| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: driven into the wood. Any one who went to Grenoble, whether on
horseback or afoot, was obliged to follow a track high up on the
mountain side, for the valley was quite impassable. The pretty road
between this place and the first village that you reach as you come
into the canton (the way along which you must have come) was nothing
but a slough at all seasons of the year.
"Political events and revolutions had never reached this inaccessible
country--it lay completely beyond the limits of social stir and
change. Napoleon's name, and his alone, had penetrated hither; he is
held in great veneration, thanks to one or two old soldiers who have
returned to their native homes, and who of evenings tell marvelous
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: before him, he hurriedly snatched a wisp out of the sledge, but
immediately decided that it was now no time to think of straw
and threw it down, and the wind instantly scattered it, carried
it away, and covered it with snow.
'Now we will set up a signal,' said Nikita, and turning the
front of the sledge to the wind he tied the shafts together
with a strap and set them up on end in front of the sledge.
'There now, when the snow covers us up, good folk will see the
shafts and dig us out,' he said, slapping his mittens together
and putting them on. 'That's what the old folk taught us!'
Vasili Andreevich meanwhile had unfastened his coat, and
Master and Man |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: 'Gainst errors' theories all, and so shut off
All refuge from the adversary, and rout
Error by two-edged confutation.
And since the mind is of a man one part,
Which in one fixed place remains, like ears,
And eyes, and every sense which pilots life;
And just as hand, or eye, or nose, apart,
Severed from us, can neither feel nor be,
But in the least of time is left to rot,
Thus mind alone can never be, without
The body and the man himself, which seems,
Of The Nature of Things |
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 Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: for the first time an opportunity of inquiring of an old man who
came and sat beside them, what was the meaning of that great
assemblage.
'Why, where have you come from,' he returned, 'that you haven't
heard of Lord George Gordon's great association? This is the day
that he presents the petition against the Catholics, God bless
him!'
'What have all these men to do with that?' she said.
'What have they to do with it!' the old man replied. 'Why, how you
talk! Don't you know his lordship has declared he won't present it
to the house at all, unless it is attended to the door by forty
Barnaby Rudge |
