| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs: pride that I stepped across its convulsively stiffening
corpse to snatch up the most potent secret of a world.
A single glance assured me it was the very thing that
Perry had described to me.
And as I grasped it did I think of what it meant to the
human race of Pellucidar--did there flash through my
mind the thought that countless generations of my own
kind yet unborn would have reason to worship me for the
thing that I had accomplished for them? I did not.
I thought of a beautiful oval face, gazing out of
limpid eyes, through a waving mass of jet-black hair.
At the Earth's Core |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde: Either to drive him from public life, or to make him adopt a
dishonourable position. From the latter tragedy you saved him. The
former you are now thrusting on him. Why should you do him the wrong
Mrs. Cheveley tried to do and failed?
LADY CHILTERN. Lord Goring?
LORD GORING. [Pulling himself together for a great effort, and
showing the philosopher that underlies the dandy.] Lady Chiltern,
allow me. You wrote me a letter last night in which you said you
trusted me and wanted my help. Now is the moment when you really
want my help, now is the time when you have got to trust me, to trust
in my counsel and judgment. You love Robert. Do you want to kill
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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 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: evening the Jenkins sat without lights about their drawing-room
window, 'watching the huge red flashes of the cannon' from the
Brigato and La Specula forts, and hearkening, not without some
awful pleasure, to the thunder of the cannonade.
Lord Hardwicke intervened between the rebels and La Marmora; and
there followed a troubled armistice, filled with the voice of
panic. Now the VENGEANCE was known to be cleared for action; now
it was rumoured that the galley slaves were to be let loose upon
the town, and now that the troops would enter it by storm. Crowds,
trusting in the Union Jack over the Jenkins' door, came to beg them
to receive their linen and other valuables; nor could their
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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 Before Adam by Jack London: peopled my nights with fear.
Ah, those endless forests, and their horror-haunted
gloom! For what eternities have I wandered through
them, a timid, hunted creature, starting at the least
sound, frightened of my own shadow, keyed-up, ever
alert and vigilant, ready on the instant to dash away
in mad flight for my life. For I was the prey of all
manner of fierce life that dwelt in the forest, and it
was in ecstasies of fear that I fled before the hunting
monsters.
When I was five years old I went to my first circus. I
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