| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: colour. Upon her head boards, in large gilt letters, he read "Bouton
de Rose,"--Rose-button, or Rose-bud; and this was the romantic name
of this aromatic ship.
Though Stubb did not understand the BOUTON part of the inscription,
yet the word ROSE, and the bulbous figure-head put together,
sufficiently explained the whole to him.
"A wooden rose-bud, eh?" he cried with his hand to his nose, "that
will do very well; but how like all creation it smells!"
Now in order to hold direct communication with the people on deck, he
had to pull round the bows to the starboard side, and thus come close
to the blasted whale; and so talk over it.
Moby Dick |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: Fairyland, and she had thought, not knowing of Millie, that perhaps
he might chance to love her. "But now you know you can't," she said,
"so you must stop with me just a little while, and then you must
go back to Millie." She told him that, and you know Skelmersdale
was already in love with her, but the pure inertia of his mind kept
him in the way he was going. I imagine him sitting in a sort
of stupefaction amidst all these glowing beautiful things, answering
about his Millie and the little shop he projected and the need
of a horse and cart. . . . And that absurd state of affairs must
have gone on for days and days. I see this little lady, hovering
about him and trying to amuse him, too dainty to understand his
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain: places, Huck -- sometimes on islands, sometimes in rot-
ten chests under the end of a limb of an old dead tree,
just where the shadow falls at midnight; but mostly
under the floor in ha'nted houses."
"Who hides it?"
"Why, robbers, of course -- who'd you reckon? Sun-
day-school sup'rintendents?"
"I don't know. If 'twas mine I wouldn't hide it;
I'd spend it and have a good time."
"So would I. But robbers don't do that way. They
always hide it and leave it there."
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer |
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 Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: on the drift some little way ahead of us. Now I had already
noticed swans flying about this lake, and, having never come
across them before in Africa, was exceedingly anxious to obtain
a specimen. I had questioned the natives about them, and learnt
that they came from over the mountain, always arriving at certain
periods of the year in the early morning, when it was very easy
to catch them, on account of their exhausted condition. I also
asked them what country they came from, when they shrugged their
shoulders, and said that on the top of the great black precipice
was stony inhospitable land, and beyond that were mountains with
snow, and full of wild beasts, where no people lived, and beyond
Allan Quatermain |
