| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Concerning Christian Liberty by Martin Luther: comprehend the riches of the glory of this grace? Christ, that
rich and pious Husband, takes as a wife a needy and impious
harlot, redeeming her from all her evils and supplying her with
all His good things. It is impossible now that her sins should
destroy her, since they have been laid upon Christ and swallowed
up in Him, and since she has in her Husband Christ a
righteousness which she may claim as her own, and which she can
set up with confidence against all her sins, against death and
hell, saying, "If I have sinned, my Christ, in whom I believe,
has not sinned; all mine is His, and all His is mine," as it is
written, "My beloved is mine, and I am His" (Cant. ii. 16). This
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: make you desirable to society. Avoid young women. Do not think I
say this from personal self-interest. The woman of fifty will do
all for you, the woman of twenty will do nothing; she wants your
whole life while the other asks only a few attentions. Laugh with
the young women, meet them for pastime merely; they are incapable
of serious thought. Young women, dear friend, are selfish, vain,
petty, ignorant of true friendship; they love no one but
themselves; they would sacrifice you to an evening's success.
Besides, they all want absolute devotion, and your present
situation requires that devotion be shown to you; two
irreconcilable needs! None of these young women would enter into
The Lily of the Valley |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: accursed in all the moods they brought him. But the general aspect
of things was quiet. The professor smoked innumerable pipes with
the air of a worker on his holiday, always in movement and looking
at things with that mysteriously sagacious aspect of men who are
admittedly wiser than the rest of the world. His white head of
hair - whiter than anything within the horizon except the broken
water on the reefs - was glimpsed in every part of the plantation
always on the move under the white parasol. And once he climbed
the headland and appeared suddenly to those below, a white speck
elevated in the blue, with a diminutive but statuesque effect.
Felicia Moorsom remained near the house. Sometimes she could be
Within the Tides |
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 Flower Fables by Louisa May Alcott: danced and sparkled in the sun, astride of every drop she saw merry
little spirits, who plashed and floated in the clear, cool waves, and
sang as gayly as the flowers, on whom they scattered glittering dew.
The tall trees, as their branches rustled in the wind, sang a low,
dreamy song, while the waving grass was filled with little voices
she had never heard before. Butterflies whispered lovely tales in
her ear, and birds sang cheerful songs in a sweet language she had
never understood before. Earth and air seemed filled with beauty
and with music she had never dreamed of until now.
"O tell me what it means, dear Fairy! is it another and a lovelier
dream, or is the earth in truth so beautiful as this?" she cried,
Flower Fables |
