| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: merchants would certainly have seen and discovered him.
We then set sail from Archangel the 20th of August, the same year;
and, after no extraordinary bad voyage, arrived safe in the Elbe
the 18th of September. Here my partner and I found a very good
sale for our goods, as well those of China as the sables, &c., of
Siberia: and, dividing the produce, my share amounted to 3475
pounds, 17s 3d., including about six hundred pounds' worth of
diamonds, which I purchased at Bengal.
Here the young lord took his leave of us, and went up the Elbe, in
order to go to the court of Vienna, where he resolved to seek
protection and could correspond with those of his father's friends
Robinson Crusoe |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: should have been laughed at for a billion miles around. I
shouldn't ever heard the last of it."
"Well, who did go, then?"
"Mighty few people that you and I will ever get a chance to see,
Captain. Not a solitary commoner ever has the luck to see a
reception of a prophet, I can tell you. All the nobility, and all
the patriarchs and prophets - every last one of them - and all the
archangels, and all the princes and governors and viceroys, were
there, - and NO small fry - not a single one. And mind you, I'm
not talking about only the grandees from OUR world, but the princes
and patriarchs and so on from ALL the worlds that shine in our sky,
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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 Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: Night's Dream the persons of the drama are not quite so ready for
treachery and murder as Laertes and even Hamlet himself (not to
mention the procession of ruffians who pass through the latest plays)
it is certainly not because they have any more regard for law or
religion. There is only one place in Shakespear's plays where the
sense of shame is used as a human attribute; and that is where Hamlet
is ashamed, not of anything he himself has done, but of his mother's
relations with his uncle. This scene is an unnatural one: the son's
reproaches to his mother, even the fact of his being able to discuss
the subject with her, is more repulsive than her relations with her
deceased husband's brother.
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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 Adieu by Honore de Balzac: they have involuntarily aroused. He respected his friend's silence,
rose, forgot his fatigue, and followed him silently, grieved to have
touched a wound that was evidently not healed.
"Some day, my friend," said Philippe, pressing his hand, and thanking
him for his mute repentance by a heart-rending look, "I will relate to
you my life. To-day I cannot."
They continued their way in silence. When the colonel's pain seemed
soothed, the marquis resumed his fatigue; and with the instinct, or
rather the will, of a wearied man his eye took in the very depths of
the forest; he questioned the tree-tops and examined the branching
paths, hoping to discover some dwelling where he could ask
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