| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: nothing to do with the more or less noise that at the moment we
might be engaged in making and that I could hear through any deepened
exhilaration or quickened recitation or louder strum of the piano.
Then it was that the others, the outsiders, were there.
Though they were not angels, they "passed," as the French say,
causing me, while they stayed, to tremble with the fear of their
addressing to their younger victims some yet more infernal message
or more vivid image than they had thought good enough for myself.
What it was most impossible to get rid of was the cruel idea that,
whatever I had seen, Miles and Flora saw MORE--things terrible
and unguessable and that sprang from dreadful passages of intercourse
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Memorabilia by Xenophon: friendship to every other beautiful and noble nature.
[14] {kalous kagathous}.
Soc. What perplexes and confounds you, Critobulus, is the fact that so
often men of noble conduct, with souls aloof from baseness, are not
friends but rather at strife and discord with one another, and deal
more harshly by one another than they would by the most good-for-
nothing of mankind.
Cri. Yes, and this holds true not of private persons only, but states,
the most eager to pursue a noble policy and to repudiate a base one,
are frequently in hostile relation to one another. As I reason on
these things my heart fails me, and the question, how friends are to
The Memorabilia |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Light of Western Stars by Zane Grey: went back East. With that in mind she invited Helen to visit her
during the summer, and bring as many friends as she liked.
No slight task indeed was it to oversee the many business details
of Her Majesty's Rancho and to keep a record of them. Madeline
found the course of business training upon which her father had
insisted to be invaluable to her now. It helped her to
assimilate and arrange the practical details of cattle-raising as
put forth by the blunt Stillwell. She split up the great stock
of cattle into different herds, and when any of these were out
running upon the open range she had them closely watched. Part
of the time each herd was kept in an inclosed range, fed and
The Light of Western Stars |
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 Hamlet by William Shakespeare: Polon. Yet heere Laertes? Aboord, aboord for shame,
The winde sits in the shoulder of your saile,
And you are staid for there: my blessing with you;
And these few Precepts in thy memory,
See thou Character. Giue thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any vnproportion'd thoughts his Act:
Be thou familiar; but by no meanes vulgar:
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tride,
Grapple them to thy Soule, with hoopes of Steele:
But doe not dull thy palme, with entertainment
Of each vnhatch't, vnfledg'd Comrade. Beware
Hamlet |
