| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: surf took it from the waves, and the foam took it from the surf,
and the shore received it, and lying at his feet the young
Fisherman saw the body of the little Mermaid. Dead at his feet it
was lying.
Weeping as one smitten with pain he flung himself down beside it,
and he kissed the cold red of the mouth, and toyed with the wet
amber of the hair. He flung himself down beside it on the sand,
weeping as one trembling with joy, and in his brown arms he held it
to his breast. Cold were the lips, yet he kissed them. Salt was
the honey of the hair, yet he tasted it with a bitter joy. He
kissed the closed eyelids, and the wild spray that lay upon their
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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 Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: step boldly in, and inquire my way to his dwelling."
He entered the tavern, and was guided by the murmur of voices and
the fumes of tobacco to the public-room. It was a long and low
apartment, with oaken walls, grown dark in the continual smoke,
and a floor which was thickly sanded, but of no immaculate
purity. A number of persons--the larger part of whom appeared to
be mariners, or in some way connected with the sea--occupied the
wooden benches, or leatherbottomed chairs, conversing on various
matters, and occasionally lending their attention to some topic
of general interest. Three or four little groups were draining as
many bowls of punch, which the West India trade had long since
The Snow Image |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: loss. He looked round the empty rooms. Yesterday and the day before
yesterday the preparations for the funeral had made a stir and bustle
which distracted his eyes; but the silence which follows the day, when
the friend, father, son, or loved wife has been laid in the grave--the
dull, cold silence of the morrow is terrible, is glacial. Some
irresistible force drew him to Pons' chamber, but the sight of it was
more than the poor man could bear; he shrank away and sat down in the
dining-room, where Mme. Sauvage was busy making breakfast ready.
Schmucke drew his chair to the table, but he could eat nothing. A
sudden, somewhat sharp ringing of the door-bell rang through the
house, and Mme. Cantinet and Mme. Sauvage allowed three black-coated
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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 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: see a nearer instance before long; for this family of Jenkin, if
they were not very aptly fitted to live, had the art of manly
dying. Uncle John was but an outsider after all; he had dropped
out of hail of his nephew's way of life and station in society, and
was more like some shrewd, old, humble friend who should have kept
a lodge; yet he led the procession of becoming deaths, and began in
the mind of Fleeming that train of tender and grateful thought,
which was like a preparation for his own. Already I find him
writing in the plural of 'these impending deaths'; already I find
him in quest of consolation. 'There is little pain in store for
these wayfarers,' he wrote, 'and we have hope - more than hope,
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