| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: stop the carriage?'
'No, child,' said Sir John, 'not until I see you mistress of
yourself.'
There was a long pause, during which the carriage rolled by rock and
woodland.
'And now,' she resumed, with perfect steadiness, 'will you consider
me composed? I request you, as a gentleman, to let me out.'
'I think you do unwisely,' he replied. 'Continue, if you please, to
use my carriage.'
'Sir John,' she said, 'if death were sitting on that pile of stones,
I would alight! I do not blame, I thank you; I now know how I
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: what extent I feel myself guilty towards you.
"Feel yourself guilty?" she said, angrily mimicking him. "You did
not feel so then, but threw me 100 roubles. That's your price."
"I know, I know; but what is to be done now?" said Nekhludoff. "I
have decided not to leave you, and what I have said I shall do."
"And I say you sha'n't," she said, and laughed aloud.
"Katusha" he said, touching her hand.
"You go away. I am a convict and you a prince, and you've no
business here," she cried, pulling away her hand, her whole
appearance transformed by her wrath. "You've got pleasure out of
me in this life, and want to save yourself through me in the life
Resurrection |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from King James Bible: myself known unto them, in bringing them forth out of the land of Egypt.
EZE 20:10 Wherefore I caused them to go forth out of the land of Egypt,
and brought them into the wilderness.
EZE 20:11 And I gave them my statutes, and shewed them my judgments,
which if a man do, he shall even live in them.
EZE 20:12 Moreover also I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between
me and them, that they might know that I am the LORD that sanctify them.
EZE 20:13 But the house of Israel rebelled against me in the
wilderness: they walked not in my statutes, and they despised my
judgments, which if a man do, he shall even live in them; and my
sabbaths they greatly polluted: then I said, I would pour out my fury
King James Bible |
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 American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: Hottentot would not have been guilty of this sort of barbarism.
The coins made an effect pretty enough, but the man who put them
there had no thought of beauty, and, therefore, he was a savage.
"Then my cab-driver showed me business blocks gay with signs and
studded with fantastic and absurd advertisements of goods, and
looking down the long street so adorned, it was as though each
vender stood at his door howling:--"For the sake of my money,
employ or buy of me, and me only!"
Have you ever seen a crowd at a famine-relief distribution? You
know then how the men leap into the air, stretching out their
arms above the crowd in the hope of being seen, while the women
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