| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare: Anon comes Piramus, sweet youth and tall,
And findes his Thisbies Mantle slaine;
Whereat, with blade, with bloody blamefull blade,
He brauely broacht his boiling bloudy breast,
And Thisby, tarrying in Mulberry shade,
His dagger drew, and died. For all the rest,
Let Lyon, Moone-shine, Wall, and Louers twaine,
At large discourse, while here they doe remaine.
Exit all but Wall.
Thes. I wonder if the Lion be to speake
Deme. No wonder, my Lord: one Lion may, when
A Midsummer Night's Dream |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: figure of solid importance, and possessed of a genuine relationship to
this figure or to that date. Singularly enough, the sharp call of the
telephone-bell still echoed in her ear, and her body and mind were in
a state of tension, as if, at any moment, she might hear another
summons of greater interest to her than the whole of the nineteenth
century. She did not clearly realize what this call was to be; but
when the ears have got into the habit of listening, they go on
listening involuntarily, and thus Katharine spent the greater part of
the morning in listening to a variety of sounds in the back streets of
Chelsea. For the first time in her life, probably, she wished that
Mrs. Hilbery would not keep so closely to her work. A quotation from
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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 The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: that we were both thought equally guilty of the murder, and that I was
considered the most clumsy. I tried to explain the crime by
somnambulism, and so protect my friend; but there I rambled and
contradicted myself. No, I am lost. I read my condemnation in the eyes
of my judges. They smiled incredulously. All is over. No more
uncertainty. To-morrow I shall be shot. I am not thinking of myself,"
he went on after a pause, "but of my poor mother." Then he stopped,
looked up to heaven, and shed no tears; his eyes were dry and strongly
convulsed. "Frederic--"
["Ah! true," cried Monsieur Hermann, with an air of triumph. "Yes, the
other's name was Frederic, Frederic! I remember now!"
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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 Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: breaking out hundreds of miles away. I will give you a very
curious instance of that.
If you look at the West Indies on the map, you will see a line of
red dots runs through the Windward Islands: there are two
volcanos in them, one in Guadaloupe, and one in St. Vincent (I
will tell you a curious story, presently, about that last), and
little volcanos (if they have ever been real volcanos at all),
which now only send out mud, in Trinidad. There the red dots
stop: but then begins along the north coast of South America a
line of mountain country called Cumana, and Caraccas, which has
often been horribly shaken by earthquakes. Now once, when the
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