| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum: you feel comfor'ble now?"
"Not very. The sun has helped to dry my feathers, as it has your
dress, and I feel better since I laid my morning egg. But what's to
become of us, I should like to know, afloat on this big pond?"
"I'd like to know that, too," said Dorothy. "But, tell me; how does
it happen that you are able to talk? I thought hens could only cluck
and cackle."
"Why, as for that," answered the yellow hen thoughtfully, "I've
clucked and cackled all my life, and never spoken a word before this
morning, that I can remember. But when you asked a question, a minute
ago, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to answer you. So
Ozma of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare: Doth cite each moving sense from idle rest.
Not daring trust the office of mine eyes,
While Philomela sits and sings, I sit and mark,
And wish her lays were tuned like the lark;
For she doth welcome daylight with her ditty,
And drives away dark dismal-dreaming night:
The night so pack'd, I post unto my pretty;
Heart hath his hope, and eyes their wished sight;
Sorrow changed to solace, solace mix'd with sorrow;
For why, she sigh'd and bade me come tomorrow.
Were I with her, the night would post too soon;
|
| 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: artists, as their HIGHEST rank. It is the profound, suspicious
fear of an incurable pessimism which compels whole centuries to
fasten their teeth into a religious interpretation of existence:
the fear of the instinct which divines that truth might be
attained TOO soon, before man has become strong enough, hard
enough, artist enough.... Piety, the "Life in God," regarded in
this light, would appear as the most elaborate and ultimate
product of the FEAR of truth, as artist-adoration and artist-
intoxication in presence of the most logical of all
falsifications, as the will to the inversion of truth, to untruth
at any price. Perhaps there has hitherto been no more effective
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 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad: spoke to me and looked at me with hushed, pained compassion as
though I had been ill), that I had no difficulty in giving them all
up. I would have given up the society of the whole town, for the
sake of sitting near that girl, snarling and superb and barely clad
in that flimsy, dingy, amber wrapper, open low at the throat. She
looked, with the wild wisps of hair hanging down her tense face, as
though she had just jumped out of bed in the panic of a fire.
She sat leaning on her elbow, looking at nothing. Why did she stay
listening to my absurd chatter? And not only that; but why did she
powder her face in preparation for my arrival? It seemed to be her
idea of making a toilette, and in her untidy negligence a sign of
'Twixt Land & Sea |
