| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: "Once outside the Abbaye de Chelles, I look upon myself as dead,"
added the nun who had not left the house, while the Sister that had
just returned held out the little box to the priest.
"Here are the wafers . . . but I can hear some one coming up the
stairs."
At this, the three began to listen. The sound ceased.
"Do not be alarmed if somebody tries to come in," said the priest.
"Somebody on whom we could depend was to make all necessary
arrangements for crossing the frontier. He is to come for the letters
that I have written to the Duc de Langeais and the Marquis de
Beauseant, asking them to find some way of taking you out of this
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Poems of William Blake by William Blake: Thy wine doth purify the golden honey; thy perfume.
Which thou dost scatter on every little blade of grass that springs
Revives the milked cow, & tames the fire-breathing steed.
But Thel is like a faint cloud kindled at the rising sun:
I vanish from my pearly throne, and who shall find my place.
Queen of the vales the Lily answered, ask the tender cloud,
And it shall tell thee why it glitters in the morning sky.
And why it scatters its bright beauty thro the humid air.
Descend O little cloud & hover before the eyes of Thel.
The Cloud descended and the Lily bowd her modest head:
And went to mind her numerous charge among the verdant grass.
Poems of William Blake |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: set out from. In these days, talent must have the good luck which
secures success to the most incapable; nay, more, if it scorns the
base compromises which insure advancement to crawling mediocrity, it
will never get on.
If we thoroughly knew our time, we also knew ourselves, and we
preferred the indolence of dreamers to aimless stir, easy-going
pleasure to the useless toil which would have exhausted our courage
and worn out the edge of our intelligence. We had analyzed social life
while smoking, laughing, and loafing. But, though elaborated by such
means as these, our reflections were none the less judicious and
profound.
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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 Intentions by Oscar Wilde: words, he was 'broken like a vessel of clay,' prostrated him for a
time. His delicately strung organisation, however indifferent it
might have been to inflicting pain on others, was itself most
keenly sensitive to pain. He shrank from suffering as a thing that
mars and maims human life, and seems to have wandered through that
terrible valley of melancholia from which so many great, perhaps
greater, spirits have never emerged. But he was young - only
twenty-five years of age - and he soon passed out of the 'dead
black waters,' as he called them, into the larger air of humanistic
culture. As he was recovering from the illness that had led him
almost to the gates of death, he conceived the idea of taking up
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