| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: She a long season wandered through the world.
Above in beauteous Italy lies a lake
At the Alp's foot that shuts in Germany
Over Tyrol, and has the name Benaco.
By a thousand springs, I think, and more, is bathed,
'Twixt Garda and Val Camonica, Pennino,
With water that grows stagnant in that lake.
Midway a place is where the Trentine Pastor,
And he of Brescia, and the Veronese
Might give his blessing, if he passed that way.
Sitteth Peschiera, fortress fair and strong,
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: He glanced at them all, stooping and swaying and gesticulating round
the table-cloth. Amiable and modest, respectable in many ways,
lovable even in their contentment and desire to be kind, how mediocre
they all were, and capable of what insipid cruelty to one another!
There was Mrs. Thornbury, sweet but trivial in her maternal egoism;
Mrs. Elliot, perpetually complaining of her lot; her husband a mere
pea in a pod; and Susan--she had no self, and counted neither one way
nor the other; Venning was as honest and as brutal as a schoolboy;
poor old Thornbury merely trod his round like a horse in a mill;
and the less one examined into Evelyn's character the better,
he suspected. Yet these were the people with money, and to them
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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 Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: dibs in the hand of the P.D., I.E. painful doer; because if there
be none, I shall take to my flageolet on the high-road, and work
home the best way I can, having previously made away with my family
- I am of opinion that if - and his are in the customary state, and
you are thinking of an offering, and there should be still some
funds over, you would be a real good P.D. to put some in with yours
and tak' the credit o't, like a wee man! I know it's a beastly
thing to ask; but it, after all, does no earthly harm, only that
much good. And besides, like enough there's nothing in the till,
and there is an end. Yet I live here in the full lustre of
millions; it is thought I am the richest son of man that has yet
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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 Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: foam ran to her feet, and the dead leaves swarmed about her back,
and the rags blew about her face in the blowing of the wind.
"Now," said the King's daughter, and she named a holy name, "this
is the most unhappy old crone between two seas."
"Daughter of a King," said the crone, "you dwell in a stone house,
and your hair is like the gold: but what is your profit? Life is
not long, nor lives strong; and you live after the way of simple
men, and have no thought for the morrow and no power upon the
hour."
"Thought for the morrow, that I have," said the King's daughter;
"but power upon the hour, that have I not." And she mused with
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