| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare: 'The diamond, why 'twas beautiful and hard,
Whereto his invis'd properties did tend;
The deep-green emerald, in whose fresh regard
Weak sights their sickly radiance do amend;
The heaven-hued sapphire and the opal blend
With objects manifold; each several stone,
With wit well blazon'd, smil'd, or made some moan.
'Lo! all these trophies of affections hot,
Of pensiv'd and subdued desires the tender,
Nature hath charg'd me that I hoard them not,
But yield them up where I myself must render,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from 1984 by George Orwell: own bones, the instinctive feeling that the conditions you lived in were
intolerable and that at some other time they must have been different. It
struck him that the truly characteristic thing about modern life was not
its cruelty and insecurity, but simply its bareness, its dinginess, its
listlessness. Life, if you looked about you, bore no resemblance not only
to the lies that streamed out of the telescreens, but even to the ideals
that the Party was trying to achieve. Great areas of it, even for a Party
member, were neutral and non-political, a matter of slogging through dreary
jobs, fighting for a place on the Tube, darning a worn-out sock, cadging
a saccharine tablet, saving a cigarette end. The ideal set up by the
Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering--a world of steel
1984 |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson: See Schlegel's remarks upon it in his Dramatic Literature.
Such and so gloomy is the prospect, which
Posidippus has laid before us. But we are not to
acquiesce too hastily in his determination against the
value of existence: for Metrodorus, a philosopher of
Athens, has shown, that life has pleasures as well
as pains; and having exhibited the present state of
man in brighter colours, draws with equal appearance
of reason, a contrary conclusion.
"You may pass well through any of the paths of
life. In publick assemblies are honours and
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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 Glasses by Henry James: she would most naturally meet her match. Lord Iffield had been
seen with her at Lucerne, at Cadenabbia; but it was Mrs. Meldrum's
conviction that nothing was to be expected of him but the most
futile flirtation. The girl had a certain hold of him, but with a
great deal of swagger he hadn't the spirit of a sheep: he was in
fear of his father and would never commit himself in Lord
Considine's lifetime. The most Flora might achieve was that he
wouldn't marry some one else. Geoffrey Dawling, to Mrs. Meldrum's
knowledge (I had told her of the young man's visit) had attached
himself on the way back from Italy to the Hammond Synge group. My
informant was in a position to be definite about this dangler; she
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