| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: once.
And why?
Because Analysis can only explain to you a little about dead
things, like stones--inorganic things as they are called. Living
things--organisms, as they are called--he cannot explain to you at
all. When he meddles with them, he always ends like the man who
killed his goose to get the golden eggs. He has to kill his
goose, or his flower, or his insect, before he can analyse it; and
then it is not a goose, but only the corpse of a goose; not a
flower, but only the dead stuff of the flower.
And therefore he will never do anything but fail, when he tries to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: charming creature); and that, in consequence of his treatment,
or something which hung on her mind, she had, during her first
lying-in, lost her senses."
What a subject of meditation--even to the very
confines of madness.
"Woman, fragile flower! why were you suffered to adorn a world
exposed to the inroad of such stormy elements?" thought Maria,
while the poor maniac's strain was still breathing on her ear,
and sinking into her very soul.
Towards the evening, Jemima brought her Rousseau's Heloise;
and she sat reading with eyes and heart, till the return of her
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: Don't speak against him, my son. He was your father, and a gentleman.
Indeed, he was highly connected."
An oath broke from his lips. "I don't care for myself,"
he exclaimed, "but don't let Sibyl. . . . It is a gentleman,
isn't it, who is in love with her, or says he is?
Highly connected, too, I suppose."
For a moment a hideous sense of humiliation came over the woman.
Her head drooped. She wiped her eyes with shaking hands.
"Sibyl has a mother," she murmured; "I had none."
The lad was touched. He went towards her, and stooping down,
he kissed her. "I am sorry if I have pained you by asking about
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Rig Veda: Varuna, Mitra, Aryaman, of one accord.
12 Gods whom we yearn for, of your gifts, of what ye bring
to us,
bestow
By princes' hands on me, ye Mighty, day by day.
13 Him whom your sacrifices clothe, even as a woman with her
robe,
The Asvins help to glory honouring him well.
14 Whoso regards your care of men as succour widest in its
reach,
About his dwelling go, ye Asvins, loving us.
The Rig Veda |
