| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Koran: can they bring it on.
They set down to God what they abhor themselves; and their tongues
describe the lie that good is to be theirs.' Without a doubt theirs is
the Fire, for, verily, they shall be sent on there!
By God! we sent (messengers) to nations before thee, but Satan
made their works seemly to them, for he is their patron to-day, and
for them is grievous woe!
We have only sent down to thee the Book, that thou mayest explain to
them that which they did dispute about, and as a guidance and a
mercy to a people who believe.
And God sends down water from the sky, and quickens therewith the
The Koran |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: pearls, and tigers' claws set in gold, and the claws of that gilt
cat, the leopard, set in gold also, and earrings of pierced
emerald, and finger-rings of hollowed jade. From the tea-houses
comes the sound of the guitar, and the opium-smokers with their
white smiling faces look out at the passers-by.
'Of a truth thou shouldst have been with me. The wine-sellers
elbow their way through the crowd with great black skins on their
shoulders. Most of them sell the wine of Schiraz, which is as
sweet as honey. They serve it in little metal cups and strew rose
leaves upon it. In the market-place stand the fruitsellers, who
sell all kinds of fruit: ripe figs, with their bruised purple
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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 Phaedo by Plato: is not surprising that he should have fallen into verbal fallacies: early
logic is always mistaking the truth of the form for the truth of the
matter. It is easy to see that the alternation of opposites is not the
same as the generation of them out of each other; and that the generation
of them out of each other, which is the first argument in the Phaedo, is at
variance with their mutual exclusion of each other, whether in themselves
or in us, which is the last. For even if we admit the distinction which he
draws between the opposites and the things which have the opposites, still
individuals fall under the latter class; and we have to pass out of the
region of human hopes and fears to a conception of an abstract soul which
is the impersonation of the ideas. Such a conception, which in Plato
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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 1984 by George Orwell: utterly penitent, saved from himself, crawling to our feet of his own
accord. That is the world that we are preparing, Winston. A world of
victory after victory, triumph after triumph after triumph: an endless
pressing, pressing, pressing upon the nerve of power. You are beginning,
I can see, to realize what that world will be like. But in the end you
will do more than understand it. You will accept it, welcome it, become
part of it.'
Winston had recovered himself sufficiently to speak. 'You can't!' he said
weakly.
'What do you mean by that remark, Winston?'
'You could not create such a world as you have just described. It is a
1984 |
