| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: I don't defend myself. I had no clear perception of what it was I
really wanted. Perhaps it was an impulse of unconscious loyalty,
or the fulfilment of one of those ironic necessities that lurk
in the facts of human existence. I don't know. I can't tell.
But I went.
"I thought his memory was like the other memories of the dead
that accumulate in every man's life--a vague impress on the brain
of shadows that had fallen on it in their swift and final passage;
but before the high and ponderous door, between the tall
houses of a street as still and decorous as a well-kept
alley in a cemetery, I had a vision of him on the stretcher,
Heart of Darkness |
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 Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: Like all great souls, she found her luxury in strength of feeling, and
derived her happiness from quietness and work. These three beings
loved each other too well for the externals of existence to be of
value in their eyes.
Often, and especially after the second dreadful fall of Napoleon,
Bartolomeo and his wife passed delightful evenings alone with their
daughter, listening while she sang and played. To them there was a
vast secret pleasure in the presence, in the slightest word of that
child; their eyes followed her with tender anxiety; they heard her
step in the court-yard, lightly as she trod. Like lovers, the three
would often sit silently together, understanding thus, better than by
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