| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: he found himself crippled.
Every means had been employed in vain to restore the use of
his limbs. He had been subjected to a severe disciplinary
course of medicine, at length he sent away all his doctors,
declaring that he preferred the disease to the treatment,
and came to Paris, where the fame of his wit had preceded
him. There he had a chair made on his own plan, and one day,
visiting Anne of Austria in this chair, she asked him,
charmed as she was with his wit, if he did not wish for a
title.
"Yes, your majesty, there is a title which I covet much,"
Twenty Years After |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde: He has nothing, but he looks everything. What more can one desire?
JACK. It pains me very much to have to speak frankly to you, Lady
Bracknell, about your nephew, but the fact is that I do not approve
at all of his moral character. I suspect him of being untruthful.
[ALGERNON and CECILY look at him in indignant amazement.]
LADY BRACKNELL. Untruthful! My nephew Algernon? Impossible! He
is an Oxonian.
JACK. I fear there can be no possible doubt about the matter.
This afternoon during my temporary absence in London on an
important question of romance, he obtained admission to my house by
means of the false pretence of being my brother. Under an assumed
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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 Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: Let me pause here for a moment. It is difficult for us
with our academical and somewhat school-boardy minds
to enter into all this, and to understand the sense of
(unconscious or sub-conscious) identification with the world
around which characterized the primitive man--or to look upon
Nature with his eyes. A Tree, a Snake, a Bull, an Ear of
Corn. WE know so well from our botany and natural history
books what these things are. Why should our minds
dwell on them any longer or harbor a doubt as to our perfect
comprehension of them?
And yet (one cannot help asking the question): Has any
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
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 Pathology of Lying, Etc. by William and Mary Healy: history appears to be negative. She has lived about in several
different homes, the longest stay being about seven years. In
one place she was suspected of masturbation, but we were unable
to get a perfectly definite statement that she was addicted to
the habit.
Two years prior to the time we knew Marie she had worked up a
story of adventure in which she was the heroine. She used the
telephone to call for help, stating that she stood with a
revolver covering a burglar. From this incident she gained a
good deal of notoriety. The police found there was nothing to
the case and later Marie herself made a confession. By the time
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