| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac: asked Gazonal.
"Look!" said his cousin, pointing to an elegant caleche which was
turning at that moment from the boulevard into the rue Grange-
Bateliere, "there's one of the leading danseuses whose name on the
posters attracts all Paris. That woman earns sixty thousand francs a
year and lives like a princess; the price of your manufactory all told
wouldn't suffice to buy you the privilege of bidding her good-morning
a dozen times."
"Do you see," said Bixiou, "that young man who is sitting on the front
seat of her carriage? Well, he's a viscount who bears a fine old name;
he's her first gentleman of the bed-chamber; does all her business
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare: Keep him out.
HELENA.
But he assails; and our virginity, though valiant in the
defence, yet is weak: unfold to us some warlike resistance.
PAROLLES.
There is none: man, setting down before you, will undermine you
and blow you up.
HELENA.
Bless our poor virginity from underminers and blowers-up!--Is
there no military policy how virgins might blow up men?
PAROLLES.
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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 King Lear by William Shakespeare: Reg. I know't- my sister's. This approves her letter,
That she would soon be here.
Enter [Oswald the] Steward.
Is your lady come?
Lear. This is a slave, whose easy-borrowed pride
Dwells in the fickle grace of her he follows.
Out, varlet, from my sight!
Corn. What means your Grace?
Enter Goneril.
Lear. Who stock'd my servant? Regan, I have good hope
Thou didst not know on't.- Who comes here? O heavens!
King Lear |
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 Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: marshaled themselves under this sign against the June insurgents, tries,
in turn, to take the revolutionary field in the interest of its own
class, it goes down in its turn before the cry: "Property, Family,
Religion, Order." Thus it happens that "society is saved" as often as
the circle of its ruling class is narrowed, as often as a more exclusive
interest asserts itself over the general. Every demand for the most
simple bourgeois financial reform, for the most ordinary liberalism, for
the most commonplace republicanism, for the flattest democracy, is
forthwith punished as an "assault upon society," and is branded as
"Socialism." Finally the High Priests of "Religion and Order"
themselves are kicked off their tripods; are fetched out of their beds
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