| 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 H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: What other kind avails, not heard in heaven?"'
Before me now the Poet up the mount
Ascending, cried: "Haste thee, for see the sun
Has touch'd the point meridian, and the night
Now covers with her foot Marocco's shore."
CANTO V
Now had I left those spirits, and pursued
The steps of my Conductor, when beheld
Pointing the finger at me one exclaim'd:
"See how it seems as if the light not shone
From the left hand of him beneath, and he,
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: bodily combat.
Now what happened to me in the adventure of the goat happens very
often to parents, and would happen to schoolmasters if the prison door
of the school did not shut out the trials of life. I remember once,
at school, the resident head master was brought down to earth by the
sudden illness of his wife. In the confusion that ensued it became
necessary to leave one of the schoolrooms without a master. I was in
the class that occupied that schoolroom. To have sent us home would
have been to break the fundamental bargain with our parents by which
the school was bound to keep us out of their way for half the day at
all hazards. Therefore an appeal had to be made to our better
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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 An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: more about it."
"As to rights," said the notary, "the Bourbons have much more right to
conceive, plan, and execute a scheme against Bonaparte, than Bonaparte
had on the 18th Brumaire against the Republic, whose product he was.
He murdered his mother on that occasion, but these royalists only seek
to recover what was theirs. I can understand that the princes and
their adherents, seeing the lists of the /emigres/ closed, mortgages
suppressed, the Catholic faith restored, anti-revolutionary decrees
accumulating, should begin to see that their return is becoming
difficult, not to say impossible. Bonaparte being the sole obstacle
now in their way, they want to get rid of him--nothing simpler.
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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 Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain: a-laughing at us behind them bogus snores of his'n; and we
would stick by him, and the first night we was ashore we
would get him drunk and search him, and get the di'monds;
and DO for him, too, if it warn't too risky. If we got
the swag, we'd GOT to do for him, or he would hunt us down
and do for us, sure. But I didn't have no real hope.
I knowed we could get him drunk--he was always ready
for that--but what's the good of it? You might search him
a year and never find--"Well, right there I catched my
breath and broke off my thought! For an idea went ripping
through my head that tore my brains to rags--and land,
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