| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum: started to run away.
Dorothy wanted to see more of the Princess, so she ran after her.
But the china girl cried out:
"Don't chase me! Don't chase me!"
She had such a frightened little voice that Dorothy stopped
and said, "Why not?"
"Because," answered the Princess, also stopping, a safe
distance away, "if I run I may fall down and break myself."
"But could you not be mended?" asked the girl.
"Oh, yes; but one is never so pretty after being mended, you know,"
replied the Princess.
The Wizard of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Tanach: Exodus 28: 5 And they shall take the gold, and the blue, and the purple, and the scarlet, and the fine linen.
Exodus 28: 6 And they shall make the ephod of gold, of blue, and purple, scarlet, and fine twined linen, the work of the skilful workman.
Exodus 28: 7 It shall have two shoulder-pieces joined to the two ends thereof, that it may be joined together.
Exodus 28: 8 And the skilfully woven band, which is upon it, wherewith to gird it on, shall be like the work thereof and of the same piece: of gold, of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen.
Exodus 28: 9 And thou shalt take two onyx stones, and grave on them the names of the children of Israel:
Exodus 28: 10 six of their names on the one stone, and the names of the six that remain on the other stone, according to their birth.
Exodus 28: 11 With the work of an engraver in stone, like the engravings of a signet, shalt thou engrave the two stones, according to the names of the children of Israel; thou shalt make them to be inclosed in settings of gold.
Exodus 28: 12 And thou shalt put the two stones upon the shoulder-pieces of the ephod, to be stones of memorial for the children of Israel; and Aaron shall bear their names before the LORD upon his two shoulders for a memorial.
The Tanach |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Crito by Plato: deliberation is over, and there is only one thing to be done, which must be
done this very night, and if we delay at all will be no longer practicable
or possible; I beseech you therefore, Socrates, be persuaded by me, and do
as I say.
SOCRATES: Dear Crito, your zeal is invaluable, if a right one; but if
wrong, the greater the zeal the greater the danger; and therefore we ought
to consider whether I shall or shall not do as you say. For I am and
always have been one of those natures who must be guided by reason,
whatever the reason may be which upon reflection appears to me to be the
best; and now that this chance has befallen me, I cannot repudiate my own
words: the principles which I have hitherto honoured and revered I still
|
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 Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: paintings, vases, guardian-angels, temples, together with innumerable
/immortelles/, and dead rose-bushes. It is a forlorn comedy! It is
another Paris, with its streets, its signs, its industries, and its
lodgings; but a Paris seen through the diminishing end of an opera-
glass, a microscopic Paris reduced to the littleness of shadows,
spectres, dead men, a human race which no longer has anything great
about it, except its vanity. There Jules saw at his feet, in the long
valley of the Seine, between the slopes of Vaugirard and Meudon and
those of Belleville and Montmartre, the real Paris, wrapped in a misty
blue veil produced by smoke, which the sunlight tendered at that
moment diaphanous. He glanced with a constrained eye at those forty
Ferragus |
