| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: and he had to carry his part through.
"All I read is, Father Parsons, that such are not fit for the
kingdom of God; of which high honor I have for some time past felt
myself unworthy. I have much doubt just now as to my vocation; and
in the meanwhile have not forgotten that I am a citizen of a free
country." And so saying, he took his father's arm, and walked out.
His last words had hit the Jesuits hard. They had put the poor
cobweb-spinners in mind of the humiliating fact, which they have
had thrust on them daily from that time till now, and yet have
never learnt the lesson, that all their scholastic cunning,
plotting, intriguing, bulls, pardons, indulgences, and the rest of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: marle, and every body knows that borough is a name for a town;
and this way of expression is after the usual dark manner of old
astrological predictions.
Then shall the Fyshe, etc. By the fish, is understood the Dauphin
of France, as their kings eldest sons are called: 'Tis here said,
he shall lament the loss of the Duke of Burgundy, called the
Bosse, which is an old English word for hump-shoulder, or
crook-back, as that Duke is known to be; and the prophecy seems
to mean, that he should be overcome or slain. By the green
berrys, in the next line, is meant the young Duke of Berry, the
Dauphin's third son, who shall not have valour or fortune enough
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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 Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the world.
Colonel Belik was born in Adis Abeba, the capital of the
empire, and until recently had been in command of the
emperor's palace guard. Jealousy and the ambition and
intrigue of another officer had lost him the favor of his
emperor, and he had been detailed to this frontier post as a
mark of his sovereign's displeasure.
Some fifty years before, the young emperor, Menelek XIV, was
ambitious. He knew that a great world lay across the waters
far to the north of his capital. Once he had crossed the
desert and looked out upon the blue sea that was the
Lost Continent |
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 What is Man? by Mark Twain: Everybody said it. But we have lived to see her leave him two
years behind.
I measured off 817 feet of the roadway, a foot representing
a year, and at the beginning and end of each reign I drove a
three-foot white-pine stake in the turf by the roadside and wrote
the name and dates on it. Abreast the middle of the porch-front
stood a great granite flower-vase overflowing with a cataract of
bright-yellow flowers--I can't think of their name. The vase of
William the Conqueror. We put his name on it and his accession
date, 1066. We started from that and measured off twenty-one
feet of the road, and drove William Rufus's state; then thirteen
What is Man? |
