| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Koran: shameful woe.
And those who flee in God's way, and then are slain or die, God will
provide them with a goodly provision; for, verily, God is the best
of providers.
He shall surely make them enter by an entrance that they like;
for, verily, God is knowing, clement.
That (is so). Whoever punishes with the like of what he has been
injured with, and shall then be outraged again, God shall surely
help him; verily, God pardons, forgives.
That for that God joins on the night to the day, and joins on the
day to the night, and that God is hearing, seeing; that is for that
The Koran |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: About a year and a half after I entertained these notions (and by
long musing had, as it were, resolved them all into nothing, for
want of an occasion to put them into execution), I was surprised
one morning by seeing no less than five canoes all on shore
together on my side the island, and the people who belonged to them
all landed and out of my sight. The number of them broke all my
measures; for seeing so many, and knowing that they always came
four or six, or sometimes more in a boat, I could not tell what to
think of it, or how to take my measures to attack twenty or thirty
men single-handed; so lay still in my castle, perplexed and
discomforted. However, I put myself into the same position for an
Robinson Crusoe |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Amazing Interlude by Mary Roberts Rinehart: lake. By opening the gates in the dikes the Allies had let in the sea
and placed a flood in front of the advancing enemy. The battle front
was a reeking pond. The opposing armies lived like duck hunters in a
swamp. To dig a foot was to encounter water. Machine guns here and
there sat but six inches above the yellow flood. Men lay in pools to
fire them. To reach outposts were narrow paths built first of bags of
earth - a life, sometimes for every bag. And, when this filling was
sufficient, on top a path of fascines, bound together in bundles, made
a footway.
For this reason the Belgians approached their trenches not through deep
cuts which gave them shelter but with no other cover than the darkness
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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 Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: The full brain hammered hot with too much thinking,
The vexed heart over-worn with too much aching, --
This weary jangling of conjoined affairs
Made out of elements that have no end,
And all confused at once, I understand,
Is not what makes a man to live forever.
O no, not now! He'll not be going now:
There'll be time yet for God knows what explosions
Before he goes. He'll stay awhile. Just wait:
Just wait a year or two for Cleopatra,
For she's to be a balsam and a comfort;
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