| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: must be a man who knows what he is doing; one must keep a sharp
lookout, and not for one second lose sight of what lies before
one.
A good conductor, interpreting the thought of the composer, does
twenty things at once: reads the score, waves his baton, watches
the singer, makes a motion sideways, first to the drum then to
the wind-instruments, and so on. I do just the same when I
lecture. Before me a hundred and fifty faces, all unlike one
another; three hundred eyes all looking straight into my face. My
object is to dominate this many-headed monster. If every moment
as I lecture I have a clear vision of the degree of its attention
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from King James Bible: GEN 49:24 But his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were
made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob; (from thence is the
shepherd, the stone of Israel:)
GEN 49:25 Even by the God of thy father, who shall help thee; and by
the Almighty, who shall bless thee with blessings of heaven above,
blessings of the deep that lieth under, blessings of the breasts, and of
the womb:
GEN 49:26 The blessings of thy father have prevailed above the
blessings of my progenitors unto the utmost bound of the everlasting
hills: they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head
of him that was separate from his brethren.
King James Bible |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: about the pretty complexions of the American ladies, about his
impressions of France and his opinion of its female inhabitants.
All this was a brilliant monologue on the part of the duchess, who,
like many of her country-women, was a person of an affirmative rather
than an interrogative cast of mind, who made mots and put them
herself into circulation, and who was apt to offer you a present
of a convenient little opinion, neatly enveloped in the gilt paper
of a happy Gallicism. Newman had come to her with a grievance,
but he found himself in an atmosphere in which apparently
no cognizance was taken of grievance; an atmosphere into which
the chill of discomfort had never penetrated, and which seemed
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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 Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain: Well, by and by Tom's glory got to paling down
gradu'ly, on account of other things turning up for the
people to talk about -- first a horse-race, and on top of
that a house afire, and on top of that the circus, and
on top of that the eclipse; and that started a revival,
same as it always does, and by that time there wasn't
any more talk about Tom, so to speak, and you never
see a person so sick and disgusted.
Pretty soon he got to worrying and fretting right
along day in and day out, and when I asked him what
WAS he in such a state about, he said it 'most broke his
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