| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: crowd of beings flung by fate into the social life of this planet
to make up a generation there are exceptional souls. If your
letter is the outcome of long poetic reveries on the fate which
conventions bring to women, if, constrained by the impulse of a
lofty and intelligent mind, you have wished to understand the life
of a man to whom you attribute the gift of genius, to the end that
you may create a friendship withdrawn from the ordinary relations
of life, with a soul in communion with your own, disregarding thus
the ordinary trammels of your sex,--then, assuredly, you are an
exception. The law which rightly limits the actions of the crowd
is too limited for you. But in that case, the remark in my first
Modeste Mignon |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Moon-Face and Other Stories by Jack London: Light, however, was thrown upon this when a frightened housemaid brought the
news that Gaffer Bedshaw had that very morning, not more than an hour back,
gone violently insane, and was strapped down at home, in the huntsman's lodge,
where he raved of a battle with a ferocious and gigantic beast that he had
encountered in the Tichlorne pasture. He claimed that the thing, whatever it
was, was invisible, that with his own eyes he had seen that it was invisible;
wherefore his tearful wife and daughters shook their heads, and wherefore he
but waxed the more violent, and the gardener and the coachman tightened the
straps by another hole.
Nor, while Paul Tichlorne was thus successfully mastering the problem of
invisibility, was Lloyd Inwood a whit behind. I went over in answer to a
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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 Ursula by Honore de Balzac: now return to it, but I shall try. What are we, after all, at this
moment? Brother and sister. Let us stay so. Marry that happy girl
who can have the joy of giving to your name the lustre it ought to
have, and which your mother thinks I should diminish. You will not
hear of me again. The world will approve of you; I shall never
blame you--but I shall love you ever. Adieu, then!
"Wait," cried the young man. Signing to La Bougival to sit down, he
scratched off hastily the following reply:--
My dear Ursula,--Your letter cuts me to the heart, inasmuch as you
have needlessly felt such pain; and also because our hearts, for
the first time, have failed to understand each other. If you are
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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 An Open Letter on Translating by Dr. Martin Luther: strictly command"]. That has been your Holy Spirit. Christendom
has had to suffer this tyranny. This tyranny has robbed it of the
sacrament and, not by its own fault, has been held in captivity.
And still the asses would pawn of on us this intolerable tyranny
of their own wickedness as a willing act and example of
Christendom - and thereby acquit themselves!
But this is getting too long. Let this be enough of an answer to
your questions for now. More another time. Excuse this long
letter. Christ our Lord be with us all. Amen.
Martin Luther,
Your good friend.
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