| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: shabbier and no less cheerful than before, he recognised and
addressed like an old family friend.
"That was a good turn you did me," said he. "That railway was
the making of me. I hope you've had luck yourself."
"My word, no!" replied the little man. "I just sit here and read
the _Dead Bird_. It's the depression in tryde, you see. There's
no positions goin' that a man like me would care to look at."
And he showed Norris his certificates and written characters,
one from a grocer in Wooloomooloo, one from an ironmonger,
and a third from a billiard saloon. "Yes," he said, "I tried bein'
a billiard marker. It's no account; these lyte hours are no use
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: from the Maugrabins.
At this moment the panther turned her head toward the man and looked
at him fixedly without moving. The rigidity of her metallic eyes and
their insupportable luster made him shudder, especially when the
animal walked towards him. But he looked at her caressingly, staring
into her eyes in order to magnetize her, and let her come quite close
to him; then with a movement both gentle and amorous, as though he
were caressing the most beautiful of women, he passed his hand over
her whole body, from the head to the tail, scratching the flexible
vertebrae which divided the panther's yellow back. The animal waved
her tail voluptuously, and her eyes grew gentle; and when for the
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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 The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: the nerve-centres of the neck; otherwise, the hunter's life would
often be in jeopardy.
The Grasshopper order supplied me with a second series of victims:
Green Grasshoppers as long as one's finger, large-headed Locusts,
Ephippigerae. {12} The same result follows when these are bitten
in the neck: lightning death. When injured elsewhere, notably in
the abdomen, the subject of the experiment resists for some time.
I have seen a Grasshopper, bitten in the belly, cling firmly for
fifteen hours to the smooth, upright wall of the glass bell that
constituted his prison. At last, he dropped off and died. Where
the Bee, that delicate organism, succumbs in less than half an
The Life of the Spider |
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 Walden by Henry David Thoreau: realization of the Golden Age.--
"Eurus ad Auroram Nabathaeaque regna recessit,
Persidaque, et radiis juga subdita matutinis."
"The East-Wind withdrew to Aurora and the Nabathean kingdom,
And the Persian, and the ridges placed under the morning rays.
. . . . . . .
Man was born. Whether that Artificer of things,
The origin of a better world, made him from the divine seed;
Or the earth, being recent and lately sundered from the high
Ether, retained some seeds of cognate heaven."
A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So
Walden |
