| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: answered, "Here is his library, but his study is out of doors."
Living much out of doors, in the sun and wind, will no doubt
produce a certain roughness of character--will cause a thicker
cuticle to grow over some of the finer qualities of our nature,
as on the face and hands, or as severe manual labor robs the
hands of some of their delicacy of touch. So staying in the
house, on the other hand, may produce a softness and smoothness,
not to say thinness of skin, accompanied by an increased
sensibility to certain impressions. Perhaps we should be more
susceptible to some influences important to our intellectual and
moral growth, if the sun had shone and the wind blown on us a
Walking |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: Lady Henry. I never talk during music--at least, during good music.
If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it in conversation."
"Ah! that is one of Harry's views, isn't it, Mr. Gray?
I always hear Harry's views from his friends. It is the only
way I get to know of them. But you must not think I don't
like good music. I adore it, but I am afraid of it.
It makes me too romantic. I have simply worshipped pianists--
two at a time, sometimes, Harry tells me. I don't know what it
is about them. Perhaps it is that they are foreigners.
They all are, ain't they? Even those that are born
in England become foreigners after a time, don't they?
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: noble things.
HERMOGENES: Very good; and what do we say of Demeter, and Here, and
Apollo, and Athene, and Hephaestus, and Ares, and the other deities?
SOCRATES: Demeter is e didousa meter, who gives food like a mother; Here
is the lovely one (erate)--for Zeus, according to tradition, loved and
married her; possibly also the name may have been given when the legislator
was thinking of the heavens, and may be only a disguise of the air (aer),
putting the end in the place of the beginning. You will recognize the
truth of this if you repeat the letters of Here several times over. People
dread the name of Pherephatta as they dread the name of Apollo,--and with
as little reason; the fear, if I am not mistaken, only arises from their
|
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 Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: had twelve, grated, whistled, and thundered. Enormous leathern bags,
bristling with pipes, made a shrill clashing noise; the tabourines,
beaten with all the players' might, resounded with heavy, rapid blows;
and, in spite of the fury of the clarions, the salsalim snapped like
grasshoppers' wings.
The hierodules, with a long hook, opened the seven-storied
compartments on the body of the Baal. They put meal into the highest,
two turtle-doves into the second, an ape into the third, a ram into
the fourth, a sheep into the fifth, and as no ox was to be had for the
sixth, a tawny hide taken from the sanctuary was thrown into it. The
seventh compartment yawned empty still.
Salammbo |
