| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle: Little did I reckon to see thy face this day, or to meet thee this
side Paradise." Little John could make no answer, but wept also.
Then Robin Hood gathered his band together in a close rank, with Will Stutely
in the midst, and thus they moved slowly away toward Sherwood, and were gone,
as a storm cloud moves away from the spot where a tempest has swept the land.
But they left ten of the Sheriff's men lying along the ground wounded--
some more, some less--yet no one knew who smote them down.
Thus the Sheriff of Nottingham tried thrice to take Robin Hood
and failed each time; and the last time he was frightened,
for he felt how near he had come to losing his life; so he said,
"These men fear neither God nor man, nor king nor king's officers.
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: the other in secret; they establish luxurious clubs; they break
themselves over horse-flesh and other things, and they are
instant in a quarrel. At twenty they are experienced in
business, embark in vast enterprises, take partners as
experienced as themselves, and go to pieces with as much splendor
as their neighbors. Remember that the men who stocked California
in the fifties were physically, and, as far as regards certain
tough virtues, the pick of the earth. The inept and the weakly
died en route, or went under in the days of construction. To
this nucleus were added all the races of the Continent--French,
Italian, German, and, of course, the Jew.
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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 Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: testimony that they are accustomed to rely, they like to discern
the object which engages their attention with extreme clearness;
they therefore strip off as much as possible all that covers it,
they rid themselves of whatever separates them from it, they
remove whatever conceals it from sight, in order to view it more
closely and in the broad light of day. This disposition of the
mind soon leads them to contemn forms, which they regard as
useless and inconvenient veils placed between them and the truth.
The Americans then have not required to extract their
philosophical method from books; they have found it in
themselves. The same thing may be remarked in what has taken
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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 The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther: hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,
envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like.
Therefore, if you cannot feel it, at least believe the Scriptures, they
will not lie to you and they know your flesh better than you yourself.
Yea, St. Paul further concludes in Rom. 7, 18: l know that in me, that
is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. If St. Paul may speak thus of
his flesh, we do not propose to be better nor more holy. But that we do
not feel it is so much the worse; for it is a sign that there is a
leprous flesh which feels nothing, and yet [the leprosy] rages and
keeps spreading. Yet as we have said, if you are quite dead to all
sensibility, still believe the Scriptures, which pronounce sentence
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