| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Faith of Men by Jack London: chief. This I had played for, and when they were well and hungry,
I summoned the whole village, made a great harangue, posed as
patriarch, and fed the famishing. Moosu made harangue likewise,
and because of this and the thing I had done I was made chief.
Moosu, who had the ear of God and decreed his judgments, anointed
me with whale blubber, and right blubberly he did it, not
understanding the ceremony. And between us we interpreted to the
people the new theory of the divine right of kings. There was
hooch galore, and meat and feastings, and they took kindly to the
new order.
"So you see, O man, I have sat in the high places, and worn 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 Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy: if she might deposit her things at his house for a
while, and, on his offering no objection, she dismissed
her carriage, and went on to the village alone by a
back lane.
At sight of her father's chimney she asked herself how
she could possibly enter the house? Inside that
cottage her relations were calmly supposing her far
away on a wedding-tour with a comparatively rich man,
who was to conduct her to bouncing prosperity; while
here she was, friendless, creeping up to the old door
quite by herself, with no better place to go to in the
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: who was in London during the infection but must have known several
of the cases of both sorts.
(1) Fathers and mothers have gone about as if they had been well,
and have believed themselves to be so, till they have insensibly
infected and been the destruction of their whole families, which they
would have been far from doing if they had the least apprehensions of
their being unsound and dangerous themselves. A family, whose story
I have heard, was thus infected by the father; and the distemper began
to appear upon some of them even before he found it upon himself.
But searching more narrowly, it appeared he had been affected some
time; and as soon as he found that his family had been poisoned by
A Journal of the Plague Year |
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 Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: ancient statement that the training and education of her offspring is
exclusively the duty of the mother, however true it may have been with
regard to a remote past, has become an absolute misstatement; and the woman
who should at the present day insist on entirely educating her own
offspring would, in nine cases out of ten, inflict an irreparable injury on
them, because she is incompetent.
But, if possible, yet more deeply and radically have the changes of modern
civilisation touched our ancient field of labour in another direction--in
that very portion of the field of human labour which is peculiarly and
organically ours, and which can never be wholly taken from us. Here the
shrinkage has been larger than in any other direction, and touches us as
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