| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare: Mine eare is much enamored of thy note;
On the first view to say, to sweare I loue thee.
So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape.
And thy faire vertues force (perforce) doth moue me
Bot. Me-thinkes mistresse, you should haue little
reason for that: and yet to say the truth, reason and
loue keepe little company together, nowadayes.
The more the pittie, that some honest neighbours will
not make them friends. Nay, I can gleeke vpon occasion
Tyta. Thou art as wise, as thou art beautifull
Bot. Not so neither: but if I had wit enough to get
A Midsummer Night's Dream |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy: a circle on two stalks, down the centre of which a
switch moved pendulum-wise; while the sun, lowering
itself behind this patient row, threw their shadows
accurately inwards upon the wall. Thus it threw
shadows of these obscure and homely figures every
evening with as much care over each contour as if it
had been the profile of a court beauty on a palace
wall; copied them as diligently as it had copied
Olympian shapes on marble FACADES long ago, or the
outline of Alexander, Caesar, and the Pharaohs.
They were the less restful cows that were stalled.
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: service it can buy for him that this. Here is one hundred dollars.
Luck or no luck, we part company here. Star or no star, calamity seems
to travel by your side. You will return to the steamer. She touches at
Amotapa to discharge her lumber and iron, and then puts back to New
Orleans. Hand this note to the sailing-master, who will give you
passage.' I wrote on a leaf torn from my book, and placed it and the
money in Kearny's hand.
"'Good-bye,' I said, extending my own. 'It is not that I am displeased
with you; but there is no place in this expedition for--let us say,
the Senorita Phoebe.' I said this with a smile, trying to smooth the
thing for him. 'May you have better luck, /companero/.'
|
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 Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: Don, had caracoled and serenaded and blustered while the tomahawk and
the pioneer's rifle were already uplifted to expel him from a
continent. And Tansey, stumbling through this old-world dust, looked
up, dark as it was, and saw Andalusian beauties glimmering on the
balconies. Some of them were laughing and listening to the goblin
music that still followed; others harked fearfully through the night,
trying to catch the hoof beats of caballeros whose last echoes from
those stones had died away a century ago. Those women were silent, but
Tansey heard the jangle of horseless bridle-bits, the whirr of
riderless rowels, and, now and then, a muttered malediction in a
foreign tongue. But he was not frightened. Shadows, nor shadows of
|
