| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda
Gray's understudy from the FOLLIES. The party has begun.
I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house I was one of
the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not
invited--they went there. They got into automobiles which bore them out
to Long Island, and somehow they ended up at Gatsby's door. Once there
they were introduced by somebody who knew Gatsby, and after that they
conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with
amusement parks. Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby
at all, came for the party with a simplicity of heart that was its own
ticket of admission.
The Great Gatsby |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: near relation, had taken charge of the little orphan. Unluckily,
the widow of the commissary-general to the armies of the Republic
had nothing in the world but her jointure and her widow's
pension, and some day she might be obliged to leave the helpless,
inexperienced girl to the mercy of the world. The good soul,
therefore, took Victorine to mass every Sunday, and to confession
once a fortnight, thinking that, in any case, she would bring up
her ward to be devout. She was right; religion offered a solution
of the problem of the young girl's future. The poor child loved
the father who refused to acknowledge her. Once every year she
tried to see him to deliver her mother's message of forgiveness,
Father Goriot |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells: is pasture for sheep. Latest as yet is Salisbury,--English,
real English. It may last a few centuries still. It is little
more than seven hundred years old. But when I think of those
great hangars back there by Stonehenge, I feel that the next
phase is already beginning. Of a world one will fly to the
ends of, in a week or so. Our world still. Our people, your
people and mine, who are going to take wing so soon now, were
made in all these places. We are visiting the old homes. I am
glad I came back to it just when you were doing the same
thing."
"I'm lucky to have found a sympathetic fellow traveller,"
|
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 Protagoras by Plato: their superiority were disclosed, all men would be practising their wisdom.
And this secret of theirs has never been discovered by the imitators of
Lacedaemonian fashions in other cities, who go about with their ears
bruised in imitation of them, and have the caestus bound on their arms, and
are always in training, and wear short cloaks; for they imagine that these
are the practices which have enabled the Lacedaemonians to conquer the
other Hellenes. Now when the Lacedaemonians want to unbend and hold free
conversation with their wise men, and are no longer satisfied with mere
secret intercourse, they drive out all these laconizers, and any other
foreigners who may happen to be in their country, and they hold a
philosophical seance unknown to strangers; and they themselves forbid their
|
