| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: is a very strange thing, but whenever I am in the company of newly-engaged
couples I blossom. Newly-engaged couples, mothers with first babies, and
normal deathbeds have precisely the same effect on me. Shall we join the
others?"
I was longing to ask her why normal deathbeds should cause anyone to burst
into flower, and said, "Yes, do let us."
We were greeted by the little party of "cure guests" on the pension steps,
with those cries of joy and excitement which herald so pleasantly the
mildest German excursion. Herr Erchardt and I had not met before that day,
so, in accordance with strict pension custom, we asked each other how long
we had slept during the night, had we dreamed agreeably, what time we had
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: ordinarily have yielded to the torpor which had crept through all
his modes of being, and which sluggishly counselled him to sit
in his morning chair till eventide. But the girl seldom failed
to propose a removal to the garden, where Uncle Venner and the
daguerreotypist had made such repairs on the roof of the ruinous
arbor, or summer-house, that it was now a sufficient shelter from
sunshine and casual showers. The hop-vine, too, had begun to
grow luxuriantly over the sides of the little edifice, and made
an interior of verdant seclusion, with innumerable peeps and
glimpses into the wider solitude of the garden.
Here, sometimes, in this green play-place of flickering light,
House of Seven Gables |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: and liable to slight intermissions of their severity at various shiftings
of the wind, Gallia's winter was caused by her immense distance from
the source of all light and heat, and the cold was consequently destined
to go on steadily increasing until it reached the limit ascertained
by Fourier to be the normal temperature of the realms of space.
With the over-clouding of the heavens there arose a violent tempest;
but although the wind raged with an almost inconceivable fury, it was
unaccompanied by either snow or rain. Its effect upon the burning curtain
that covered the aperture of the central hall was very remarkable.
So far from there being any likelihood of the fire being extinguished
by the vehemence of the current of air, the hurricane seemed rather
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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 A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: hope, charity, and even of reason itself, seem ready to perish,
that I have come to suspect that the aim of creation cannot be
ethical at all. I would fondly believe that its object is purely
spectacular: a spectacle for awe, love, adoration, or hate, if
you like, but in this view--and in this view alone--never for
despair! Those visions, delicious or poignant, are a moral end
in themselves. The rest is our affair--the laughter, the tears,
the tenderness, the indignation, the high tranquillity of a
steeled heart, the detached curiosity of a subtle mind--that's
our affair! And the unwearied self-forgetful attention to every
phase of the living universe reflected in our consciousness may
A Personal Record |
