| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Poems of William Blake by William Blake: And went to mind her numerous charge among the verdant grass.
II.
O little Cloud the virgin said, I charge thee to tell me
Why thou complainest now when in one hour thou fade away:
Then we shall seek thee but not find: ah Thel is like to thee.
I pass away, yet I complain, and no one hears my voice.
The Cloud then shewd his golden head & his bright form emerg'd.
Hovering and glittering on the air before the face of Thel.
O virgin know'st thou not our steeds drink of the golden springs
Where Luvah doth renew his horses: lookst thou on my youth.
And fearest thou because I vanish and am seen no more.
Poems of William Blake |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy: itself is absurdly minute. When women are in a freakish
mood, their usual intuition, either from carelessness or
inherent defect, seemingly fails to teach them this, and
hence it was that Bathsheba was fated to be astonished
today.
Boldwood looked at her -- not slily, critically, or
understandingly, but blankly at gaze, in the way a
reaper looks up at a passing train -- as something foreign
to his element, and but dimly understood. To Bold-
wood women had been remote phenomena rather than
necessary complements -- comets of such uncertain
Far From the Madding Crowd |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: simplicity and folly, or by reason of their cunning and a certain sort of
prudence?
HIPPIAS: By reason of their cunning and prudence, most certainly.
SOCRATES: Then they are prudent, I suppose?
HIPPIAS: So they are--very.
SOCRATES: And if they are prudent, do they know or do they not know what
they do?
HIPPIAS: Of course, they know very well; and that is why they do mischief
to others.
SOCRATES: And having this knowledge, are they ignorant, or are they wise?
HIPPIAS: Wise, certainly; at least, in so far as they can deceive.
|
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 Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: appearance of uncertainty in her health, co-incident and equally
new. It was characteristic of the inner detachment he had hitherto
so successfully cultivated and to which our whole account of him is
a reference, it was characteristic that his complications, such as
they were, had never yet seemed so as at this crisis to thicken
about him, even to the point of making him ask himself if he were,
by any chance, of a truth, within sight or sound, within touch or
reach, within the immediate jurisdiction, of the thing that waited.
When the day came, as come it had to, that his friend confessed to
him her fear of a deep disorder in her blood, he felt somehow the
shadow of a change and the chill of a shock. He immediately began
|
