| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: sanctity. He added another history of a famous Abyssinian monk, who
killed a devil two hundred feet high, and only four feet thick, that
ravaged all the country; the peasants had a great desire to throw
the dead carcase from the top of a rock, but could not with all
their force remove it from the place, but the monk drew it after him
with all imaginable ease and pushed it down. This story was
followed by another, of a young devil that became a religious of the
famous monastery of Aba Gatima. The good father would have favoured
me with more relations of the same kind, if I had been in the humour
to have heard them, but, interrupting him, I told him that all these
relations confirmed what we had found by experience, that the monks
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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 Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: beauty of his pallid features. "Oh?" said Caderousse,
thunderstruck, "but for that black hair, I should say you
were the Englishman, Lord Wilmore."
"I am neither the Abbe Busoni nor Lord Wilmore," said Monte
Cristo; "think again, -- do you not recollect me?" Those was
a magic effect in the count's words, which once more revived
the exhausted powers of the miserable man. "Yes, indeed,"
said he; "I think I have seen you and known you formerly."
"Yes, Caderousse, you have seen me; you knew me once."
"Who, then, are you? and why, if you knew me, do you let me
die?"
The Count of Monte Cristo |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: return until the morning, and had given them explicit orders not to
stir from the house. These orders were sufficient, I well knew, to
insure their immediate disappearance, one and all, as soon as my
back was turned.
I took from their sconces two flambeaux, and giving one to
Fortunato, bowed him through several suites of rooms to the archway
that led into the vaults. I passed down a long and winding
staircase, requesting him to be cautious as he followed. We
came at length to the foot of the descent, and stood together on
the damp ground of the catacombs of the Montresors.
The gait of my friend was unsteady, and the bells upon his cap
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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 Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: the window.
As I am now speaking of localities, this is the place to describe to
you the interior arrangements of the inn; for, on an accurate
knowledge of the premises depends an understanding of my tale. The
public room in which the three persons I have named to you were
sitting, had two outer doors. One opened on the main road to
Andernach, which skirts the Rhine. In front of the inn was a little
wharf, to which the boat hired by the merchant for his journey was
moored. The other door opened upon the courtyard of the inn. This
courtyard was surrounded by very high walls and was full, for the time
being, of cattle and horses, the stables being occupied by human
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