| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: extirpating debauchery, but in favoring it, by assuring the
harmlessness of the consequences. Besides, it is not a question
of that. It is a question of this frightful thing that has
happened to me, as it happens to nine-tenths, if not more, not
only of the men of our society, but of all societies, even
peasants,--this frightful thing that I had fallen, and not
because I was subjected to the natural seduction of a certain
woman. No, no woman seduced me. I fell because the surroundings
in which I found myself saw in this degrading thing only a
legitimate function, useful to the health; because others saw in
it simply a natural amusement, not only excusable, but even
The Kreutzer Sonata |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: been a private banker in a very large way of business. Many years
before, his affairs becoming disordered, he had been led to try
dangerous, and at last criminal, expedients to retrieve himself
from ruin. All was in vain; he became more and more cruelly
involved, and found his honour lost at the same moment with his
fortune. About this period, Northmour had been courting his
daughter with great assiduity, though with small encouragement; and
to him, knowing him thus disposed in his favour, Bernard
Huddlestone turned for help in his extremity. It was not merely
ruin and dishonour, nor merely a legal condemnation, that the
unhappy man had brought upon his head. It seems he could have gone
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs: "Thank God we drove them out. There is not a single . . .
man on British soil today; but at what awful cost. I tried
to persuade Sir Phillip to urge the people to remain. But
they are mad with fear of the Death, and rage at our
enemies. He tells me that the coast cities are packed . . .
waiting to be taken across. What will become of England,
with none left to rebuild her shattered cities!"
And the last entry:
". . . alone. Only the wild beasts . . . A lion is roaring
now beneath the palace windows. I think the people feared
the beasts even more than they did the Death. But they are
Lost Continent |
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 At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: those who have wandered through deserted Paris at the hours when its
roar, hushed for a moment, rises and spreads in the distance like the
great voice of the sea. This strange young man must have seemed as
curious to the shopkeeping folk of the "Cat and Racket" as the "Cat
and Racket" was to him. A dazzlingly white cravat made his anxious
face look even paler than it really was. The fire that flashed in his
black eyes, gloomy and sparkling by turns, was in harmony with the
singular outline of his features, with his wide, flexible mouth,
hardened into a smile. His forehead, knit with violent annoyance, had
a stamp of doom. Is not the forehead the most prophetic feature of a
man? When the stranger's brow expressed passion the furrows formed in
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