| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: of rose-wood, included in the purchase of the house.
By the window nearest to the door stood a straw chair, whose legs were
raised on castors to lift its occupant, Madame Grandet, to a height
from which she could see the passers-by. A work-table of stained
cherry-wood filled up the embrasure, and the little armchair of
Eugenie Grandet stood beside it. In this spot the lives had flowed
peacefully onward for fifteen years, in a round of constant work from
the month of April to the month of November. On the first day of the
latter month they took their winter station by the chimney. Not until
that day did Grandet permit a fire to be lighted; and on the thirty-
first of March it was extinguished, without regard either to the
Eugenie Grandet |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: likely to do something handsome for him; indeed he has as good
as told Fred that he means to leave him his land, and that makes
other people jealous."
"Vincy, I must repeat, that you will not get any concurrence from
me as to the course you have pursued with your eldest son. It was
entirely from worldly vanity that you destined him for the Church:
with a family of three sons and four daughters, you were not
warranted in devoting money to an expensive education which has
succeeded in nothing but in giving him extravagant idle habits.
You are now reaping the consequences."
To point out other people's errors was a duty that Mr. Bulstrode rarely
Middlemarch |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: a friend of the good for the sake of getting rid of the evil. In this
intermediate 'indifferent' position the philosopher or lover of wisdom
stands: he is not wise, and yet not unwise, but he has ignorance
accidentally clinging to him, and he yearns for wisdom as the cure of the
evil. (Symp.)
After this explanation has been received with triumphant accord, a fresh
dissatisfaction begins to steal over the mind of Socrates: Must not
friendship be for the sake of some ulterior end? and what can that final
cause or end of friendship be, other than the good? But the good is
desired by us only as the cure of evil; and therefore if there were no evil
there would be no friendship. Some other explanation then has to be
Lysis |
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 Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche: Environed by you,
Ye silent, presentientest
Maiden-kittens,
Dudu and Suleika,
--ROUNDSPHINXED, that into one word
I may crowd much feeling:
(Forgive me, O God,
All such speech-sinning!)
--Sit I here the best of air sniffling,
Paradisal air, truly,
Bright and buoyant air, golden-mottled,
Thus Spake Zarathustra |
