| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: Justice with favour have I always done;
Prayers and tears have mov'd me, gifts could never.
When have I aught exacted at your hands
But to maintain the king, the realm, and you?
Large gifts have I bestow'd on learned clerks,
Because my book preferr'd me to the king;
And seeing ignorance is the curse of God,
Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven,
Unless you be possess'd with devilish spirits,
You cannot but forbear to murther me.
This tongue hath parley'd unto foreign kings
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: room where the two valets had deposited the dying man on a
bed. D'Arminges and Olivain and the two grooms then mounted
their horses, and all four started off at a quick trot to
rejoin Raoul and his companion. Just as the tutor and his
escort disappeared in their turn, a new traveler stopped on
the threshold of the inn.
"What does your worship want?" demanded the host, pale and
trembling from the discovery he had just made.
The traveler made a sign as if he wished to drink, and then
pointed to his horse and gesticulated like a man who is
brushing something.
Twenty Years After |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Chronicles of the Canongate by Walter Scott: our native Scottish nobility, and have clombe higher up the brae
of preferment than what this house of Croftangry hath done,
quhilk shame not to carry in their warlike shield and insignia of
dignity the tools and implements the quhilk their first
forefathers exercised in labouring the croft-rig, or, as the poet
Virgilius calleth it eloquently, in subduing the soil, and no
doubt this ancient house of Croftangry, while it continued to be
called of that Ilk, produced many worshipful and famous patriots,
of quhom I now praetermit the names; it being my purpose, if God
shall spare me life for sic ane pious officium, or duty, to
resume the first part of my narrative touching the house of
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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 The Jolly Corner by Henry James: Brydon's throat, gasping there in a sound he couldn't utter; for
the bared identity was too hideous as HIS, and his glare was the
passion of his protest. The face, THAT face, Spencer Brydon's? -
he searched it still, but looking away from it in dismay and
denial, falling straight from his height of sublimity. It was
unknown, inconceivable, awful, disconnected from any possibility! -
He had been "sold," he inwardly moaned, stalking such game as this:
the presence before him was a presence, the horror within him a
horror, but the waste of his nights had been only grotesque and the
success of his adventure an irony. Such an identity fitted his at
NO point, made its alternative monstrous. A thousand times yes, as
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