| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: with the shaft-bow shaking before his eyes, kept passing
through his mind, then he remembered Nikita lying under him,
then recollections of the festival, his wife, the
police-officer, and the box of candles, began to mingle with
these; then again Nikita, this time lying under that box, then
the peasants, customers and traders, and the white walls of his
house with its iron roof with Nikita lying underneath,
presented themselves to his imagination. Afterwards all these
impressions blended into one nothingness. As the colours of
the rainbow unite into one white light, so all these different
impressions mingled into one, and he fell asleep.
Master and Man |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: consecutive years nothing has ever been amiss,--linen in perfect
order, bands, albs, surplices; I find everything in its place, always
in sufficient quantity, and smelling of orris-root. My furniture is
rubbed and kept so bright that I don't know when I have seen any dust
--did you ever see a speck of it in my rooms? Then the firewood is so
well selected. The least little things are excellent. In fact,
Mademoiselle Gamard keeps an incessant watch over my wants. I can't
remember having rung twice for anything--no matter what--in ten years.
That's what I call living! I never have to look for a single thing,
not even my slippers. Always a good fire, always a good dinner. Once
the bellows annoyed me, the nozzle was choked up; but I only mentioned
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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 Middlemarch by George Eliot: The gentleman was too much occupied with the presence of the one woman
to reflect on the contrast between the two--a contrast that would
certainly have been striking to a calm observer. They were both tall,
and their eyes were on a level; but imagine Rosamond's infantine
blondness and wondrous crown of hair-plaits, with her pale-blue
dress of a fit and fashion so perfect that no dressmaker could look
at it without emotion, a large embroidered collar which it was
to be hoped all beholders would know the price of, her small hands
duly set off with rings, and that controlled self-consciousness
of manner which is the expensive substitute for simplicity.
"Thank you very much for allowing me to interrupt you,"
Middlemarch |
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 Royalty Restored/London Under Charles II by J. Fitzgerald Molloy: to her physical attractions so long as she reigned paramount in
the king's affections; but when another woman, no less fair, came
betwixt my lady and his majesty's favour, Mr. Pepys, being a
loyal man and a frail, found greater beauty in the new love,
whose charms he avowed surpassed the old. To his most
interesting diary posterity is indebted for glimpses of the
manner in which the merry monarch and his mistress behaved
themselves during the first months of the restoration. Now he
tells of "great doings of musique," which were going on at Madame
Palmer's house, situated in the Strand, next Earl Sandwich's, and
of the king and the duke being with that lady: again, in the
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