| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lamentable Tragedy of Locrine and Mucedorus by William Shakespeare: [Enter Locrine, Camber, Corineius, Assaracus,
Thrasimachus, and the soldiers.]
LOCRINE.
Thus from the furty of Bellona's broils,
With sound of drum and trumpets' melody,
The Brittain king returns triumphantly.
The Scithians slain with great occasion
Do equalize the grass in multitude,
And with their blood have stained the streaming brooks,
Offering their bodies and their dearest blood
As sacrifice to Albanactus' ghost.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: Then her tears were dried by the fires that burned in the dark
depths within her. She grew even paler. When I drew the letters
from beneath my pillow and held them out to her, she took them
mechanically; then, trembling from head to foot, she said in a
hollow voice:
"And _I_ burned all his letters!--I have nothing of him left!--
Nothing! nothing!"
She struck her hand against her forehead.
"Madame----" I began.
She glanced at me in the convulsion of grief.
"I cut this from his head, this lock of his hair."
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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 Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: Even before the most seductive reveries I have remained mindful
of that sobriety of interior life, that asceticism of sentiment,
in which alone the naked form of truth, such as one conceives it,
such as one feels it, can be rendered without shame. It is but a
maudlin and indecent verity that comes out through the strength
of wine. I have tried to be a sober worker all my life--all my
two lives. I did so from taste, no doubt, having an instinctive
horror of losing my sense of full self-possession, but also from
artistic conviction. Yet there are so many pitfalls on each side
of the true path that, having gone some way, and feeling a little
battered and weary, as a middle-aged traveller will from the mere
Some Reminiscences |
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 Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: clearly appear whither. Perhaps he had had wind of Kelmar's
coming, and was now ensconced among the underwood, or
watching us from the shoulder of the mountain. We, hearing
there were no houses to be had, were for immediately giving
up all hopes of Silverado. But this, somehow, was not to
Kelmar's fancy. He first proposed that we should "camp
someveres around, ain't it?" waving his hand cheerily as
though to weave a spell; and when that was firmly rejected,
he decided that we must take up house with the Hansons. Mrs.
Hanson had been, from the first, flustered, subdued, and a
little pale; but from this proposition she recoiled with
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