| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: last visited me with my fair daughter Medea. That good and
amiable child! Were she now here, it would delight her to see
me offering this wine to my honored guest."
But Ulysses, while the butler was gone for the wine, held the
snow-white flower to his nose.
"Is it a wholesome wine?" he asked.
At this the four maidens tittered; whereupon the enchantress
looked round at them, with an aspect of severity.
"It is the wholesomest juice that ever was squeezed out of the
grape," said she; "for, instead of disguising a man, as other
liquor is apt to do, it brings him to his true self, and shows
Tanglewood Tales |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: on all fours, like a colony of huge apes. On reaching the kraal
we saw that the Masai had still further choked this entrance,
which was about ten feet wide -- no doubt in order to guard against
attack -- by dragging four or five tops of mimosa trees up to
it. So much the better for us, I reflected; the more obstruction
there was the slower would they be able to come through. Here
we separated; Mackenzie and his party creeping up under the shadow
of the wall to the left, while Sir Henry and Umslopogaas took
their stations one on each side of the thorn fence, the two spearmen
and the Askari lying down in front of it. I and my men crept
on up the right side of the kraal, which was about fifty paces
Allan Quatermain |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: The word ivory would ring in the air for a while--and on we went
again into the silence, along empty reaches, round the still bends,
between the high walls of our winding way, reverberating in
hollow claps the ponderous beat of the stern-wheel. Trees,
trees, millions of trees, massive, immense, running up high;
and at their foot, hugging the bank against the stream,
crept the little begrimed steamboat, like a sluggish beetle
crawling on the floor of a lofty portico. It made you feel
very small, very lost, and yet it was not altogether depressing,
that feeling. After all, if you were small, the grimy
beetle crawled on--which was just what you wanted it to do.
Heart of Darkness |
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 Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: 'Well, just to oblige you, I give you the vatje and you give me the girl!'
And so he did. Most people wouldn't have fancied a nigger girl who'd had
two nigger children, but I didn't mind; it's all the same to me. And I
tell you she worked. She made a garden, and she and the other girl worked
in it; I tell you I didn't need to buy a sixpence of food for them in six
months, and I used to sell green mealies and pumpkins to all the fellows
about. There weren't many flies on her, I tell you. She picked up English
quicker than I picked up her lingo, and took to wearing a dress and shawl."
The stranger still sat motionless, looking into the fire.
Peter Halket reseated himself more comfortably before the fire. "Well, I
came home to the huts one day, rather suddenly, you know, to fetch
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