| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Koran: they were extinct.
Alas for the servants! there comes to them no apostle but they
mock at him!
Have they not seen how many generations we have destroyed before
them? verily, they shall not return to them; but all of them shall
surely altogether be arraigned.
And a sign for them is the dead earth which we have quickened and
brought forth therefrom seed, and from it do they eat; and we made
therein gardens and palms and grapes, and we have caused fountains
to gush forth therein, that they may eat from the fruit thereof, and
of what their hands have made; will they not then give thanks?
The Koran |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Oedipus Trilogy by Sophocles: OEDIPUS
He is too cunning to commit himself,
And makes a mouthpiece of a knavish seer.
JOCASTA
Then thou mayest ease thy conscience on that score.
Listen and I'll convince thee that no man
Hath scot or lot in the prophetic art.
Here is the proof in brief. An oracle
Once came to Laius (I will not say
'Twas from the Delphic god himself, but from
His ministers) declaring he was doomed
Oedipus Trilogy |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: natural things."
"Natural!" said he. "Natural! No, I consider on the contrary
that it is against nature, and it is I, a perverted man, who have
reached this conviction. What would it be, then, if I had not
known corruption? To a young girl, to every unperverted young
girl, it is an act extremely unnatural, just as it is to
children. My sister married, when very young, a man twice her
own age, and who was utterly corrupt. I remember how astonished
we were the night of her wedding, when, pale and covered with
tears, she fled from her husband, her whole body trembling,
saying that for nothing in the world would she tell what he
The Kreutzer Sonata |
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 Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: you are? If you won't accept the noble conjugality just formulated for
your benefit by your friend de Marsay, listen, at any rate, to his
final advice. Remain a bachelor for the next thirteen years; amuse
yourself like a lost soul; then, at forty, on your first attack of
gout, marry a widow of thirty-six. Then you may possibly be happy. If
you now take a young girl to wife, you'll die a madman."
"Ah ca! tell me why!" cried Paul, somewhat piqued.
"My dear fellow," replied de Marsay, "Boileau's satire against women
is a tissue of poetical commonplaces. Why shouldn't women have
defects? Why condemn them for having the most obvious thing in human
nature? To my mind, the problem of marriage is not at all at the point
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