| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: bills, and the very beds that we inherited from bygone
miners, put in human touches and realized for us the story of
the past.
I have sat on an old sleeper, under the thick madronas near
the forge, with just a look over the dump on the green world
below, and seen the sun lying broad among the wreck, and
heard the silence broken only by the tinkling water in the
shaft, or a stir of the royal family about the battered
palace, and my mind has gone back to the epoch of the
Stanleys and the Chapmans, with a grand TUTTI of pick and
drill, hammer and anvil, echoing about the canyon; the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: So she lay all that morning, and all that afternoon.
Again and again Gregory crept close to the bedside and looked at her; but
she did not speak to him. Was it stupor or was it sleep that shone under
those half-closed eyelids. Gregory could not tell.
At last in the evening he bent over her.
"The oxen have come," he said; "we can start tomorrow if you like. Shall I
get the wagon ready tonight?"
Twice he repeated his question. Then she looked up at him, and Gregory saw
that all hope had died out of the beautiful eyes. It was not stupor that
shone there, it was despair.
"Yes, let us go," she said.
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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 War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells: it was found attached to its parent, partially BUDDED off, just
as young lilybulbs bud off, or like the young animals in the
fresh-water polyp.
In man, in all the higher terrestrial animals, such a method
of increase has disappeared; but even on this earth it was
certainly the primitive method. Among the lower animals,
up even to those first cousins of the vertebrated animals, the
Tunicates, the two processes occur side by side, but finally
the sexual method superseded its competitor altogether. On
Mars, however, just the reverse has apparently been the case.
It is worthy of remark that a certain speculative writer of
War of the Worlds |
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 Message by Honore de Balzac: When we reached Pouilly, I scanned my new friend with much
interest, and truly, it was not difficult to imagine him the hero
of a very serious love affair. Picture to yourselves a young man
of middle height, but very well proportioned, a bright,
expressive face, dark hair, blue eyes, moist lips, and white and
even teeth. A certain not unbecoming pallor still overspread his
delicately cut features, and there were faint dark circles about
his eyes, as if he were recovering from an illness. Add,
furthermore, that he had white and shapely hands, of which he was
as careful as a pretty woman should be; add that he seemed to be
very well informed, and was decidedly clever, and it should not
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