| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence: life, unless my life does something and gets somewhere, inwardly at
least, to keep us both fresh. A man must offer a woman some meaning in
his life, if it's going to be an isolated life, and if she's a genuine
woman. I can't be just your male concubine.'
'Why not?' she said.
'Why, because I can't. And you would soon hate it.'
'As if you couldn't trust me,' she said.
The grin flickered on his face.
'The money is yours, the position is yours, the decisions will lie with
you. I'm not just my Lady's fucker, after all.'
'What else are you?'
Lady Chatterley's Lover |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy: through me. That was true life, the time when she tempted me!'
(He always thought with ecstasy of that night and of her who was
now Mother Agnes.) She had tasted of that pure water, but since
then there had not been time for it to collect before thirsty
people came crowding in and pushing one another aside. And they
had trampled everything down and nothing was left but mud.
So he thought in rare moments of lucidity, but his usual state of
mind was one of weariness and a tender pity for himself because
of that weariness.
It was in spring, on the eve of the mid-Pentecostal feast.
Father Sergius was officiating at the Vigil Service in his
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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 Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: on the top of Mr. Laurence's bald head, and ran up to slip the
apology under Laurie's door, advising him through the keyhole to
be submissive, decorous, and a few other agreeable impossibilities.
Finding the door locked again, she left the note to do its work,
and was going quietly away, when the young gentleman slid down
the banisters, and waited for her at the bottom, saying, with his
most virtuous expression of countenance, "What a good fellow you
are, Jo! Did you get blown up?" he added, laughing.
"No, he was pretty mild, on the whole."
"AH! I got it all round. Even you cast me off over there,
and I felt just ready to go to the deuce," he began apologetically.
Little Women |
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 Timaeus by Plato: things which were not fair and good. And now I will endeavour to show you
the disposition and generation of them by an unaccustomed argument, which I
am compelled to use; but I believe that you will be able to follow me, for
your education has made you familiar with the methods of science.
In the first place, then, as is evident to all, fire and earth and water
and air are bodies. And every sort of body possesses solidity, and every
solid must necessarily be contained in planes; and every plane rectilinear
figure is composed of triangles; and all triangles are originally of two
kinds, both of which are made up of one right and two acute angles; one of
them has at either end of the base the half of a divided right angle,
having equal sides, while in the other the right angle is divided into
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