| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: not let her get further sight of me--otherwise I should have
certainly been lost.] {107}
"Hence I was carried along for nine days till on the tenth night
the gods stranded me on the Ogygian island, where dwells the
great and powerful goddess Calypso. She took me in and was kind
to me, but I need say no more about this, for I told you and
your noble wife all about it yesterday, and I hate saying the
same thing over and over again."
Book XIII
ULYSSES LEAVES SCHERIA AND RETURNS TO ITHACA.
Thus did he speak, and they all held their peace throughout the
The Odyssey |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Summer by Edith Wharton: seeing it sometimes when she was a little girl, before
Mrs. Royall died.
"Don't let's go on like this, Charity. It can't do any
good to either of us. You were seen going into that
fellow's house...you were seen coming out of it....I've
watched this thing coming, and I've tried to stop it.
As God sees me, I have...."
"Ah, it WAS you, then? I knew it was you that sent
him away!"
He looked at her in surprise. "Didn't he tell you so?
I thought he understood." He spoke slowly, with
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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 La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: imagined that there was any purpose in it. Besides, he never raised
his nose above his book, poor young man! And then, monsieur, of an
evening he went for a walk on the hill among the ruins of the old
castle. It was his only amusement, poor man; it reminded him of his
native land. They say that Spain is all hills!
" 'One evening, a few days after he was sent here, he was out very
late. I was rather uneasy when he did not come in till just on the
stroke of midnight; but we all got used to his whims; he took the key
of the door, and we never sat up for him. He lived in a house
belonging to us in the Rue des Casernes. Well, then, one of our
stable-boys told us one evening that, going down to wash the horses in
La Grande Breteche |
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 Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: could not cure, braving dangers which seemed to them miraculous,
from which they were utterly defenceless, spending money, time,
and, after all, life itself upon sufferers from whom they might
without shame have fled.
They are very cheering, the stories of the old city pestilences;
and the nobleness which they brought out in the heart of many a
townsman who had seemed absorbed in the lust of gain--who perhaps
had been really absorbed in it--till that fearful hour awakened in
him his better self, and taught him, not self-aggrandisement, but
self-sacrifice; begetting in him, out of the very depth of
darkness, new and divine light. That nobleness, doubt it not,
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