| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde: have with him? You would feel that he was lying to you every
moment of the day. You would feel that the look in his eyes was
false, his voice false, his touch false, his passion false. He
would come to you when he was weary of others; you would have to
comfort him. He would come to you when he was devoted to others;
you would have to charm him. You would have to be to him the mask
of his real life, the cloak to hide his secret.
LADY WINDERMERE. You are right - you are terribly right. But
where am I to turn? You said you would be my friend, Lord
Darlington. - Tell me, what am I to do? Be my friend now.
LORD DARLINGTON. Between men and women there is no friendship
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: convinced him that the deacon was dead--had been dead some time,
for the limbs were rigid. Silas asked himself if he had been
asleep, and looked at the clock: it was already four in the morning.
How was it that William had not come? In much anxiety he went to
seek for help, and soon there were several friends assembled in the
house, the minister among them, while Silas went away to his work,
wishing he could have met William to know the reason of his
non-appearance. But at six o'clock, as he was thinking of going to
seek his friend, William came, and with him the minister. They came
to summon him to Lantern Yard, to meet the church members there; and
to his inquiry concerning the cause of the summons the only reply
Silas Marner |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: forward to the conversation. She had become really quite expert, she
thought, at listening as though she didn't listen, at sitting in other
people's lives just for a minute while they talked round her.
She glanced, sideways, at the old couple. Perhaps they would go soon.
Last Sunday, too, hadn't been as interesting as usual. An Englishman and
his wife, he wearing a dreadful Panama hat and she button boots. And she'd
gone on the whole time about how she ought to wear spectacles; she knew she
needed them; but that it was no good getting any; they'd be sure to break
and they'd never keep on. And he'd been so patient. He'd suggested
everything--gold rims, the kind that curved round your ears, little pads
inside the bridge. No, nothing would please her. "They'll always be
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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 Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: pleasures became distasteful. Conscious that at will he was the master
of all the women that he could desire, knowing that his power was
irresistible, he did not care to exercise it; they were pliant to his
unexpressed wishes, to his most extravagant caprices, until he felt a
horrible thirst for love, and would have love beyond their power to
give.
The world refused him nothing save faith and prayer, the soothing and
consoling love that is not of this world. He was obeyed--it was a
horrible position.
The torrents of pain, and pleasure, and thought that shook his soul
and his bodily frame would have overwhelmed the strongest human being;
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