| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from King James Bible: ISA 60:11 Therefore thy gates shall be open continually; they shall not
be shut day nor night; that men may bring unto thee the forces of the
Gentiles, and that their kings may be brought.
ISA 60:12 For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall
perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted.
ISA 60:13 The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir tree, the
pine tree, and the box together, to beautify the place of my sanctuary;
and I will make the place of my feet glorious.
ISA 60:14 The sons also of them that afflicted thee shall come bending
unto thee; and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves down at
the soles of thy feet; and they shall call thee; The city of the LORD,
King James Bible |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: with its package containing his single worldly luxury.
As the little, ancient bronze bell continued swinging in the tower, its
plaintive call reached something in the Padre's memory. Softly, absently,
he began to sing. He took up the slow strain not quite correctly, and
dropped it, and took it up again, always in cadence with the bell.
[musical score appears here]
At length he heard himself, and, glancing at the belfry, smiled a little.
"It is a pretty tune," he said, "and it always made me sorry for poor Fra
Diavolo. Auber himself confessed to me that he had made it sad and put
the hermitage bell to go with it, because he too was grieved at having to
kill his villain, and wanted him, if possible, to die in a religious
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: their sisters). Those fifteen hundred francs of yours (got
together, God knows how! in a country where there are more
chestnuts than five-franc pieces) will slip away like soldiers
after pillage. And, then, what will you do? Shall you begin to
work? Work, or what you understand by work at this moment, means,
for a man of Poiret's calibre, an old age in Mamma Vauquer's
lodging-house. There are fifty thousand young men in your
position at this moment, all bent as you are on solving one and
the same problem--how to acquire a fortune rapidly. You are but a
unit in that aggregate. You can guess, therefore, what efforts
you must make, how desperate the struggle is. There are not fifty
Father Goriot |
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 The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of
Von Weber. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy
brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vagueness at which
I shuddered the more thrillingly, because I shuddered knowing not
why;--from these paintings (vivid as their images now are before
me) I would in vain endeavour to educe more than a small portion
which should lie within the compass of merely written words. By
the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his designs, he
arrested and overawed attention. If ever mortal painted an idea,
that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me at least--in the
circumstances then surrounding me--there arose out of the pure
The Fall of the House of Usher |
