| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: would not be able to find her footmarks; and she would hide, there where
the rocks and the kopjes were.
So she stood up and walked towards the river. The water in the river was
low; just a line of silver in the broad bed of sand, here and there
broadening into a pool. She stepped into it, and bathed her feet in the
delicious cold water. Up and up the stream she walked, where it rattled
over the pebbles, and past where the farmhouse lay; and where the rocks
were large she leaped from one to the other. The night wind in her face
made her strong--she laughed. She had never felt such night wind before.
So the night smells to the wild bucks, because they are free! A free thing
feels as a chained thing never can.
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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 Vision Splendid by William MacLeod Raine: her eyes.
"Nellie told you?"
"She told me."
"They exaggerate. Nobody could have done less than I."
"Or more." She did not dwell upon the subject. "Tell me about Mr.
Marchant."
He went over for her the story of the little poet's gentle death.
She listened till he made an end.
"Then it was not hard for him?"
"No. He had one of his good, eager days, then guietly fell
asleep."
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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 Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: After this I inquired in general into what is essential I to the truth and
certainty of a proposition; for since I had discovered one which I knew to
be true, I thought that I must likewise be able to discover the ground of
this certitude. And as I observed that in the words I think, therefore I
am, there is nothing at all which gives me assurance of their truth beyond
this, that I see very clearly that in order to think it is necessary to
exist, I concluded that I might take, as a general rule, the principle,
that all the things which we very clearly and distinctly conceive are
true, only observing, however, that there is some difficulty in rightly
determining the objects which we distinctly conceive.
In the next place, from reflecting on the circumstance that I doubted, and
Reason Discourse |
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 An Open Letter on Translating by Dr. Martin Luther: same time kept seven thousand [I Kings 19]. How? Do you not also
think that God could now, under the papacy, have preserved his
own, even though the priests and monks of Christendom have been
teachers of the devil and gone to hell? Many children and young
people have died in Christ. For even under the anti-Christ,
Christ has strongly sustained baptism, the bare text of the gospel
in the pulpit, the Lord's Prayer, and the Creed. By this means he
sustained many of his Christians, and therefore also his
Christendom, and said nothing about it to these devil's teachers.
Now even though Christians have done some parts of the papal
blasphemy, the papal asses have not yet proved that they did it
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