| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: all bespeak an approach to some half-regal residence.
Before reaching this enclosure from the height of an eminence such as
we Frenchmen rather conceitedly call a mountain, at the foot of which
lies the village of Conches (the last post-house), I had seen the long
valley of Aigues, at the farther end of which the mail road turns to
follow a straight line into the little sub-prefecture of La Ville-aux-
Fayes, over which, as you know, the nephew of our friend des Lupeaulx
lords it. Tall forests lying on the horizon, along vast slopes which
skirt a river, command this rich valley, which is framed in the far
distance by the mountains of a lesser Switzerland, called the Morvan.
These forests belong to Les Aigues, and to the Marquis de Ronquerolles
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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: The man who don't get his reward on earth, needn't bother - he will
get it here, sure."
"But why did they throw off on Shakespeare, that way, and put him
away down there below those shoe-makers and horse-doctors and
knife-grinders - a lot of people nobody ever heard of?"
"That is the heavenly justice of it - they warn't rewarded
according to their deserts, on earth, but here they get their
rightful rank. That tailor Billings, from Tennessee, wrote poetry
that Homer and Shakespeare couldn't begin to come up to; but nobody
would print it, nobody read it but his neighbors, an ignorant lot,
and they laughed at it. Whenever the village had a drunken frolic
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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 The Odyssey by Homer: 'Then we came to the isle Aeolian, where dwelt Aeolus, son
of Hippotas, dear too the deathless gods, in a floating
island, and all about it is a wall of bronze unbroken, and
the cliff runs up sheer from the sea. His twelve children
to abide there in his halls, six daughters and six lusty
sons; and, behold, he gave his daughters to his sons to
wife. And they feast evermore by their dear father and
their kind mother, and dainties innumerable lie ready to
their hands. And the house is full of the savour of
feasting, and the noise thereof rings round, yea in the
courtyard, by day, and in the night they sleep each one by
The Odyssey |
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 Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: with a choice body of foot on their left, and the horse rallying in
the High Street, and charging them again in the front, they were
driven back quite into the street of the suburb, and most of those
that had so rashly entered were cut in pieces.
Thus they were repulsed at the south entrance into the town; and
though they attempted to storm three times after that with great
resolution, yet they were as often beaten back, and that with great
havoc of their men; and the cannon from the fort all the while did
execution upon those who stood drawn up to support them; so that at
last, seeing no good to be done, they retreated, having small joy
of their pretended victory.
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