| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: In haste for the sport soon their ankles they twitch,
And whirl round in dances so gay;
The young and the old, and the poor, and the rich,
But the cerements stand in their way;
And as modesty cannot avail them aught here,
They shake themselves all, and the shrouds soon appear
Scatter'd over the tombs in confusion.
Now waggles the leg, and now wriggles the thigh,
As the troop with strange gestures advance,
And a rattle and clatter anon rises high,
As of one beating time to the dance.
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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 Odyssey by Homer: Now the goddess, grey-eyed Athene, put it into the heart of
the daughter of Icarius, wise Penelope, to set the bow and
the axes of grey iron, for the wooers in the halls of
Odysseus, to be the weapons of the contest, and the
beginning of death. So she descended the tall staircase of
her chamber, and took the well-bent key in her strong hand,
a goodly key of bronze, whereon was a handle of ivory. And
she betook her, with her handmaidens, to the
treasure-chamber in the uttermost part of the house, where
lay the treasures of her lord, bronze and gold and
well-wrought iron. And there lay the back-bent bow and the
The Odyssey |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Lesson of the Master by Henry James: when you fellows get talking you sit up half the night."
"Half the night? - jamais de la vie! I follow a hygiene" - and St.
George rose to his feet.
"I see - you're hothouse plants," laughed the General. "That's the
way you produce your flowers."
"I produce mine between ten and one every morning - I bloom with a
regularity!" St. George went on.
"And with a splendour!" added the polite General, while Paul noted
how little the author of "Shadowmere" minded, as he phrased it to
himself, when addressed as a celebrated story-teller. The young
man had an idea HE should never get used to that; it would always
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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 Cromwell by William Shakespeare: The Jewels that I have brought to Antwerp
Are recond to be worth five thousand pound,
Which scarcely stood me in three hundreth pound.
I bought them at an easy kind of rate;
I care not which way they came by them
That sold them me, it comes not near my heart:
And least thy should be stolen--as sure they are--
I thought it meet to sell them here in Antwerp,
And so have left them in the Governour's hand,
Who offers me within two hundreth pound
Of all my price. But now no more of that:
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