| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: honours, in the middle of a devilish wet, swampy country.--'Tis quite
surrounded, said my uncle Toby, with the Shannon, and is, by its situation,
one of the strongest fortified places in Ireland.--
I think this is a new fashion, quoth Dr. Slop, of beginning a medical
lecture.--'Tis all true, answered Trim.--Then I wish the faculty would
follow the cut of it, said Yorick.--'Tis all cut through, an' please your
reverence, said the corporal, with drains and bogs; and besides, there was
such a quantity of rain fell during the siege, the whole country was like a
puddle,--'twas that, and nothing else, which brought on the flux, and which
had like to have killed both his honour and myself; now there was no such
thing, after the first ten days, continued the corporal, for a soldier to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: the glance of a general issuing an order.
"Are we alone?" he asked.
"Yes, monsieur."
"Very good. March on Rabourdin; forward! steady! Of course you kept a
copy of that paper?"
"Yes."
"You understand me? Inde iroe! There must be a general hue and cry
raised against him. Find some way to start a clamor--"
"I could get a man to make a caricature, but I haven't five hundred
francs to pay for it."
"Who would make it?"
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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 Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: There he was, purposeless in life and purposeless out of it. He talked
of his father and mother and his schoolmaster, and all who had ever
been anything to him in the world, meanly. He had been too sensitive,
too nervous; none of them had ever valued him properly or understood
him, he said. He had never had a real friend in the world,
I think; he had never had a success. He had shirked games and failed
examinations. 'It's like that with some people,' he said; 'whenever
I got into the examination-room or anywhere everything seemed to go.'
Engaged to be married of course--to another over-sensitive person, I
suppose--when the indiscretion with the gas escape ended his affairs.
'And where are you now?' I asked. 'Not in--?'
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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 The Rig Veda:
HYMN LII. Adityas.
1. MAY we be free from every bond, Adityas! a castle among
Gods and
men, ye Vasus.
Winning, may we win Varuna and Mitra, and, being, may we be,
O Earth
and Heaven.
2 May Varuna and Mitra grant this blessing, our Guardians,
shelter to
The Rig Veda |
