| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake: And the dews of night arise;
Your spring and your day are wasted in play,
And your winter and night in disguise.
THE SICK ROSE
O rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Songs of Innocence and Experience |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: rain-light, of the smell of soot and cabbage through the window,
the blistered wall-paper, the dusty wax bouquets under glass
globes, and the electric lighting so contrived that as you
turned on the feeble globe hanging from the middle of the
ceiling the feebler one beside the bed went out!
What a sham world she and Nick had lived in during their few
months together! What right had either of them to those
exquisite settings of the life of leisure: the long white house
hidden in camellias and cypresses above the lake, or the great
rooms on the Giudecca with the shimmer of the canal always
playing over their frescoed ceilings! Yet she had come to
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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 Charmides by Plato: is nothing which has an inherent property of relation to self, or some
things only and not others; and whether in this class of self-related
things, if there be such a class, that science which is called wisdom or
temperance is included. I altogether distrust my own power of determining
these matters: I am not certain whether there is such a science of science
at all; and even if there be, I should not acknowledge this to be wisdom or
temperance, until I can also see whether such a science would or would not
do us any good; for I have an impression that temperance is a benefit and a
good. And therefore, O son of Callaeschrus, as you maintain that
temperance or wisdom is a science of science, and also of the absence of
science, I will request you to show in the first place, as I was saying
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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 Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: important the world should know that I have consented, by my
free will, to stop my arm, already raised to strike, and
that with the arm which has been so powerful against others
I have struck myself. It must be; it shall be."
Seizing a pen, he drew a paper from a secret drawer in his
desk, and wrote at the bottom of the document (which was no
other than his will, made since his arrival in Paris) a sort
of codicil, clearly explaining the nature of his death. "I
do this, O my God," said he, with his eyes raised to heaven,
"as much for thy honor as for mine. I have during ten years
considered myself the agent of thy vengeance, and other
The Count of Monte Cristo |
