| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs: nature, unhindered, had covered the ghastly evidence of
human depravity with her beauteous mantle of verdure.
Splendid trees reared their stately tops where splendid
cathedrals once had reared their domes, and sweet wild
flowers blossomed in simple serenity in soil that once was
drenched with human blood.
Nature had reclaimed what man had once stolen from her and
defiled. A herd of zebras grazed where once the German
kaiser may have reviewed his troops. An antelope rested
peacefully in a bed of daisies where, perhaps, two hundred
years ago a big gun belched its terror-laden messages of
Lost Continent |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare: GREMIO.
O! this learning, what a thing it is.
GRUMIO.
O! this woodcock, what an ass it is.
PETRUCHIO.
Peace, sirrah!
HORTENSIO.
Grumio, mum! God save you, Signior Gremio!
GREMIO.
And you are well met, Signior Hortensio.
Trow you whither I am going? To Baptista Minola.
The Taming of the Shrew |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: current, and hindered it from predominating and advancing; and they so
disturbed the nature of the other or diverse, that the three double
intervals (i.e. between 1, 2, 4, 8), and the three triple intervals (i.e.
between 1, 3, 9, 27), together with the mean terms and connecting links
which are expressed by the ratios of 3:2, and 4:3, and of 9:8--these,
although they cannot be wholly undone except by him who united them, were
twisted by them in all sorts of ways, and the circles were broken and
disordered in every possible manner, so that when they moved they were
tumbling to pieces, and moved irrationally, at one time in a reverse
direction, and then again obliquely, and then upside down, as you might
imagine a person who is upside down and has his head leaning upon the
|
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 Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: even with tears of penitence, I can not, even in memory, dwell on
it without a start of horror. I will say but one thing, Utterson,
and that (if you can bring your mind to credit it) will be more
than enough. The creature who crept into my house that night was,
on Jekyll's own confession, known by the name of Hyde and hunted
for in every corner of the land as the murderer of Carew.
HASTIE LANYON
Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case
I was born in the year 18-- to a large fortune, endowed besides
with excellent parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond of the
respect of the wise and good among my fellowmen, and thus, as
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |
