| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: He used to go from her on board the schooner exhausted, broken,
shaken up, as though he had been put to the most exquisite torture.
When he saw her approaching he always had a moment of
hallucination. She was a misty and fair creature, fitted for
invisible music, for the shadows of love, for the murmurs of
waters. After a time (he could not be always staring at the
ground) he would summon up all his resolution and look at her.
There was a sparkle in the clear obscurity of her eyes; and when
she turned them on him they seemed to give a new meaning to life.
He would say to himself that another man would have found long
before the happy release of madness, his wits burnt to cinders in
Within the Tides |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas: rest of his clothes, carried him to a bath, in which they
let him soak a considerable time. They then put on him clean
linen, and placed him in a well-warmed bed -- the whole with
efforts and pains which might have roused a dead man, but
which did not make Porthos open an eye, or interrupt for a
second the formidable diapason of his snoring. Aramis wished
on his part, with his nervous nature, armed with
extraordinary courage, to outbrave fatigue, and employ
himself with Gourville and Pellisson, but he fainted in the
chair in which he had persisted sitting. He was carried into
the adjoining room, where the repose of bed soon soothed his
Ten Years Later |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: SOCRATES: And so should I; but what would you say of another man, who
fights flying, instead of remaining?
LACHES: How flying?
SOCRATES: Why, as the Scythians are said to fight, flying as well as
pursuing; and as Homer says in praise of the horses of Aeneas, that they
knew 'how to pursue, and fly quickly hither and thither'; and he passes an
encomium on Aeneas himself, as having a knowledge of fear or flight, and
calls him 'an author of fear or flight.'
LACHES: Yes, Socrates, and there Homer is right: for he was speaking of
chariots, as you were speaking of the Scythian cavalry, who have that way
of fighting; but the heavy-armed Greek fights, as I say, remaining in his
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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 Out of Time's Abyss by Edgar Rice Burroughs: "Who are you," he asked, "and from where do you come? Do not tell
me that you are a Wieroo."
"No," she replied, "I am no Wieroo." And she shuddered slightly as
she pronounced the word. "I am a Galu; but who and what are you?
I am sure that you are no Galu, from your garments; but you are
like the Galus in other respects. I know that you are not of
this frightful city, for I have been here for almost ten moons,
and never have I seen a male Galu brought hither before, nor are
there such as you and I, other than prisoners in the land of
Oo-oh, and these are all females. Are you a prisoner, then?"
He told her briefly who and what he was, though he doubted if she
Out of Time's Abyss |
