| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: convicted;
by John Partridge, student in physick and astrology.
It is hard, my dear countrymen of these united nations, it is
very hard that a Briton born, a Protestant astrologer, a man of
revolution principles, an assertor of the liberty and property of
the people, should cry out, in vain, for justice against a
Frenchman, a Papist, an illiterate pretender to science; that
would blast my reputation, most inhumanly bury me alive, and
defraud my native country of those services, that, in my double
capacity, I daily offer to the publick.
What great provocations I have receiv'd, let the impartial reader
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde: on my account! You don't know what may be in store for you, unless
you leave this house at once. You don't know what it is to fall
into the pit, to be despised, mocked, abandoned, sneered at - to be
an outcast! to find the door shut against one, to have to creep in
by hideous byways, afraid every moment lest the mask should be
stripped from one's face, and all the while to hear the laughter,
the horrible laughter of the world, a thing more tragic than all
the tears the world has ever shed. You don't know what it is. One
pays for one's sin, and then one pays again, and all one's life one
pays. You must never know that. - As for me, if suffering be an
expiation, then at this moment I have expiated all my faults,
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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 La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: was a great effort to her to speak.
" ' "Madame," I began. She signed to me to be silent. At that moment
the old housekeeper rose and said in my ear, "Do not speak; Madame la
Comtesse is not in a state to bear the slightest noise, and what you
say might agitate her."
" 'I sat down. A few instants after, Madame de Merret collected all
her remaining strength to move her right hand, and slipped it, not
without infinite difficulty, under the bolster; she then paused a
moment. With a last effort she withdrew her hand; and when she brought
out a sealed paper, drops of perspiration rolled from her brow. "I
place my will in your hands--Oh! God! Oh!" and that was all. She
La Grande Breteche |
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 Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: would have strained all probability. So I stuck to Mary Fitton. But
I had another and more personal reason. I was, in a manner, present
at the birth of the Fitton theory. Its parent and I had become
acquainted; and he used to consult me on obscure passages in the
sonnets, on which, as far as I can remember, I never succeeded in
throwing the faintest light, at a time when nobody else thought my
opinion, on that or any other subject, of the slightest importance. I
thought it would be friendly to immortalize him, as the silly literary
saying is, much as Shakespear immortalized Mr W. H., as he said he
would, simply by writing about him.
Let me tell the story formally.
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