| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: mouth my wife recognized her as the person who has been trying
for several months to get me on the telephone to tell me how the
spirit of Jack London is seeking to communicate with me! The
seance was a public one, a gathering composed, half of wealthy
and cultured society-women, and half of confederates, people with
the dialect and manners of a vaudeville troupe. A megaphone was
set in the middle of the floor, the room was made dark, a couple
of hymns were sung, and then the spirit of Dr. Oliver Wendell
Holmes spoke through the megaphone with a Bowery accent, and gave
communications from relatives and friends of the various
confederates. "Jesus is with us", said Dr. Holmes. "The spirit of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Caesar's Commentaries in Latin by Julius Caesar: postea ex captivis comperit, aut ipsius adventus aut Labieni cognitus
esset, Considius equo admisso ad eum accurrit, dicit montem, quem a
Labieno occupari voluerit, ab hostibus teneri: id se a Gallicis armis
atque insignibus cognovisse. Caesar suas copias in proximum collem
subducit, aciem instruit. Labienus, ut erat ei praeceptum a Caesare ne
proelium committeret, nisi ipsius copiae prope hostium castra visae
essent, ut undique uno tempore in hostes impetus fieret, monte occupato
nostros expectabat proelioque abstinebat. Multo denique die per
exploratores Caesar cognovit et montem a suis teneri et Helvetios castra,
movisse et Considium timore perterritum quod non vidisset pro viso sibi
renuntiavisse. Eo die quo consuerat intervallo hostes sequitur et milia
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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 Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: imagination. "God is in heaven, and thou upon earth; therefore
let thy words be few;" is the lesson which those are learning all
day long who study the works of God with reverent accuracy, lest
by misrepresenting them they should be tempted to say that God has
done that which He has not; and in that wholesome discipline I
long that women as well as men should share.
And now I come to a thrift of the highest kind, as contrasted with
a waste the most deplorable and ruinous of all; thrift of those
faculties which connect us with the unseen and spiritual world;
with humanity, with Christ, with God; thrift of the immortal
spirit. I am not going now to give you a sermon on duty. You
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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 Witch, et. al by Anton Chekhov: directly after mass a number of people gathered together in the
hut. The Leonytchevs and Matvyeitchevs and the Ilyitchovs came to
inquire about their relations who were in service in Moscow. All
the lads of Zhukovo who could read and write were packed off to
Moscow and hired out as butlers or waiters (while from the
village on the other side of the river the boys all became
bakers), and that had been the custom from the days of serfdom
long ago when a certain Luka Ivanitch, a peasant from Zhukovo,
now a legendary figure, who had been a waiter in one of the
Moscow clubs, would take none but his fellow-villagers into his
service, and found jobs for them in taverns and restaurants; and
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