| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: right angle in any apartment; and this defect arises from the
contempt they bear to practical geometry, which they despise as
vulgar and mechanic; those instructions they give being too
refined for the intellects of their workmen, which occasions
perpetual mistakes. And although they are dexterous enough upon a
piece of paper, in the management of the rule, the pencil, and
the divider, yet in the common actions and behaviour of life, I
have not seen a more clumsy, awkward, and unhandy people, nor so
slow and perplexed in their conceptions upon all other subjects,
except those of mathematics and music. They are very bad
reasoners, and vehemently given to opposition, unless when they
Gulliver's Travels |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: following on the crash alarmed us, and we hurried up. Finding the
key in the latch, we happily took the liberty of entering, and we
found you lying motionless on the ground. My mother went to fetch
what was needed to bathe your head and revive you. You have cut
your forehead--there. Do you feel it?"
"Yes, I do now," he replied.
"Oh, it will be nothing," said the old mother. "Happily your head
rested against this lay-figure."
"I feel infinitely better," replied the painter. "I need nothing
further but a hackney cab to take me home. The porter's wife will
go for one."
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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 Black Beauty by Anna Sewell: Sometimes on a Sunday morning a party of fast men would hire the cab
for the day; four of them inside and another with the driver,
and I had to take them ten or fifteen miles out into the country,
and back again; never would any of them get down to walk up a hill,
let it be ever so steep, or the day ever so hot -- unless, indeed,
when the driver was afraid I should not manage it, and sometimes
I was so fevered and worn that I could hardly touch my food.
How I used to long for the nice bran mash with niter in it
that Jerry used to give us on Saturday nights in hot weather,
that used to cool us down and make us so comfortable.
Then we had two nights and a whole day for unbroken rest,
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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 New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: as a politician might do. I perceived I was at last finding an
adequate expression for all that was in me, for those forces that
had rebelled at the crude presentations of Bromstead, at the
secrecies and suppressions of my youth, at the dull unrealities of
City Merchants, at the conventions and timidities of the Pinky
Dinkys, at the philosophical recluse of Trinity and the phrases and
tradition-worship of my political associates. None of these things
were half alive, and I wanted life to be intensely alive and awake.
I wanted thought like an edge of steel and desire like a flame. The
real work before mankind now, I realised once and for all, is the
enlargement of human expression, the release and intensification of
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