| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: "It seems," said the missionary, with bursting tears, "that there
was nothing in them."
By this the kava of the dead was ready, and the daughters of Miru
began to intone in the old manner of singing. "Gone are the green
islands and the bright sea, the sun and the moon and the forty
million stars, and life and love and hope. Henceforth is no more,
only to sit in the night and silence, and see your friends
devoured; for life is a deceit, and the bandage is taken from your
eyes."
Now when the singing was done, one of the daughters came with the
bowl. Desire of that kava rose in the missionary's bosom; he
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: piece of driveling nonsense in this world as a certificate of
birth; that plenty of women were younger at forty than many a
girl of twenty; and, to come to the point, that a woman is no
older than she looks.
This theory set no limits to the age of love, so we struck out,
in all good faith, into a boundless sea. At length, when we had
portrayed our mistresses as young, charming, and devoted to us,
women of rank, women of taste, intellectual and clever; when we
had endowed them with little feet, a satin, nay, a delicately
fragrant skin, then came the admission--on his part that Madame
Such-an-one was thirty-eight years old, and on mine that I
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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 Love Songs by Sara Teasdale: Threaded with stars,
Scattering jewels on the fence
And the pasture bars;
As dawn leaves the dry grass bright
And the tangled weeds
Bearing a rainbow gem
On each of their seeds;
So has your love, my lover,
Fresh as the dawn,
Made me a shining road
To travel on,
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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 Desert Gold by Zane Grey: At noon the rangers got out of the thick cactus. Moreover, the
gravel-bottomed washes, the low weathering, rotting ledges of
yellow rock gave place to hard sandy rolls and bare clay knolls.
The desert resembled a rounded hummocky sea of color. All light
shades of blue and pink and yellow and mauve were there dominated
by the glaring white sun. Mirages glistened, wavered, faded in the
shimmering waves of heat. Dust as fine as power whiffed up from
under the tireless hoofs.
The rangers rode on and the escarpment began to loom. The desert
floor inclined perceptibly upward. When Gale got an unobstructed
view of the slope of the escarpment he located the raiders and
Desert Gold |
