| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: Merchant Shipping Act, the very word SOBER must be written, or a
whole sackful, a ton, a mountain of the most enthusiastic
appreciation will avail you nothing. The door of the examination
rooms shall remain closed to your tears and entreaties. The most
fanatical advocate of temperance could not be more pitilessly
fierce in his rectitude than the Marine Department of the Board
of Trade. As I have been face to face at various times with all
the examiners of the Port of London, in my generation, there can
be no doubt as to the force and the continuity of my
abstemiousness. Three of them were examiners in seamanship, and
it was my fate to be delivered into the hands of each of them at
Some Reminiscences |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: much more loudly, and invariably both the upper and lower orbicular
muscles were strongly contracted, and now in an equal degree.
It is a singular fact that the African elephant, which, however, is so
different from the Indian species that it is placed by some naturalists
in a distinct sub-genus, when made on two occasions to trumpet loudly,
exhibited no trace of the contraction of the orbicular muscles.
[20] `Ceylon,' 3rd edit. 1859, vol. ii. pp. 364, 376.
I applied to Mr. Thwaites, in Ceylon, for further information
with respect to the weeping of the elephant; and in consequence
received a letter from the Rev. Mr Glenie, who, with others,
kindly observed for me a herd of recently captured elephants.
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: white pebbles that look like sifted gold and purest pearls. There he
perceives a cunningly wrought fountain of many-coloured jasper and
polished marble; here another of rustic fashion where the little
mussel-shells and the spiral white and yellow mansions of the snail
disposed in studious disorder, mingled with fragments of glittering
crystal and mock emeralds, make up a work of varied aspect, where art,
imitating nature, seems to have outdone it. Suddenly there is
presented to his sight a strong castle or gorgeous palace with walls
of massy gold, turrets of diamond and gates of jacinth; in short, so
marvellous is its structure that though the materials of which it is
built are nothing less than diamonds, carbuncles, rubies, pearls,
Don Quixote |
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 Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: tals with nine units."
The formula was complete; but--what did it mean?
I thought I knew, and, seizing a powerful magnifying glass
from the litter of my pocket-pouch, I applied myself to a careful
examination of the marble immediately about the pinhole in the door.
I could have cried aloud in exultation when my scrutiny
disclosed the almost invisible incrustation of particles of
carbonized electrons which are thrown off by these Martian torches.
The Warlord of Mars |
