| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: It was just as though I had been let into some conspiracy--
I don't know--something not quite right; and I was glad to get out.
In the outer room the two women knitted black wool feverishly.
People were arriving, and the younger one was walking back
and forth introducing them. The old one sat on her chair.
Her flat cloth slippers were propped up on a foot-warmer, and a cat
reposed on her lap. She wore a starched white affair on her head,
had a wart on one cheek, and silver-rimmed spectacles hung
on the tip of her nose. She glanced at me above the glasses.
The swift and indifferent placidity of that look troubled me.
Two youths with foolish and cheery countenances were being piloted over,
Heart of Darkness |
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 Lamentable Tragedy of Locrine and Mucedorus by William Shakespeare: The fearful rage of fell Tisiphone,
The boistrous waves of humid Ocean,
Are instruments and tools of dismal death.
Then, novel cousin, cease to mourn his chance,
Whose age & years were signs that he should die.
It reseth now that we inter his bones,
That was a terror to his enemies.
Take up the course, and, princes, hold him dead,
Who while he lived, upheld the Trojan state.
Sound drums and trumpets; march to Troinouant,
There to provide our chieftain's funeral.
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