| 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: simple souls the mystery that hung about the stranger grew
inexplicable; as for the priest, from that day forth he did not even
try to understand it.
Before very long the prisoners knew that, in spite of the Terror, some
powerful hand was extended over them. It began when they received
firewood and provisions; and next the Sisters knew that a woman had
lent counsel to their protector, for linen was sent to them, and
clothes in which they could leave the house without causing remark
upon the aristocrat's dress that they had been forced to wear. After
awhile Mucius Scaevola gave them two civic cards; and often tidings
necessary for the priest's safety came to them in roundabout ways.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: skulls."
"These are the shields they bore, and those are the skulls they wore,"
answered one. "See, Mopo, son of Makedama, this is no man's work that
has brought them to their death. Men do not break the bones of their
foes in pieces as these bones are broken. Wow! men do not break them,
but wolves do, and last night we saw wolves a-hunting; nor did they
hunt alone, Mopo. Wow! this is a haunted land!"
Then we went on in silence, and all the way the stone face of the
Witch who sits aloft forever stared down on us from the mountain top.
At length, an hour before sundown, we came to the open lands, and
there, on the crest of a rise beyond the river, we saw the kraal of
Nada the Lily |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: would be something. Here at least was Q. He dug his heels in at Q. Q he
was sure of. Q he could demonstrate. If Q then is Q--R--. Here he
knocked his pipe out, with two or three resonant taps on the handle of the
urn, and proceeded. "Then R ..." He braced himself. He clenched
himself.
Qualities that would have saved a ship's company exposed on a broiling
sea with six biscuits and a flask of water--endurance and justice,
foresight, devotion, skill, came to his help. R is then--what is R?
A shutter, like the leathern eyelid of a lizard, flickered over the
intensity of his gaze and obscured the letter R. In that flash of
darkness he heard people saying--he was a failure--that R was beyond him.
To the Lighthouse |
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 Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: If a stranger is admitted to the /cenacle/, every member of it in turn
will say (not without a trace of irony), "You will not find the
brilliancy of your Parisian society here," and proceed forthwith to
criticise the life led by his neighbors, as if he himself were an
exception who had striven, and vainly striven, to enlighten the rest.
But any stranger so ill advised as to concur in any of their freely
expressed criticism of each other, is pronounced at once to be an ill-
natured person, a heathen, an outlaw, a reprobate Parisian "as
Parisians mostly are."
Before Gaston de Nueil made his appearance in this little world of
strictly observed etiquette, where every detail of life is an
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