| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Hamlet by William Shakespeare: What thinke you on't?
Hor. Before my God, I might not this beleeue
Without the sensible and true auouch
Of mine owne eyes
Mar. Is it not like the King?
Hor. As thou art to thy selfe,
Such was the very Armour he had on,
When th' Ambitious Norwey combatted:
So frown'd he once, when in an angry parle
He smot the sledded Pollax on the Ice.
'Tis strange
Hamlet |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom by William and Ellen Craft: lady to whom she first belonged became so annoyed,
at finding her frequently mistaken for a child of
the family, that she gave her when eleven years of
age to a daughter, as a wedding present. This
separated my wife from her mother, and also from
several other dear friends. But the incessant
cruelty of her old mistress made the change of
owners or treatment so desirable, that she did not
grumble much at this cruel separation.
It may be remembered that slavery in America
is not at all confined to persons of any particular
Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: He said that it had been propos'd among them, but not agreed to,
for this reason: "When we were first drawn together as a society,"
says he, "it had pleased God to enlighten our minds so far as to see
that some doctrines, which we once esteemed truths, were errors;
and that others, which we had esteemed errors, were real truths.
From time to time He has been pleased to afford us farther light,
and our principles have been improving, and our errors diminishing.
Now we are not sure that we are arrived at the end of this progression,
and at the perfection of spiritual or theological knowledge;
and we fear that, if we should once print our confession of faith,
we should feel ourselves as if bound and confin'd by it, and perhaps
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
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 Moby Dick by Herman Melville: indifference with which the white whale tore his hunters, whether
sinning or sinned against; now it was that there lurked a something
in the old man's eyes, which it was hardly sufferable for feeble
souls to see. As the unsetting polar star, which through the
livelong, arctic, six months' night sustains its piercing, steady,
central gaze; so Ahab's purpose now fixedly gleamed down upon the
constant midnight of the gloomy crew. It domineered above them so,
that all their bodings, doubts, misgivings, fears, were fain to hide
beneath their souls, and not sprout forth a single spear or leaf.
In this foreshadowing interval too, all humor, forced or natural,
vanished. Stubb no more strove to raise a smile; Starbuck no more
Moby Dick |
