| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: shovel and pick had served as a ray of light to Boulatruelle; he had
hastened to the thicket in the morning, and had found neither shovel
nor pick. From this he had drawn the inference that this person,
once in the forest, had dug a hole with his pick, buried the coffer,
and reclosed the hole with his shovel. Now, the coffer was too small
to contain a body; therefore it contained money. Hence his researches.
Boulatruelle had explored, sounded, searched the entire forest
and the thicket, and had dug wherever the earth appeared to him
to have been recently turned up. In vain.
He had "ferreted out" nothing. No one in Montfermeil thought
any more about it. There were only a few brave gossips, who said,
Les Miserables |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: bed. That trait gives you the woman. Du Bruel dared not say a word; he
was ordered to spread abroad that challenge in luxury, so that it
might reach the other. Tullia was very fond of this gift from the Duc
de Rhetore; but one day, five years after her marriage, she played
with her cat to such purpose that the coverlet--furbelows, flounces,
and all--was torn to shreds, and replaced by a sensible quilt, a quilt
that was a quilt, and not a symptom of the peculiar form of insanity
which drives these women to make up by an insensate luxury for the
childish days when they lived on raw apples, to quote the expression
of a journalist. The day when the bed-spread was torn to tatters
marked a new epoch in her married life.
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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 Parmenides by Plato: only is non-existent and nothing else; but if all is not-being there is
nothing which can be spoken of. Also the one which is not differs, and is
different in kind from the others, and therefore unlike them; and they
being other than the one, are unlike the one, which is therefore unlike
them. But one, being unlike other, must be like itself; for the unlikeness
of one to itself is the destruction of the hypothesis; and one cannot be
equal to the others; for that would suppose being in the one, and the
others would be equal to one and like one; both which are impossible, if
one does not exist. The one which is not, then, if not equal is unequal to
the others, and in equality implies great and small, and equality lies
between great and small, and therefore the one which is not partakes of
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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 Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: The blood which Ivanhoe had lost did not prevent
a flush from crossing his cheek, feeling that
he had incautiously betrayed a deep interest in
Rowena by the awkward attempt he had made to
conceal it.''
``It was less of her I would speak,'' said he,
``than of Prince John; and I would fain know
somewhat of a faithful squire, and why he now attends
me not?''
``Let me use my authority as a leech,'' answered
Rebecca, ``and enjoin you to keep silence, and
Ivanhoe |
