| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: The music of your love and of your faith
To foreign ears that are as far away
As Antioch and Haran, yet I wonder
How much of love you know, and if your faith
Be the shut fruit of words. If so, remember
Words are but shells unfilled. Jews have at least
A Law to make them sorry they were born
If they go long without it; and these Gentiles,
For the first time in shrieking history,
Have love and law together, if so they will,
For their defense and their immunity
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: been secretly preserved with reverence even to our own day; Jacob
Boehm, Swendenborg, Martinez Pasqualis, Saint-Martin, Molinos, Madame
Guyon, Madame Bourignon, and Madame Krudener, the extensive sect of
the Ecstatics, and that of the Illuminati, have at different periods
duly treasured the doctrines of this science, of which the aim is
indeed truly startling and portentous. In Doctor Sigier's day, as in
our own, man has striven to gain wings to fly into the sanctuary where
God hides from our gaze.
This digression was necessary to give a clue to the scene at which the
old man and the youth from the island under Notre-Dame had come to be
audience; it will also protect this narrative from all blame on the
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