| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: enable you to do what you wish for yourself and the state, but justice and
wisdom.
ALCIBIADES: Clearly.
SOCRATES: You and the state, if you act wisely and justly, will act
according to the will of God?
ALCIBIADES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: As I was saying before, you will look only at what is bright and
divine, and act with a view to them?
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: In that mirror you will see and know yourselves and your own
good?
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the number of fingers upon one of his hands.
His search through the various books convinced him that
he had discovered all the different kinds of bugs most often
repeated in combination, and these he arranged in proper
order with great ease because of the frequency with which he
had perused the fascinating alphabet picture book.
His education progressed; but his greatest finds were in the
inexhaustible storehouse of the huge illustrated dictionary, for
he learned more through the medium of pictures than text,
even after he had grasped the significance of the bugs.
When he discovered the arrangement of words in alphabetical
Tarzan of the Apes |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: Ah! cut my lace asunder! -
are only a few of the many examples one might quote. One of the
finest effects I have ever seen on the stage was Salvini, in the
last act of LEAR, tearing the plume from Kent's cap and applying it
to Cordelia's lips when he came to the line,
This feather stirs; she lives!
Mr. Booth, whose Lear had many noble qualities of passion, plucked,
I remember, some fur from his archaeologically-incorrect ermine for
the same business; but Salvini's was the finer effect of the two,
as well as the truer. And those who saw Mr. Irving in the last act
of RICHARD THE THIRD have not, I am sure, forgotten how much the
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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 Vailima Prayers & Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson: thanksgiving.
Our beloved in the far parts of the earth, those who are now
beginning the labours of the day what time we end them, and those
with whom the sun now stands at the point of noon, bless, help,
console, and prosper them.
Our guard is relieved, the service of the day is over, and the hour
come to rest. We resign into thy hands our sleeping bodies, our
cold hearths, and open doors. Give us to awake with smiles, give
us to labour smiling. As the sun returns in the east, so let our
patience be renewed with dawn; as the sun lightens the world, so
let our loving-kindness make bright this house of our habitation.
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