| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Koran: the garden or thou wilt be wretched. Verily, thou hast not to be
hungry there, nor naked! and, verily, thou shalt not thirst therein,
nor feel the noonday heat!'
But the devil whispered to him. Said he, 'O Adam! shall I guide thee
to the tree of immortality, and a kingdom that shall not wane?'
And they eat therefrom, and their shame became apparent to them; and
they began to stitch upon themselves some leaves of the garden; and
Adam rebelled against his Lord, and went astray.
Then his Lord chose him, and relented towards him, and guided him.
Said he, 'Go down, ye twain, therefrom altogether, some of you foes to
the other. And if there should come to you from me a guidance; then
The Koran |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber: so humbled, so worshiped, so neglected, so courted. He
was a creature of a thousand moods to torture one. What
guise would he wear to-day? Would he be gay, or dour, or
sullen, or teasing or passionate, or cold, or tender or
scintillating? I know that my hands were always cold,
and my cheeks were always hot, those days.
He wrote like a modern Demosthenes, with
all political New York to quiver under his philippics.
The managing editor used to send him out on wonderful
assignments, and they used to hold the paper for his
stuff when it was late. Sometimes he would be gone for
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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 Walden by Henry David Thoreau: day, or more rarely, in spring-like days, a wiry summery phe-be
from the woodside. They were so familiar that at length one
alighted on an armful of wood which I was carrying in, and pecked at
the sticks without fear. I once had a sparrow alight upon my
shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I
felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I
should have been by any epaulet I could have worn. The squirrels
also grew at last to be quite familiar, and occasionally stepped
upon my shoe, when that was the nearest way.
When the ground was not yet quite covered, and again near the
end of winter, when the snow was melted on my south hillside and
Walden |
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 Chance by Joseph Conrad: years afterwards, and remained always liable at the slightest
emotion to an extraordinary ghost-like whiteness. The end came in
the abomination of desolation of the poor child's miserable cry for
help: "Charley! Charley!" coming from her throat in hidden gasping
efforts. Her enlarged eyes had discovered him where he stood
motionless and dumb.
He started from his immobility, a hand withdrawn brusquely from the
pocket of his overcoat, strode up to the woman, seized her by the
arm from behind, saying in a rough commanding tone: "Come away,
Eliza." In an instant the child saw them close together and remote,
near the door, gone through the door, which she neither heard nor
Chance |
