| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: 'They are no countrymen of mine, O Montezuma,' I answered, 'though
my mother was one of them.'
'Did I not bid you speak the truth, Teule? If your mother was one
of them, must you not also be of them; for are you not of your
mother's bone and blood?'
'As the king pleases,' I answered bowing. Then I began and told
him of the Spaniards--of their country, their greatness, their
cruelty and their greed of gold, and he listened eagerly, though I
think that he believed little of what I said, for his fear had made
him very suspicious. When I had done, he spoke and said:
'Why do they come here to Anahuac?'
Montezuma's Daughter |
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: had a pistol in his pocket, which I knew nothing of, nor the
Tartars either: if they had, I suppose they would not have
attacked us, for cowards are always boldest when there is no
danger. The old man seeing me down, with a bold heart stepped up
to the fellow that had struck me, and laying hold of his arm with
one hand, and pulling him down by main force a little towards him,
with the other shot him into the head, and laid him dead upon the
spot. He then immediately stepped up to him who had stopped us, as
I said, and before he could come forward again, made a blow at him
with a scimitar, which he always wore, but missing the man, struck
his horse in the side of his head, cut one of the ears off by the
Robinson Crusoe |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling: gone with the Manor-roll. I remember when Fulke heard
the tide blow and whistle in the shaft he leaped back, and
his long down-turned stirrup-shoes caught in the rushes
and he stumbled, so that Jehan behind him found it easy
to knock his head against the wall.'
'Did you know it was going to happen?' said Dan.
'Assuredly,' said Sir Richard, with a sweet smile. 'I put
my foot on his sword and plucked away his dagger, but
he knew not whether it was day or night for awhile. He
lay rolling his eyes and bubbling with his mouth, and
jehan roped him like a calf. He was cased all in that
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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 Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: inherited from our ancestors and which we shall transmit more or
less modified to our descendants. How far back this consciousness
has been felt passes the possibilities of history to determine,
since the recording of it necessarily followed the fact. All we
know is that its mention is coeval with chronicle, and its origin
lost in allegory. The Bible, one of the oldest written records in
the world, begins with a bit of mythology of a very significant
kind. When the Jews undertook to trace back their family tree to an
idyllic garden of Eden, they mentioned as growing there beside the
tree of life, another tree called the tree of knowledge. Of what
character this knowledge was is inferable from the sudden
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