| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Caesar's Commentaries in Latin by Julius Caesar: iuris libertatisque condicionem atque ipsi erant receperunt.
In castris Hevetiorum tabulae repertae sunt litteris Graecis confectae
et ad Caesarem relatae, quibus in tabulis nominatim ratio confecta erat,
qui numerus domo exisset eorum qui arma ferre possent, et item separatim,
pueri, senes mulieresque. [Quarum omnium rerum] summa erat capitum
Helvetiorum milium CCLXIII, Tulingorum milium XXXVI, Latobrigorum XIIII,
Rauracorum XXIII, Boiorum XXXII; ex his qui arma ferre possent ad milia
nonaginta duo. Summa omnium fuerunt ad milia CCCLXVIII. Eorum qui domum
redierunt censu habito, ut Caesar imperaverat, repertus est numerus milium
C et X.
Bello Helvetiorum confecto totius fere Galliae legati, principes
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: taken, the nomads dispersed, and all the Barbarians annihilated. The
Acropolis was hidden beneath coloured velaria; the beaks of the
triremes, drawn up in line outside the mole, shone like a dyke of
diamonds; everywhere there was a sense of the restoration of order,
the beginning of a new existence, and the diffusion of vast happiness:
it was the day of Salammbo's marriage with the King of the Numidians.
On the terrace of the temple of Khamon there were three long tables
laden with gigantic plate, at which the priests, Ancients, and the
rich were to sit, and there was a fourth and higher one for Hamilcar,
Narr' Havas, and Salammbo; for as she had saved her country by the
restoration of the zaimph, the people turned her wedding day into a
Salammbo |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: Still what avails it that she sought her cave
That murderous mother of red harlotries?
At Munich on the marble architrave
The Grecian boys die smiling, but the seas
Which wash AEgina fret in loneliness
Not mirroring their beauty; so our lives grow colourless
For lack of our ideals, if one star
Flame torch-like in the heavens the unjust
Swift daylight kills it, and no trump of war
Can wake to passionate voice the silent dust
Which was Mazzini once! rich Niobe
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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 Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: ends, and hung at full length - not doubled, for your life - across
the pack-saddle, the traveller is safe. The saddle will certainly
not fit, such is the imperfection of our transitory life; it will
assuredly topple and tend to overset; but there are stones on every
roadside, and a man soon learns the art of correcting any tendency
to overbalance with a well-adjusted stone.
On the day of my departure I was up a little after five; by six, we
began to load the donkey; and ten minutes after, my hopes were in
the dust. The pad would not stay on Modestine's back for half a
moment. I returned it to its maker, with whom I had so
contumelious a passage that the street outside was crowded from
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