| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Crito by Plato: will he not suffer evil?
CRITO: Certainly he will.
SOCRATES: And what will the evil be, whither tending and what affecting,
in the disobedient person?
CRITO: Clearly, affecting the body; that is what is destroyed by the evil.
SOCRATES: Very good; and is not this true, Crito, of other things which we
need not separately enumerate? In questions of just and unjust, fair and
foul, good and evil, which are the subjects of our present consultation,
ought we to follow the opinion of the many and to fear them; or the opinion
of the one man who has understanding? ought we not to fear and reverence
him more than all the rest of the world: and if we desert him shall we not
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson: buttery; greed is your undoing," answered Ellis. "We took twenty
pounds from Appleyard. We took seven marks from the messenger last
night. A day ago we had fifty from the merchant."
"And to-day," said one of the men, "I stopped a fat pardoner riding
apace for Holywood. Here is his purse."
Ellis counted the contents.
"Five score shillings!" he grumbled. "Fool, he had more in his
sandal, or stitched into his tippet. Y' are but a child, Tom
Cuckow; ye have lost the fish."
But, for all that, Ellis pocketed the purse with nonchalance. He
stood leaning on his boar-spear, and looked round upon the rest.
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: the appeal: "You HAVE forgiven him?"
"How, if I hadn't, could I linger here?"
She visibly winced at the deep but unintended irony of this; but
even while she did so she panted quickly: "Then in the lights on
your altar - ?"
"There's never a light for Acton Hague!"
She stared with a dreadful fall, "But if he's one of your Dead?"
"He's one of the world's, if you like - he's one of yours. But
he's not one of mine. Mine are only the Dead who died possessed of
me. They're mine in death because they were mine in life."
"HE was yours in life then, even if for a while he ceased to be.
|
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 Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: "The nitre!" I said; "see, it increases. It hangs like moss
upon the vaults. We are below the river's bed. The drops of
moisture trickle among the bones. Come, we will go back ere it is
too late. Your cough--"
"It is nothing," he said; "let us go on. But first, another
draught of the Medoc."
I broke and reached him a flagon of De Grave. He emptied it
at a breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and
threw the bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not understand.
I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement--a
grotesque one.
|
