| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: revealed the immense horizons of a world in which he found himself for
the first time, though recognizing it as that he had seen in his
dreams. He fancied himself transported into the scenery of his native
land, where that beautiful Italian landscape begins at what Napoleon
so cleverly described as the /glacis/ of the Alps. Carried back by
memory to the time when his young and eager brain was as yet
untroubled by the ecstasy of his too exuberant imagination he listened
with religious awe and would not utter a single word. The Count
respected the internal travail of his soul. Till half-past twelve
Gambara sat so perfectly motionless that the frequenters of the opera
house took him, no doubt, for what he was--a man drunk.
Gambara |
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 treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: all their diligence and effort to do and to leave undone what
their over-lords desire of them, that they do not allow
themselves to be torn or driven from this, whatever another do.
Let no man think that he lives well or does good works, whether
it be prayer or fasting, or by whatever name it may be called,
if he does not earnestly and diligently exercise himself in this.
But if it should happen, as it often does, that the temporal
power and authorities, as they are called, should urge a subject
to do contrary to the Commandments of God, or hinder him from
doing them, there obedience ends, and that duty is annulled. Here
a man must say as St. Peter says to the rulers of the Jews: "We
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