| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: this country subject to any diseases; which, however, were much
fewer than horses have among us, and contracted, not by any
ill-treatment they meet with, but by the nastiness and greediness
of that sordid brute. Neither has their language any more than a
general appellation for those maladies, which is borrowed from
the name of the beast, and called HNEA-YAHOO, or YAHOO'S EVIL;
and the cure prescribed is a mixture of their own dung and urine,
forcibly put down the YAHOO'S throat. This I have since often
known to have been taken with success, and do here freely
recommend it to my countrymen for the public good, as an
admirable specific against all diseases produced by repletion.
Gulliver's Travels |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: * Here he called to one of his men, and bade him order Captain
Richard and his people to march the lower way on the side of the
marches, and meet them in the forest; which was all a sham, for they
had no Captain Richard, or any such company. [Footnote in the original.]
they would have been sent to prison, or perhaps knocked on the head.
They were soon made sensible of this, for two days afterwards they
found several parties of horsemen and footmen also about, in pursuit
of three companies of men, armed, as they said, with muskets, who
were broke out from London and had the plague upon them, and that
were not only spreading the distemper among the people, but
plundering the country.
A Journal of the Plague Year |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: morning.
Sometimes flights of birds darted past beneath the blue sky in the
freedom of the air. The men closed their eyes that they might not see
them.
At first they felt a buzzing in their ears, their nails grew black,
the cold reached to their breasts; they lay upon their sides and
expired without a cry.
On the nineteenth day two thousand Asiatics were dead, with fifteen
hundred from the Archipelago, eight thousand from Libya, the youngest
of the Mercenaries and whole tribes--in all twenty thousand soldiers,
or half of the army.
Salammbo |
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 Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: time that I have met you since, their impress is revived. I was
shaken from head to foot when I first saw you; the mere
presentiment of your coming overcame me. Neither time nor my firm
will has enabled me to conquer that imperious sense of pleasure. I
asked myself involuntarily, "What must be such joys?" Our mutual
looks, the respectful kisses you laid upon my hand, the pressure
of my arm on yours, your voice with its tender tones,--all, even
the slightest things, shook me so violently that clouds obscured
my sight; the murmur of rebellious senses filled my ears. Ah! if
in those moments when outwardly I increased my coldness you had
taken me in your arms I should have died of happiness. Sometimes I
The Lily of the Valley |
