| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: breast was swinging loose like a flap, and there was no need to listen
for the heart beneath. The mouth was wide open and ripped at the
corners, as though she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous
vitality she had stored so long.
We saw the three or four automobiles and the crowd when we were still
some distance away.
"Wreck!" said Tom. "That's good. Wilson'll have a little business
at last."
He slowed down, but still without any intention of stopping, until,
as we came nearer, the hushed, intent faces of the people at the garage
door made him automatically put on the brakes.
 The Great Gatsby |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft: the range of modern human knowledge. Traditional facts took on
new and doubtful aspects, and I marvelled at the dream-fancy which
could invent such surprising addenda to history and science.
I
shivered at the mysteries the past may conceal, and trembled at
the menaces the future may bring forth. What was hinted in the
speech of post-human entities of the fate of mankind produced
such an effect on me that I will not set it down here.
After
man there would be the mighty beetle civilisation, the bodies
of whose members the cream of the Great Race would seize when
 Shadow out of Time |