| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: is put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will
also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between
classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation
to another will come to an end.
The charges against Communism made from a religious, a
philosophical, and, generally, from an ideological standpoint,
are not deserving of serious examination.
Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas,
views and conceptions, in one word, man's consciousness, changes
with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in
his social relations and in his social life?
The Communist Manifesto |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: But the stage had always been his master-passion. He would have
sold his soul for the time and freedom to write plays! It was IN
HIM--he could not remember when it had not been his deepest-
seated instinct. As the years passed it became a morbid, a
relentless obsession--yet with every year the material conditions
were more and more against it. He felt himself growing middle-
aged, and he watched the reflection of the process in his
sister's wasted face. At eighteen she had been pretty, and as
full of enthusiasm as he. Now she was sour, trivial,
insignificant--she had missed her chance of life. And she had no
resources, poor creature, was fashioned simply for the primitive
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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 Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: God and Man?
Be this as it may, we find that from the time of Philo, the deepest
thought of the heathen world began to flow in a theologic channel. All
the great heathen thinkers henceforth are theologians. In the times of
Nero, for instance, Epictetus the slave, the regenerator of Stoicism, is
no mere speculator concerning entities and quiddities, correct or
incorrect. He is a slave searching for the secret of freedom, and
finding that it consists in escaping not from a master, but from self:
not to wealth and power, but to Jove. He discovers that Jove is, in
some most mysterious, but most real sense, the Father of men; he learns
to look up to that Father as his guide and friend.
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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 Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by L. Frank Baum: understand--perhaps for the reason that no one ever told it you. Many
years before you came here this Land was united under one Ruler, as it
is now, and the Ruler's name was always 'Oz,' which means in our
language 'Great and Good'; or, if the Ruler happened to be a woman,
her name was always 'Ozma.' But once upon a time four Witches leagued
together to depose the king and rule the four parts of the kingdom
themselves; so when the Ruler, my grandfather, was hunting one day, one
Wicked Witch named Mombi stole him and carried him away, keeping him a
close prisoner. Then the Witches divided up the kingdom, and ruled
the four parts of it until you came here. That was why the people
were so glad to see you, and why they thought from your initials that
Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz |
