| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll: Alice corrected herself.
`No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The SONG is
called "WAYS AND MEANS": but that's only what it's CALLED, you
know!'
`Well, what IS the song, then?' said Alice, who was by this
time completely bewildered.
`I was coming to that,' the Knight said. `The song really IS
"A-SITTING ON A GATE": and the tune's my own invention.'
So saying, he stopped his horse and let the reins fall on its
neck: then, slowly beating time with one hand, and with a faint
smile lighting up his gentle foolish face, as if he enjoyed the
Through the Looking-Glass |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: umbrella through a long life would seem a higher and wiser
flight of achievement than to go smiling to the stake; and so
long as you are a bit of a coward and inflexible in money
matters, you fulfil the whole duty of man.
It is a still more difficult consideration for our
average men, that while all their teachers, from Solomon down
to Benjamin Franklin and the ungodly Binney, have inculcated
the same ideal of manners, caution, and respectability, those
characters in history who have most notoriously flown in the
face of such precepts are spoken of in hyperbolical terms of
praise, and honoured with public monuments in the streets of
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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 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: government clerk won't let it drop, he'll go on with the thing."
Vronsky saw all the thanklessness of the business, and that there
could be no question of a duel in it, that everything must be
done to soften the government clerk, and hush the matter up. The
colonel had called in Vronsky just because he knew him to be an
honorable and intelligent man, and, more than all, a man who
cared for the honor of the regiment. They talked it over, and
decided that Petritsky and Kedrov must go with Vronsky to
Venden's to apologize. The colonel and Vronsky were both fully
aware that Vronsky's name and rank would besure to contribute
greatly to softening of the injured husband's feelings.
Anna Karenina |
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 Caesar's Commentaries in Latin by Julius Caesar: legatus exercitu pulso interfectus esset atque unde L. Manlius proconsul
impedimentis amissis profugisset, non mediocrem sibi diligentiam
adhibendam intellegebat. Itaque re frumentaria provisa, auxiliis
equitatuque comparato, multis praeterea viris fortibus Tolosa et Carcasone
et Narbone, quae sunt civitates Galliae provinciae finitimae, ex his
regionibus nominatim evocatis, in Sotiatium fines exercitum introduxit.
Cuius adventu cognito Sotiates magnis copiis coactis, equitatuque, quo
plurimum valebant, in itinere agmen nostrum adorti primum equestre
proelium commiserunt, deinde equitatu suo pulso atque insequentibus
nostris subito pedestres copias, quas in convalle in insidiis
conlocaverant, ostenderunt. Hi nostros disiectos adorti proelium
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