| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: grasp a penknife, Owen had been remarkable for a delicate
ingenuity, which sometimes produced pretty shapes in wood,
principally figures of flowers and birds, and sometimes seemed to
aim at the hidden mysteries of mechanism. But it was always for
purposes of grace, and never with any mockery of the useful. He
did not, like the crowd of school-boy artisans, construct little
windmills on the angle of a barn or watermills across the
neighboring brook. Those who discovered such peculiarity in the
boy as to think it worth their while to observe him closely,
sometimes saw reason to suppose that he was attempting to imitate
the beautiful movements of Nature as exemplified in the flight of
Mosses From An Old Manse |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare: The Oxe hath therefore stretch'd his yoake in vaine,
The Ploughman lost his sweat, and the greene Corne
Hath rotted, ere his youth attain'd a beard:
The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
And Crowes are fatted with the murrion flocke,
The nine mens Morris is fild vp with mud,
And the queint Mazes in the wanton greene,
For lacke of tread are vndistinguishable.
The humane mortals want their winter heere,
No night is now with hymne or caroll blest;
Therefore the Moone (the gouernesse of floods)
A Midsummer Night's Dream |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: and they are the root and foundation of the human race. The marrow itself
is created out of other materials: God took such of the primary triangles
as were straight and smooth, and were adapted by their perfection to
produce fire and water, and air and earth--these, I say, he separated from
their kinds, and mingling them in due proportions with one another, made
the marrow out of them to be a universal seed of the whole race of mankind;
and in this seed he then planted and enclosed the souls, and in the
original distribution gave to the marrow as many and various forms as the
different kinds of souls were hereafter to receive. That which, like a
field, was to receive the divine seed, he made round every way, and called
that portion of the marrow, brain, intending that, when an animal was
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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 A Legend of Montrose by Walter Scott: about half way up the ascent, and, pausing, made a signal for
those who were still at the bottom to follow him, an arrow
whistled from the bow of one of the Children of the Mist, and
transfixed him with so fatal a wound, that, without a single
effort to save himself, he lost his balance, and fell headlong
from the cliff on which he stood, into the darkness below. The
crash of the boughs which received him, and the heavy sound of
his fall from thence to the ground, was followed by a cry of
horror and surprise, which burst from his followers. The
Children of the Mist, encouraged in proportion to the alarm this
first success had caused among the pursuers, echoed back the
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