| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: illusions traditionally handed down from the great Revolution.
In Switzerland they support the Radicals, without losing sight
of the fact that this party consists of antagonistic elements,
partly of Democratic Socialists, in the French sense, partly of
radical bourgeois.
In Poland they support the party that insists on an agrarian
revolution as the prime condition for national emancipation, that
party which fomented the insurrection of Cracow in 1846.
In Germany they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a
revolutionary way, against the absolute monarchy, the feudal
squirearchy, and the petty bourgeoisie.
The Communist Manifesto |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: the greatest area."
"The English?"
"I grant that the English seem, on the whole, whiter than most men,
their records cleaner. But, good Lord, don't run away with the idea
that I don't see the drawbacks--horrors--unmentionable things done
in our very midst! I'm under no illusions. Few people, I suppose,
have fewer illusions than I have. Have you ever been in a factory,
Miss Vinrace!--No, I suppose not--I may say I hope not.
As for Rachel, she had scarcely walked through a poor street,
and always under the escort of father, maid, or aunts.
"I was going to say that if you'd ever seen the kind of thing
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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 King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: If so, gaze on, and grovel on thy face,
Until thy head be circled with the same.
Put forth thy hand, reach at the glorious gold.
What, is't too short? I'll lengthen it with mine,
And, having both together heav'd it up,
We'll both together lift our heads to heaven,
And never more abase our sight so low
As to vouchsafe one glance unto the ground.
GLOSTER.
O Nell, sweet Nell, if thou dost love thy lord,
Banish the canker of ambitious thoughts;
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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 Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: a horrible craving to know what goes on between my mother and that
young man? Griffith tells me she has gone through all these moods; she
has longed to fly at women, whose happiness was written in their face;
she has blackened their character, torn them to pieces. According to
her, virtue consists in burying all these savage instincts in one's
innermost heart. But what then of the heart? It becomes the sink of
all that is worst in us.
It is very humiliating that no adorer has yet turned up for me. I am a
marriageable girl, but I have brothers, a family, relations, who are
sensitive on the point of honor. Ah! if that is what keeps men back,
they are poltroons.
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