| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad: draped form of the long limb, right down to her fine ankle below a
torn, soiled flounce; and as far as the point of the shabby, high-
heeled, blue slipper, dangling from her well-shaped foot, which she
moved slightly, with quick, nervous jerks, as if impatient of my
presence. And in the scent of the massed flowers I seemed to
breathe her special and inexplicable charm, the heady perfume of
the everlastingly irritated captive of the garden.
I looked at her rounded chin, the Jacobus chin; at the full, red
lips pouting in the powdered, sallow face; at the firm modelling of
the cheek, the grains of white in the hairs of the straight sombre
eyebrows; at the long eyes, a narrowed gleam of liquid white and
'Twixt Land & Sea |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: and clear as anybody's, young or old, among the fraternity of pilots.
He was the patriarch of the craft; he had been a keelboat pilot before the day
of steamboats; and a steamboat pilot before any other steamboat pilot,
still surviving at the time I speak of, had ever turned a wheel.
Consequently his brethren held him in the sort of awe in which illustrious
survivors of a bygone age are always held by their associates.
He knew how he was regarded, and perhaps this fact added some trifle
of stiffening to his natural dignity, which had been sufficiently stiff
in its original state.
He left a diary behind him; but apparently it did not date back
to his first steamboat trip, which was said to be 1811, the year
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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 The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: And are you never to have eyes
To see the world for what it is?
"Are you to pay for what you have
With all you are?" -- No other word
We caught, but with a laughing crowd
Moved on. None heeded, and few heard.
John Gorham
"Tell me what you're doing over here, John Gorham,
Sighing hard and seeming to be sorry when you're not;
Make me laugh or let me go now, for long faces in the moonlight
Are a sign for me to say again a word that you forgot." --
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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 Crowd by Gustave le Bon: idol, to a hero or to a political conception, provided that it
presents the preceding characteristics, its essence always
remains religious. The supernatural and the miraculous are found
to be present to the same extent. Crowds unconsciously accord a
mysterious power to the political formula or the victorious
leader that for the moment arouses their enthusiasm.
A person is not religious solely when he worships a divinity, but
when he puts all the resources of his mind, the complete
submission of his will, and the whole-souled ardour of fanaticism
at the service of a cause or an individual who becomes the goal
and guide of his thoughts and actions.
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