| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: pleasing. The young man held his hand on his sword, and his ear seemed
glued to the panel of the door. Both men, standing darkly in the
shadow, looked like conspirators waiting the hour to strike a tyrant.
"Come in! come in!" cried the old man, beaming with happiness. "My
work is perfect; I can show it now with pride. Never shall painter,
brushes, colors, canvas, light, produce the rival of Catherine
Lescaut, the Beautiful Nut-girl."
Porbus and Poussin, seized with wild curiosity, rushed into the middle
of a vast atelier filled with dust, where everything lay in disorder,
and where they saw a few paintings hanging here and there upon the
walls. They stopped before the figure of a woman, life-sized and half
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Hamlet by William Shakespeare: Vngartred, and downe giued to his Anckle,
Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,
And with a looke so pitious in purport,
As if he had been loosed out of hell,
To speake of horrors: he comes before me
Polon. Mad for thy Loue?
Ophe. My Lord, I doe not know: but truly I do feare it
Polon. What said he?
Ophe. He tooke me by the wrist, and held me hard;
Then goes he to the length of all his arme;
And with his other hand thus o're his brow,
Hamlet |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: God. I made it appear with how much ease the Turks might be driven
out of the Red Sea, and the Portuguese enjoy all the trade of those
countries. I informed him of the navigation of that sea, and the
situation of its ports; told him which it would be necessary to make
ourselves masters of first, that we might upon any unfortunate
encounter retreat to them. I cannot deny that some degree of
resentment might appear in my discourse; for, though revenge be
prohibited to Christians, I should not have been displeased to have
had the Bassa of Suaquem and his brother in my hands, that I might
have reproached them with the ill-treatment we had met with from
them. This was the reason of my advising to make the first attack
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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 The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: will--in the most complete of serfdoms, a filial one. Even existence
becomes a communal affair. From the family mansion, or set of
mansions, in which all its members dwell, to the family mausoleum,
to which they will all eventually be borne, a man makes his life
journey in strict company with his kin.
A man's life is thus but an undivisible fraction of the family life.
How essentially so will appear from the following slight sketch of it.
To begin at the beginning, his birth is a very important event--for
the household, at which no one fails to rejoice except the new-comer.
He cries. The general joy, however, depends somewhat upon his sex.
If the baby chances to be a boy, everybody is immensely pleased; if
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