| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: national troubles. At this period, the royalists in the interior of
France expected day by day that the Revolution would be ended on the
morrow. This conviction was the ruin of very many of them.
In spite of these difficulties, the countess had maintained her
independence very cleverly until the day when, by an inexplicable
imprudence, she closed her doors to her usual evening visitors. Madame
de Dey inspired so genuine and deep an interest, that the persons who
called upon her that evening expressed extreme anxiety on being told
that she was unable to receive them. Then, with that frank curiosity
which appears in provincial manners, they inquired what misfortune,
grief, or illness afflicted her. In reply to these questions, an old
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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 Case of the Registered Letter by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: to my friend Pernburg in Frankfurt am Main. In case anything should
happen that would render impossible for me to carry out my plans,
I will send Pernburg another letter asking him not to carry out
the instructions of the first.
I can now proceed to tell you what will happen here to-morrow
evening, the 23rd of September.
Albert Graumann will come to me, unknown to his family or friends,
as I have asked him to come. I will so arrange it that the old
servant will see him come in but will not see him go out. My
landlady will not be in my way, for she has already told me that
she will spend the night of the 23rd with her mother, in another
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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 A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: the sea.
Two or three degrees above that melancholy and eternally level
line, the ocean horizon, hung a sun of brass, with no visible
rays, in a sky of ashen hue. It was a sky the sun did not
illuminate or enkindle, as is usual at sunsets. This sheet of sky
was met by the salt mass of gray water, flecked here and there
with white. A waft of dampness occasionally rose to their faces,
which was probably rarefied spray from the blows of the sea upon
the foot of the cliff.
Elfride wished it could be a longer time ago that she had sat
there with Stephen as her lover, and agreed to be his wife. The
A Pair of Blue Eyes |
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 treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: hand, he who is not at one with God, or doubts, hunts and worries
in what way he may do enough and with many works move God. He
runs to St. James of Compostella, to Rome, to Jerusalem, hither
and yon, prays St. Bridget's prayer and the rest, fasts on this
day and on that, makes confession here, and makes confession
there, questions this man and that, and yet finds no peace. He
does all this with great effort, despair and disrelish of heart,
so that the Scriptures rightly call such works in Hebrew Avenama,
that is, labor and travail. And even then they are not good
works, and are all lost. Many have been crazed thereby; their
fear has brought them into all manner of misery. Of these it is
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