| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mountains by Stewart Edward White: seeming impassable to anything but a goat, a Western
horse will negotiate easily; while others, not
particularly terrifying in appearance, offer
complications of abrupt turn or a single bit of unstable,
leg-breaking footing which renders them exceedingly
dangerous. You must, moreover, be able to manage your
animals to the best advantage in such bad places. Of
course you must in the beginning have been wise as to
the selection of the horses.
Fourth, you must know good horse-feed when
you see it. Your animals are depending entirely on
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Phantasmagoria and Other Poems by Lewis Carroll: More tightly clenched than then they were.
When, bathed in Dawn of living red,
Majestic frowned the mountain head,
"Tell me my fault," was all he said.
When, at high Noon, the blazing sky
Scorched in his head each haggard eye,
Then keenest rose his weary cry.
And when at Eve the unpitying sun
Smiled grimly on the solemn fun,
"Alack," he sighed, "what HAVE I done?"
But saddest, darkest was the sight,
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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 Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger: of the population--always of course under the cloak of decency and
morality--and penalize every attempt to introduce the principle of
discrimination and responsibility in parenthood, they will be faced
with the ever-increasing problem of feeble-mindedness, that fertile
parent of degeneracy, crime, and pauperism. Small as the percentage
of the imbecile and half-witted may seem in comparison with the normal
members of the community, it should always be remembered that feeble-
mindedness is not an unrelated expression of modern civilization. Its
roots strike deep into the social fabric. Modern studies indicate
that insanity, epilepsy, criminality, prostitution, pauperism, and
mental defect, are all organically bound up together and that the
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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 Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: justice, Dinah was choke full of knowledge, and read everything, even
medical books, statistics, science, and jurisprudence; for she did not
know how to spend her days when she had reviewed her flower-beds and
given her orders to the gardener. Gifted with an excellent memory, and
the talent which some women have for hitting on the right word, she
could talk on any subject with the lucidity of a studied style. And so
men came from Cosne, from la Charite, and from Nevers, on the right
bank; from Lere, Vailly, Argent, Blancafort, and Aubigny, on the left
bank, to be introduced to Madame de la Baudraye, as they used in
Switzerland, to be introduced to Madame de Stael. Those who only once
heard the round of tunes emitted by this musical snuff-box went away
The Muse of the Department |
