| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: Wotan has a great thought. With all his aspirations to establish
a reign of noble thought, of righteousness, order, and justice,
he has found that day that there is no race yet in the world that
quite spontaneously, naturally, and unconsciously realizes his
ideal. He himself has found how far short Godhead falls of the
thing it conceives. He, the greatest of gods, has been unable to
control his fate: he has been forced against his will to choose
between evils, to make disgraceful bargains, to break them still
more disgracefully, and even then to see the price of his
disgrace slip through his fingers. His consort has cost him half
his vision; his castle has cost him his affections; and the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: again for payment.
To come out of my own ways of life, to be another than myself through
a kind of intoxication of the intellectual faculties, and to play this
game at will, such was my recreation. Whence comes the gift? Is it a
kind of second sight? Is it one of those powers which when abused end
in madness? I have never tried to discover its source; I possess it, I
use it, that is all. But this it behooves you to know, that in those
days I began to resolve the heterogeneous mass known as the People
into its elements, and to evaluate its good and bad qualities. Even
then I realized the possibilities of my suburb, that hotbed of
revolution in which heroes, inventors, and practical men of science,
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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 Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: orbs that distilled the rheum of intoxication.
"Nitre?" he asked, at length.
"Nitre," I replied. "How long have you had that cough?"
"Ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh! ugh!
ugh!--ugh! ugh! ugh!"
My poor friend found it impossible to reply for many minutes.
"It is nothing," he said, at last.
"Come," I said, with decision, "we will go back; your health
is precious. You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are
happy, as once I was. You are a man to be missed. For me it is no
matter. We will go back; you will be ill, and I cannot 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 Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: talk to Capraja; you will be amazed at what he can tell you. He will
say that every instrument that depends on the touch or breath of man
for its expression and length of note, is superior as a vehicle of
expression to color, which remains fixed, or speech, which has its
limits. The language of music is infinite; it includes everything; it
can express all things.
"Now do you see wherein lies the pre-eminence of the work you have
just heard? I can explain it in a few words. There are two kinds of
music: one, petty, poor, second-rate, always the same, based on a
hundred or so of phrases which every musician has at his command, a
more or less agreeable form of babble which most composers live in. We
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