| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: turpentine so energetically into my neck that it burnt like a
collar of fire, and for a long time I was unable to get to sleep.
In the morning Radek, the two conductors who had charge
of the wagons and I sat down together to breakfast and had
a very merry meal, they providing cheese and bread and I a
tin of corned beef providently sent out from home by the
Manchester Guardian. We cooked up some coffee on a
little spirit stove, which, in a neat basket together with plates,
knives, forks, etc. (now almost unobtainable in Russia) had been
a parting present from the German Spartacists to Radek when
he was released from prison in Berlin and allowed to leave Germany.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: He then took me into a saloon, and while I drank made me note
that the floor was covered with coins sunk in cement. A
Hottentot would not have been guilty of this sort of barbarism.
The coins made an effect pretty enough, but the man who put them
there had no thought of beauty, and, therefore, he was a savage.
"Then my cab-driver showed me business blocks gay with signs and
studded with fantastic and absurd advertisements of goods, and
looking down the long street so adorned, it was as though each
vender stood at his door howling:--"For the sake of my money,
employ or buy of me, and me only!"
Have you ever seen a crowd at a famine-relief distribution? You
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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 Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: 'Oh, Mr Quatermain,' she cried, throwing her arms round my neck
and bursting into tears, 'I can't bear to say goodbye to you.
I wonder when we shall meet again?'
'I don't know, my dear little girl,' I said, 'I am at one end
of life and you are at the other. I have but a short time before
me at best, and most things lie in the past, but I hope that
for you there are many long and happy years, and everything lies
in the future. By-and-by you will grow into a beautiful woman,
Flossie, and all this wild life will be like a far-off dream
to you; but I hope, even if we never do meet again, that you
will think of your old friend and remember what I say to you
Allan Quatermain |
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 Symposium by Plato: as I may say, even for a moment: these are the people who pass their whole
lives together; yet they could not explain what they desire of one another.
For the intense yearning which each of them has towards the other does not
appear to be the desire of lover's intercourse, but of something else which
the soul of either evidently desires and cannot tell, and of which she has
only a dark and doubtful presentiment. Suppose Hephaestus, with his
instruments, to come to the pair who are lying side by side and to say to
them, 'What do you people want of one another?' they would be unable to
explain. And suppose further, that when he saw their perplexity he said:
'Do you desire to be wholly one; always day and night to be in one
another's company? for if this is what you desire, I am ready to melt you
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