| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: 'I forgot to lock the door, it seems,' replied Alexander.
'I have had cause to complain of that too often,' said Mr.
Nicholson. 'But still I do not understand. Did you keep the
servants up?'
'I propose to go into all that at length after breakfast,'
returned Alexander. 'There is the half-hour going; we must
not keep Miss Mackenzie waiting.'
And greatly daring, he opened the door.
Even Alexander, who, it must have been perceived was on terms
of comparative freedom with his parent - even Alexander had
never before dared to cut short an interview in this high-
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, etc. by Oscar Wilde: imaginative plane out of reach of the trammelling accidents and
limitations of real life, to censure an artist for a forgery was to
confuse an ethical with an aesthetical problem.
Erskine, who was a good deal older than I was, and had been
listening to me with the amused deference of a man of forty,
suddenly put his hand upon my shoulder and said to me, 'What would
you say about a young man who had a strange theory about a certain
work of art, believed in his theory, and committed a forgery in
order to prove it?'
'Ah! that is quite a different matter,' I answered.
Erskine remained silent for a few moments, looking at the thin grey
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy: "I think God likes us to be good friends, don't you?"
"Indeed I do."
"And, dear miss, you won"t harry me and storm at
me, will you? because you seem to swell so tall as a
lion then, and it frightens me! Do you know, I fancy
you would be a match for any man when you are in one
O' your takings."
"Never! do you?" said Bathsheba, slightly laughing,
though somewhat seriously alarmed by this Amazonian
picture of herself. "I hope I am not a bold sort of
maid -- mannish?" she continued with some anxiety.
Far From the Madding Crowd |
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 Russia in 1919 by Arthur Ransome: meant to leave quite soon, said rather mysteriously, "Wait a
few days longer, because something of international
importance is going to happen which will certainly be of
interest for your history." That was the only hint I got of
the preparation of the Third International. Bucharin refused
to say more. On March 3rd Reinstein looked in about nine
in the morning and said he had got me a guest's ticket for
the conference in the Kremlin, and wondered why I had not
been there the day before, when it had opened. I told him I
knew nothing whatever about it; Litvinov and Karakhan,
whom I had seen quite recently, had never mentioned it,
|
