| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare: And bid her, marke you me, on Wendsday next,
But soft, what day is this?
Par. Monday my Lord
Cap. Monday, ha ha: well Wendsday is too soone,
A Thursday let it be: a Thursday tell her,
She shall be married to this Noble Earle:
Will you be ready? do you like this hast?
Weele keepe no great adoe, a Friend or two,
For harke you, Tybalt being slaine so late,
It may be thought we held him carelesly,
Being our kinsman, if we reuell much:
Romeo and Juliet |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: like her. She was by no means beautiful; but,
as in other matters, I have my own prepossessions
on the subject of beauty. There was a good
deal of breeding in her. . . Breeding in women,
as in horses, is a great thing: a discovery, the
credit of which belongs to young France. It --
that is to say, breeding, not young France --
is chiefly to be detected in the gait, in the hands
and feet; the nose, in particular, is of the greatest
significance. In Russia a straight nose is rarer
than a small foot.
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Anabasis by Xenophon: pupil of Socrates. He marched with the Spartans,
and was exiled from Athens. Sparta gave him land
and property in Scillus, where he lived for many
years before having to move once more, to settle
in Corinth. He died in 354 B.C.
The Anabasis is his story of the march to Persia
to aid Cyrus, who enlisted Greek help to try and
take the throne from Artaxerxes, and the ensuing
return of the Greeks, in which Xenophon played a
leading role. This occurred between 401 B.C. and
March 399 B.C.
Anabasis |
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 A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: of a gun is he caused them to wrap cloth and rags such as they had, as
soldiers do in wet weather to preserve the locks of their pieces from
rust; the rest was discoloured with clay or mud, such as they could
get; and all this while the rest of them sat under the trees by his
direction, in two or three bodies, where they made fires at a good
distance from one another.
While this was doing he advanced himself and two or three with
him, and set up their tent in the lane within sight of the barrier which
the town's men had made, and set a sentinel just by it with the real
gun, the only one they had, and who walked to and fro with the gun on
his shoulder, so as that the people of the town might see them. Also,
A Journal of the Plague Year |
