| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: Who join'st thou with but with a lordly nation
That will not trust thee but for profit's sake?
When Talbot hath set footing once in France,
And fashion'd thee that instrument of ill,
Who then but English Henry will be lord,
And thou be thrust out like a fugitive?
Call we to mind, and mark but this for proof,
Was not the Duke of Orleans thy foe?
And was he not in England prisoner?
But when they heard he was thine enemy,
They set him free without his ransom paid,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: and while you live live a common life as if you were a single man, and
after your death in the world below still be one departed soul instead of
two--I ask whether this is what you lovingly desire, and whether you are
satisfied to attain this?'--there is not a man of them who when he heard
the proposal would deny or would not acknowledge that this meeting and
melting into one another, this becoming one instead of two, was the very
expression of his ancient need (compare Arist. Pol.). And the reason is
that human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire
and pursuit of the whole is called love. There was a time, I say, when we
were one, but now because of the wickedness of mankind God has dispersed
us, as the Arcadians were dispersed into villages by the Lacedaemonians
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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 Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: too late. Your cough--"
"It is nothing," he said; "let us go on. But first, another
draught of the Medoc."
I broke and reached him a flagon of De Grave. He emptied it
at a breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and
threw the bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not understand.
I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement--a
grotesque one.
"You do not comprehend?" he said.
"Not I," I replied.
"Then you are not of the brotherhood."
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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 Barlaam and Ioasaph by St. John of Damascus: a single object, and ordered his waiting men to show the boy
everything after his kind; men in one place, women in another;
elsewhere gold and silver; in another place, pearls and precious
stones, fine and ornamental vestments, splendid chariots with
horses from the royal stables, with golden bridles and purple
caparisons, mounted by armed soldiers; also droves of oxen and
flocks of sheep. In brief, row after row, they showed the boy
everything. Now, as he asked what each ox these was called, the
king's esquires and guards made known unto him each by name: but,
when he desired to learn what women were called, the king's
spearman, they say, wittily replied that they were called,
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