| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells: and latterly for some reason that it is up to you to
discover, doctor, even the power of work has gone from me."
Section 4
"This afternoon brings back to me very vividly my previous
visit here. It was perhaps a dozen or fifteen years ago. We
rowed down this same backwater. I can see my companion's
hand--she had very pretty hands with rosy palms--trailing in
the water, and her shadowed face smiling quietly under her
sunshade, with little faint streaks of sunlight, reflected
from the ripples, dancing and quivering across it. She was
one of those people who seem always to be happy and to
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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 Odyssey by Homer: heap upon me. The chiefs from all our islands--Dulichium, Same,
and Zacynthus, as also from Ithaca itself, are wooing me against
my will and are wasting my estate. I can therefore show no
attention to strangers, nor suppliants, nor to people who say
that they are skilled artisans, but am all the time
broken-hearted about Ulysses. They want me to marry again at
once, and I have to invent stratagems in order to deceive them.
In the first place heaven put it in my mind to set up a great
tambour-frame in my room, and to begin working upon an enormous
piece of fine needlework. Then I said to them, 'Sweethearts,
Ulysses is indeed dead, still, do not press me to marry again
The Odyssey |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Flame and Shadow by Sara Teasdale: Dumb when the brown earth weighs on me.
With envious dark rage I bear,
Stars, your cold complacent stare;
Heart-broken in my hate look up,
Moon, at your clear immortal cup,
Changing to gold from dusky red --
Age after age when I am dead
To be filled up with light, and then
Emptied, to be refilled again.
What has man done that only he
Is slave to death -- so brutally
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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 Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: talking eagerly.
Alden turned away his face to light his pipe, and hide a smile.
"Did he get--any money--out of you?"--came slowly between the puffs
of smoke.
"Money!" answered Jean, "of course there must be money to carry on
an affair of this kind. There was seventy dollars that I had
cleaned up on the lumber-job last winter, and the mother had forty
dollars from the cow she sold in the fall. A hundred and ten
dollars,--we gave him that. He has gone to France to make the claim
for us. Next spring he comes back, and I give him a hundred dollars
more; when I get my property five thousand dollars more. It is
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