| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er
She shall press, ah, nevermore!
Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee--by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite--respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: the forest. The dew was falling by now; the mowers were in the
sun only on the hillside, but below, where a mist was rising, and
on the opposite side, they mowed into the fresh, dewy shade. The
work went rapidly. The grass cut with a juicy sound, and was at
once laid in high, fragrant rows. The mowers from all sides,
brought closer together in the short row, kept urging one another
on to the sound of jingling dipper and clanging scythes, and the
hiss of the whetstones sharpening them, and good-humored shouts.
Levin still kept between the young peasant and the old man. The
old man, who had put on his short sheepskin jacket, was just as
good- humored, jocose, and free in his movements. Among the trees
Anna Karenina |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: was in a corner on the top floor--in his dressing-gown, with his
beard uncombed and tumbled together, and go down to dress.
Soon after he would issue from his study fresh and vigorous,
in a gray smock-frock, and would go up into the zala for
breakfast. That was our déjeuner.
When there was nobody staying in the house, he would not
stop long in the drawing-room, but would take his tumbler of tea
and carry it off to his study with him.
But if there were friends and guests
¹The zala is the chief room of a house,
corresponding to the English drawing-room, but on a grand scale.
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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 Exiles by Honore de Balzac: to tower all over the city. Then suddenly confused shouts were heard
on the left bank of the Seine, behind Notre-Dame, in the quarter where
the schools of the University harbored their swarms.
At this signal, Jacqueline's elder lodger began to move about his
room. The sergeant, his wife, and the strange lady listened while he
opened and shut his door, and the old man's heavy step was heard on
the steep stair. The constable's suspicions gave such interest to the
advent of this personage, that the lady was startled as she observed
the strange expression of the two countenances before her. Referring
the terrors of this couple to the youth she was protecting--as was
natural in a lover--the young lady awaited, with some uneasiness, the
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