| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Paradise Lost by John Milton: Turned fiery red, sharpening in mooned horns
Their phalanx, and began to hem him round
With ported spears, as thick as when a field
Of Ceres ripe for harvest waving bends
Her bearded grove of ears, which way the wind
Sways them; the careful plowman doubting stands,
Left on the threshing floor his hopeless sheaves
Prove chaff. On the other side, Satan, alarmed,
Collecting all his might, dilated stood,
Like Teneriff or Atlas, unremoved:
His stature reached the sky, and on his crest
Paradise Lost |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum: your name, ma'am?" asked the little girl.
"My name is Bill," said the yellow hen, somewhat gruffly.
"Bill! Why, that's a boy's name."
"What difference does that make?"
"You're a lady hen, aren't you?"
"Of course. But when I was first hatched out no one could tell
whether I was going to be a hen or a rooster; so the little boy at the
farm where I was born called me Bill, and made a pet of me because I
was the only yellow chicken in the whole brood. When I grew up, and
he found that I didn't crow and fight, as all the roosters do, he did
not think to change my name, and every creature in the barn-yard, as
Ozma of Oz |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: banker, Pille-Miche, and Coupiau, in three different tones.
"Alas, my good friend," continued d'Orgemont, "I'm a ruined man. The
last forced loan of that devilish Republic for a hundred millions
sucked me dry, taxed as I was already."
"How much did your Republic get out of you?"
"A thousand crowns, my dear man," replied the banker, with a piteous
air, hoping for a reduction.
"If your Republic gets forced loans out of you for such big sums as
that you must see that you would do better with us; our government
would cost you less. Three hundred crowns, do you call that dear for
your skin?"
The Chouans |
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 Purse by Honore de Balzac: love is doomed to drown and die. And it is a frightful death. Are
not our feelings the most glorious part of our life? It is this
partial death which, in certain delicate or powerful natures,
leads to the terrible ruin produced by disenchantment, by hopes
and passions betrayed. Thus it was with the young painter. He
went out at a very early hour to walk under the fresh shade of
the Tuileries, absorbed in his thoughts, forgetting everything in
the world.
There by chance he met one of his most intimate friends, a
school-fellow and studio-mate, with whom he had lived on better
terms than with a brother.
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