| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Witch, et. al by Anton Chekhov: of the hands and head and thin shoulders, and at every movement
his hempen shirt crumpled into folds, slipped upwards and
displayed his back, black with age and sunburn. He kept pulling
it down, but it slipped up again at once. At last, as though
driven out of all patience by the rebellious shirt, the old man
leaped up and said bitterly:
"There is fortune, but what is the good of it if it is buried in
the earth? It is just riches wasted with no profit to anyone,
like chaff or sheep's dung, and yet there are riches there, lad,
fortune enough for all the country round, but not a soul sees it!
It will come to this, that the gentry will dig it up or 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 Ion by Plato: equally skilled in Homer and in other poets, since he himself acknowledges
that the same person will be a good judge of all those who speak of the
same things; and that almost all poets do speak of the same things?
ION: Why then, Socrates, do I lose attention and go to sleep and have
absolutely no ideas of the least value, when any one speaks of any other
poet; but when Homer is mentioned, I wake up at once and am all attention
and have plenty to say?
SOCRATES: The reason, my friend, is obvious. No one can fail to see that
you speak of Homer without any art or knowledge. If you were able to speak
of him by rules of art, you would have been able to speak of all other
poets; for poetry is a whole.
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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 In the Cage by Henry James: He had come back from Paris; everything was re-arranged; the pair
were again shoulder to shoulder in their high encounter with life,
their large and complicated game. The fine soundless pulse of this
game was in the air for our young woman while they remained in the
shop. While they remained? They remained all day; their presence
continued and abode with her, was in everything she did till
nightfall, in the thousands of other words she counted, she
transmitted, in all the stamps she detached and the letters she
weighed and the change she gave, equally unconscious and unerring
in each of these particulars, and not, as the run on the little
office thickened with the afternoon hours, looking up at a single
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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 On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw
and stand aloof from it effectually. I do not care to trace
the course of my dollar, if I could, till it buys a man a
musket to shoot one with--the dollar is innocent--but I am
concerned to trace the effects of my allegiance. In fact, I
quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though
I will still make use and get what advantages of her I can,
as is usual in such cases.
If others pay the tax which is demanded of me, from a
sympathy with the State, they do but what they have already
done in their own case, or rather they abet injustice to a
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
