| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: Sidon, the cups of cold amber and the fine vessels of glass and the
curious vessels of burnt clay. From the roof of a house a company
of women watched us. One of them wore a mask of gilded leather.
'And on the first day the priests came and bartered with us, and on
the second day came the nobles, and on the third day came the
craftsmen and the slaves. And this is their custom with all
merchants as long as they tarry in the city.
'And we tarried for a moon, and when the moon was waning, I wearied
and wandered away through the streets of the city and came to the
garden of its god. The priests in their yellow robes moved
silently through the green trees, and on a pavement of black marble
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from 1492 by Mary Johntson: evening, he brings the beggar in to supper and sits by him.''
Roderigo Sanchez opened his mouth. ``All Andalusia
knows Fray Juan Perez is a kind of visionary!''
``Aye, like to like! `Have you been to our Queen and
the King? ' `Aye, I have!' saith the beggar, `but they are
warring with the Moors and will pull Granada down and
do not see the greater glory!' ''
All laughed at that, and indeed Gutierrez could mimic to
perfection. We got, full measure, the beggar's loftiness.
``So the siren sings and the prior leaps to meet her, or
tarantula stings him and be dances! `I am growing mad
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Horse's Tale by Mark Twain: as we know the bugle-calls. He is Chief of Scouts to the Army of
the Frontier, and it makes us very important. In such a position
as I hold in the military service one needs to be of good family
and possess an education much above the common to be worthy of the
place. I am the best-educated horse outside of the hippodrome,
everybody says, and the best-mannered. It may be so, it is not for
me to say; modesty is the best policy, I think. Buffalo Bill
taught me the most of what I know, my mother taught me much, and I
taught myself the rest. Lay a row of moccasins before me - Pawnee,
Sioux, Shoshone, Cheyenne, Blackfoot, and as many other tribes as
you please - and I can name the tribe every moccasin belongs to by
|
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 Laches by Plato: courageous. For who but one of them can know to whom to die or to live is
better? And yet Nicias, would you allow that you are yourself a
soothsayer, or are you neither a soothsayer nor courageous?
NICIAS: What! do you mean to say that the soothsayer ought to know the
grounds of hope or fear?
LACHES: Indeed I do: who but he?
NICIAS: Much rather I should say he of whom I speak; for the soothsayer
ought to know only the signs of things that are about to come to pass,
whether death or disease, or loss of property, or victory, or defeat in
war, or in any sort of contest; but to whom the suffering or not suffering
of these things will be for the best, can no more be decided by the
|
