| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare: HELENA.
Which is he?
DIANA.
That jack-an-apes with scarfs. Why is he melancholy?
HELENA.
Perchance he's hurt i' the battle.
PAROLLES.
Lose our drum! well.
MARIANA.
He's shrewdly vex'd at something.
Look, he has spied us.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: information about her brother. Eight days later (not twenty-four
as stated, nor was the audience a private one), Swedenborg again
came to court, but so early that the queen had not left her
apartment called the White Room, where she was conversing with her
maids-of-honor and other ladies attached to the court. Swedenborg
did not wait until she came forth, but entered the said room and
whispered something in her ear. The queen, overcome with
amazement, was taken ill, and it was some time before she
recovered herself. When she did so she said to those about her:
"Only God and my brother knew the thing that he has just spoken
of." She admitted that it related to her last correspondence with
Seraphita |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: omnipotence, a melancholy which Satan and God relieve by the exercise
of infinite power in mysterious ways known to them alone. Castanier
had not, like his Master, the inextinguishable energy of hate and
malice; he felt that he was a devil, but a devil whose time was not
yet come, while Satan is a devil through all eternity, and being
damned beyond redemption, delights to stir up the world, like a dung
heap, with his triple fork and to thwart therein the designs of God.
But Castanier, for his misfortune, had one hope left.
If in a moment he could move from one pole to the other as a bird
springs restlessly from side to side in its cage, when, like the bird,
he has crossed his prison, he saw the vast immensity of space beyond
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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 The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson: certainty of success, may be considered as a project,
and amongst narrow minds may, therefore, expose
its author to censure and contempt; and if the liberty
of laughing be once indulged, every man will laugh
at what he does not understand, every project will be
considered as madness, and every great or new
design will be censured as a project. Men unaccustomed
to reason and researches, think every enterprise
impracticable, which is extended beyond
common effects, or comprises many intermediate
operations. Many that presume to laugh at
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