| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: have not yet seen, you persist in telling me the most mystifying and
exasperating stories tending to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling
towards the man whom you design for my bedfellow--a sort of
connexion, landlord, which is an intimate and confidential one in the
highest degree. I now demand of you to speak out and tell me who and
what this harpooneer is, and whether I shall be in all respects safe
to spend the night with him. And in the first place, you will be so
good as to unsay that story about selling his head, which if true I
take to be good evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad, and I've
no idea of sleeping with a madman; and you, sir, YOU I mean,
landlord, YOU, sir, by trying to induce me to do so knowingly, would
Moby Dick |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little. I
discern great sanity in the Greek attitude. They never chattered
about sunsets, or discussed whether the shadows on the grass were
really mauve or not. But they saw that the sea was for the
swimmer, and the sand for the feet of the runner. They loved the
trees for the shadow that they cast, and the forest for its silence
at noon. The vineyard-dresser wreathed his hair with ivy that he
might keep off the rays of the sun as he stooped over the young
shoots, and for the artist and the athlete, the two types that
Greece gave us, they plaited with garlands the leaves of the bitter
laurel and of the wild parsley, which else had been of no service
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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 An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: its way inside. The house standing thus quite by itself looked like
some old tower that Time had forgotten to destroy. A faint light shone
from the attic windows pierced at irregular distances in the roof;
otherwise the whole building was in total darkness.
Meanwhile the old lady climbed not without difficulty up the rough,
clumsily built staircase, with a rope by way of a hand-rail. At the
door of the lodging in the attic she stopped and tapped mysteriously;
an old man brought forward a chair for her. She dropped into it at
once.
"Hide! hide!" she exclaimed, looking up at him. "Seldom as we leave
the house, everything that we do is known, and every step is
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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 Poems by Bronte Sisters: Gilbert sprang from his bended knees,
By the pale spectre pushed,
And, wild as one whom demons seize,
Up the hall-staircase rushed;
Entered his chamber--near the bed
Sheathed steel and fire-arms hung--
Impelled by maniac purpose dread
He chose those stores among.
Across his throat a keen-edged knife
With vigorous hand he drew;
The wound was wide--his outraged life
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