| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Poems by T. S. Eliot: For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: to have been first introduced as early as the sixth century before Christ
by Theagenes of Rhegium, was well established in the age of Plato, and
here, as in the Phaedrus, though for a different reason, was rejected by
him. That anachronisms whether of religion or law, when men have reached
another stage of civilization, should be got rid of by fictions is in
accordance with universal experience. Great is the art of interpretation;
and by a natural process, which when once discovered was always going on,
what could not be altered was explained away. And so without any palpable
inconsistency there existed side by side two forms of religion, the
tradition inherited or invented by the poets and the customary worship of
the temple; on the other hand, there was the religion of the philosopher,
The Republic |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Anthem by Ayn Rand: his is the one I wish to bear. He took the
light of the gods and he brought it to men,
and he taught men to be gods. And he suffered
for his deed as all bearers of light
must suffer. His name was Prometheus."
"It shall be your name," said the Golden One.
"And I have read of a goddess," I said,
"who was the mother of the earth and of
all the gods. Her name was Gaea. Let this
be your name, my Golden One, for you
are to be the mother of a new kind of gods."
Anthem |
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 Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: spirits he had drunk before the attack, what with the excitement
of the attack itself and the sudden unleashing of the brute in him
an instant before, the whole affair grew dim and hazy in his mind.
He ceased to see things in their proportion. His new-found
strength gloried in matching itself with another strength that was
its equal. He fought with Moran--not as he would fight with
either woman or man, or with anything human, for the matter of
that. He fought with her as against some impersonal force that it
was incumbent upon him to conquer--that it was imperative he
should conquer if he wished to live. When she struck, he struck
blow for blow, force for force, his strength against hers,
|
