| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Sir John Mandeville: Paradise. And wit well, that that church is full low in the earth,
and some is all within the earth. But I suppose well, that it was
not so founded. But for because that Jerusalem hath often-time
been destroyed and the walls abated and beten down and tumbled into
the vale, and that they have been so filled again and the ground
enhanced; and for that skill is the church so low within the earth.
And, natheles, men say there commonly, that the earth hath so been
cloven sith the time that our Lady was there buried; and yet men
say there, that it waxeth and groweth every day, without doubt. In
that church were wont to be monks black, that had their abbot.
And beside that church is a chapel, beside the rock that hight
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum: ocean and hurried away to another part of the world to blow something
else; so that the waves, not being joggled any more, began to quiet
down and behave themselves.
It was lucky for Dorothy, I think, that the storm subsided; otherwise,
brave though she was, I fear she might have perished. Many children,
in her place, would have wept and given way to despair; but because
Dorothy had encountered so many adventures and come safely through
them it did not occur to her at this time to be especially afraid.
She was wet and uncomfortable, it is true; but, after sighing that one
sigh I told you of, she managed to recall some of her customary
cheerfulness and decided to patiently await whatever her fate might be.
Ozma of Oz |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde: Which made you richer though you knew it not,
And left me poorer, and yet glad of it!
GUIDO
[clasping her in his arms]
O love, love, love! Nay, sweet, lift up your head,
Let me unlock those little scarlet doors
That shut in music, let me dive for coral
In your red lips, and I'll bear back a prize
Richer than all the gold the Gryphon guards
In rude Armenia.
DUCHESS
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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 Walking by Henry David Thoreau: when you cannot collect a load of bark of good thickness, and we
no longer produce tar and turpentine.
The civilized nations--Greece, Rome, England--have been sustained
by the primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand.
They survive as long as the soil is not exhausted. Alas for human
culture! little is to be expected of a nation, when the vegetable
mould is exhausted, and it is compelled to make manure of the
bones of its fathers. There the poet sustains himself merely by
his own superfluous fat, and the philosopher comes down on his
marrow-bones.
It is said to be the task of the American "to work the virgin
Walking |
