| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle: he leaped to his feet, with his good sword in his hand.
And now despair fell upon Guy of Gisbourne's heart in a black cloud,
and he looked around him wildly, like a wounded hawk.
Seeing that his strength was going from him, Robin leaped forward, and,
quick as a flash, struck a back-handed blow beneath the sword arm.
Down fell the sword from Guy of Gisbourne's grasp, and back
he staggered at the stroke, and, ere he could regain himself,
Robin's sword passed through and through his body. Round he spun
upon his heel, and, flinging his hands aloft with a shrill,
wild cry, fell prone upon his face upon the green sod.
Then Robin Hood wiped his sword and thrust it back into
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: cease to exist. Of course, all crimes are not crimes against
property, though such are the crimes that the English law, valuing
what a man has more than what a man is, punishes with the harshest
and most horrible severity, if we except the crime of murder, and
regard death as worse than penal servitude, a point on which our
criminals, I believe, disagree. But though a crime may not be
against property, it may spring from the misery and rage and
depression produced by our wrong system of property-holding, and
so, when that system is abolished, will disappear. When each
member of the community has sufficient for his wants, and is not
interfered with by his neighbour, it will not be an object of any
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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 The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: down over a low wall, and into a narrow road, and up to the
cottage-door.
And a neat pretty cottage it was, with clipped yew hedges all round
the garden, and yews inside too, cut into peacocks and trumpets and
teapots and all kinds of queer shapes. And out of the open door
came a noise like that of the frogs on the Great-A, when they know
that it is going to be scorching hot to-morrow - and how they know
that I don't know, and you don't know, and nobody knows.
He came slowly up to the open door, which was all hung round with
clematis and roses; and then peeped in, half afraid.
And there sat by the empty fireplace, which was filled with a pot
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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 The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer: I agreed, after a brief examination.
"It's most extraordinary," said Weymouth. "He rang up the Yard
about an hour ago and said his chambers had been invaded by Chinamen.
Then the man at the 'phone plainly heard him fall. When we got here his
front door was bolted, as you've seen, and the windows are three floors up.
Nothing is disturbed."
"The plans of the aero-torpedo?" rapped Smith.
"I take it they are in the safe in his bedroom,"
replied the detective, "and that is locked all right. I think
he must have taken an overdose of something and had illusions.
But in case there was anything in what he mumbled (you could
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu |
