| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: forth:
"While as yet He had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the
highest part of the dust of the world.
"When He prepared the heavens, I was there: when He set a compass
upon the face of the depth:
"When He established the clouds above: when He strengthened the
fountains of the deep:
"When He gave to the sea His decree, that the waters should not
pass His commandment: when He appointed the foundations of the
earth:
"Then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him: and I was daily
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: I loved you, and you loved me; and we closed with each other;
and that made the marriage. We still love--you as well as I--
KNOW it, Sue! Therefore our marriage is not cancelled."
"Yes; I know how you see it," she answered with despairing self-suppression.
"But I am going to marry him again, as it would be called by you.
Strictly speaking you, too--don't mind my saying it, Jude!--you should
take back--Arabella."
"I should? Good God--what next! But how if you and I had married legally,
as we were on the point of doing?"
"I should have felt just the same--that ours was not a marriage.
And I would go back to Richard without repeating the sacrament,
Jude the Obscure |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: loves which do, at times, command our abnegation, and even bear their
own excuse. Perhaps I have been wrong in not varying your happiness,
in not providing you with gayer pleasures, travel, amusements,
distractions for the mind. Besides, I can explain to myself the
impulse that has driven you to a celebrated man, by the jealous envy
you have roused in certain women. Lady Dudley, Madame d'Espard, and my
sister-in-law Emilie count for something in all this. Those women,
against whom I ought to have put you more thoroughly on your guard,
have cultivated your curiosity more to trouble me and cause me
unhappiness, than to fling you into a whirlpool which, as I believe,
you would never have entered."
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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 Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: Biel came out of the place, and Strickland dropped a gut trainer's-
whip in the verandah. Ten minutes later, Biel was cutting
Bronckhorst into ribbons behind the old Court cells, quietly and
without scandal. What was left of Bronckhorst was sent home in a
carriage; and his wife wept over it and nursed it into a man again.
Later on, after Biel had managed to hush up the counter-charge
against Bronckhorst of fabricating false evidence, Mrs. Bronckhorst,
with her faint watery smile, said that there had been a mistake, but
it wasn't her Teddy's fault altogether. She would wait till her
Teddy came back to her. Perhaps he had grown tired of her, or she
had tried his patience, and perhaps we wouldn't cut her any more,
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