| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Georgics by Virgil: Vines Thasian are there, Mareotids white,
These apt for richer soils, for lighter those:
Psithian for raisin-wine more useful, thin
Lageos, that one day will try the feet
And tie the tongue: purples and early-ripes,
And how, O Rhaetian, shall I hymn thy praise?
Yet cope not therefore with Falernian bins.
Vines Aminaean too, best-bodied wine,
To which the Tmolian bows him, ay, and king
Phanaeus too, and, lesser of that name,
Argitis, wherewith not a grape can vie
Georgics |
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: analogues the lawgiver and the judge, become instruments of tyranny in
the hands of those who are too narrow-minded to understand law and
exercise judgment; and in their hands (with us they mostly fall into
such hands) law becomes tyranny. And what is a tyrant? Quite simply
a person who says to another person, young or old, "You shall do as I
tell you; you shall make what I want; you shall profess my creed; you
shall have no will of your own; and your powers shall be at the
disposal of my will." It has come to this at last: that the phrase
"she has a will of her own," or "he has a will of his own" has come to
denote a person of exceptional obstinacy and self-assertion. And even
persons of good natural disposition, if brought up to expect such
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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 The Door in the Wall, et. al. by H. G. Wells: perhaps, to eat some of it. But the llamas had a doubt of him and
regarded him with distrustful brown eyes and spat when he drew
near. Fear came on him the second day and fits of shivering.
Finally he crawled down to the wall of the Country of the Blind and
tried to make his terms. He crawled along by the stream, shouting,
until two blind men came out to the gate and talked to him.
"I was mad," he said. "But I was only newly made."
They said that was better.
He told them he was wiser now, and repented of all he had
done.
Then he wept without intention, for he was very weak and ill
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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 Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: God even more chaste than the Virgin Mary herself,--Grandet, struck
with pity, would say as he looked at her, "Poor Nanon!" The
exclamation was always followed by an undefinable look cast upon him
in return by the old servant. The words, uttered from time to time,
formed a chain of friendship that nothing ever parted, and to which
each exclamation added a link. Such compassion arising in the heart of
the miser, and accepted gratefully by the old spinster, had something
inconceivably horrible about it. This cruel pity, recalling, as it
did, a thousand pleasures to the heart of the old cooper, was for
Nanon the sum total of happiness. Who does not likewise say, "Poor
Nanon!" God will recognize his angels by the inflexions of their
Eugenie Grandet |
