| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: took particular care to note the house at which she stopped.
It was the house with the gay curtains, the home of flowers, the
house out of which Crashaw came the night he hanged himself in
his garden. I was just going away with my discovery, when I
saw an empty carriage come round and draw up in front of the
house, and I came to the conclusion that Mrs. Herbert was going
out for a drive, and I was right. There, as it happened, I met
a man I know, and we stood talking together a little distance
from the carriage-way, to which I had my back. We had not been
there for ten minutes when my friend took off his hat, and I
glanced round and saw the lady I had been following all day.
The Great God Pan |
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: Nell aer dolce che dal sol s'allegra.'
I knew the church condemned ACCIDIA, but the whole idea seemed to
me quite fantastic, just the sort of sin, I fancied, a priest who
knew nothing about real life would invent. Nor could I understand
how Dante, who says that 'sorrow remarries us to God,' could have
been so harsh to those who were enamoured of melancholy, if any
such there really were. I had no idea that some day this would
become to me one of the greatest temptations of my life.
While I was in Wandsworth prison I longed to die. It was my one
desire. When after two months in the infirmary I was transferred
here, and found myself growing gradually better in physical health,
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