| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: boys will be boys, young men must sow their wild oats,
and women must not expect miracles." I dare say you don't,
Mrs. Grundy, but it's true nevertheless. Women work
a good many miracles, and I have a persuasion that they may
perform even that of raising the standard of manhood by
refusing to echo such sayings. Let the boys be boys, the
longer the better, and let the young men sow their wild oats
if they must. But mothers, sisters, and friends may help to
make the crop a small one, and keep many tares from spoiling
the harvest, by believing, and showing that they believe, in
the possibility of loyalty to the virtues which make men manliest
Little Women |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: Adelaide could read Hippolyte's thoughts. Though he could not
confess his misdeeds, the painter knew them, and he had come back
to his mistress more in love, and more affectionate, trying thus
to purchase her tacit forgiveness. Adelaide was enjoying such
perfect, such sweet happiness, that she did not think she had
paid too dear for it with all the grief that had so cruelly
crushed her soul. And yet, this true concord of hearts, this
understanding so full of magic charm, was disturbed by a little
speech of Madame de Rouville's.
"Let us have our little game," she said, "for my old friend
Kergarouet will not let me off."
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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 Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: Or, in plainer words, practise vivisection on "good people," on
the "homo bonae voluntatis," ON YOURSELVES!
219. The practice of judging and condemning morally, is the
favourite revenge of the intellectually shallow on those who are
less so, it is also a kind of indemnity for their being badly
endowed by nature, and finally, it is an opportunity for
acquiring spirit and BECOMING subtle--malice spiritualises. They
are glad in their inmost heart that there is a standard according
to which those who are over-endowed with intellectual goods and
privileges, are equal to them, they contend for the "equality of
all before God," and almost NEED the belief in God for this
Beyond Good and Evil |
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 At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: Sound and stood off the coast in the lee of smoking Mt. Erebus.
The scoriac peak towered up some twelve thousand, seven hundred
feet against the eastern sky, like a Japanese print of the sacred
Fujiyama, while beyond it rose the white, ghostlike height of
Mt. Terror, ten thousand, nine hundred feet in altitude, and now
extinct as a volcano.
Puffs of smoke from Erebus came intermittently,
and one of the graduate assistants - a brilliant young fellow
named Danforth - pointed out what looked like lava on the snowy
slope, remarking that this mountain, discovered in 1840, had undoubtedly
been the source of Poe’s image when he wrote seven years later:
At the Mountains of Madness |
