| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: servant to hire a box near the stage for the whole season. Then, like
all young men of powerful feelings, he exaggerated the difficulties of
his undertaking, and gave his passion, for its first pasturage, the
joy of being able to admire his mistress without obstacle. The golden
age of love, during which we enjoy our own sentiments, and in which we
are almost as happy by ourselves, was not likely to last long with
Sarrasine. However, events surprised him when he was still under the
spell of that springtime hallucination, as naive as it was voluptuous.
In a week he lived a whole lifetime, occupied through the day in
molding the clay with which he succeeded in copying La Zambinella,
notwithstanding the veils, the skirts, the waists, and the bows of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: whose bare neck and arms and breast were white as snow; whose figure
was well-rounded and beautiful in its youthful grace; whose hair,
charmingly arranged above an alabaster forehead, inspired love; whose
eyes did not receive but gave forth light, who was sweet and fresh,
and whose fluffy curls, whose fragrant breath, seemed too heavy, too
harsh, too overpowering for that shadow, for that man of dust--ah! the
thought that came into my mind was of death and life, an imaginary
arabesque, a half-hideous chimera, divinely feminine from the waist
up.
"And yet such marriages are often made in society!" I said to myself.
"He smells of the cemetery!" cried the terrified young woman, grasping
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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 On Horsemanship by Xenophon: at full speed; and on the same principle, you should absolutely
abstain from setting him to race against another; as a general rule,
your fiery-spirited horse is only too fond of contention.[6]
[6] Reading {skhedon gar kai phil oi thum}, or if {. . . oi thil kai
th.} transl. "the more eager and ambitious a horse is, the more
mettlesome he will tend to become."
Smooth bits are better and more serviceable than rough; if a rough bit
be inserted at all, it must be made to resemble a smooth one as much
as possible by lightness of hand.
It is a good thing also for the rider to accustom himself to keep a
quiet seat, especially when mounted on a spirited horse; and also to
On Horsemanship |
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 Timaeus by Plato: But there still remains a rebellious seed of evil derived from the original
chaos, which is the source of disorder in the world, and of vice and
disease in man.
But what did Plato mean by essence, (Greek), which is the intermediate
nature compounded of the Same and the Other, and out of which, together
with these two, the soul of the world is created? It is difficult to
explain a process of thought so strange and unaccustomed to us, in which
modern distinctions run into one another and are lost sight of. First, let
us consider once more the meaning of the Same and the Other. The Same is
the unchanging and indivisible, the heaven of the fixed stars, partaking of
the divine nature, which, having law in itself, gives law to all besides
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