| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: feelings of revenge and hatred filled my bosom, and I did not strive
to control them, but allowing myself to be borne away by the stream,
I bent my mind towards injury and death. When I thought of my friends,
of the mild voice of De Lacey, the gentle eyes of Agatha, and the
exquisite beauty of the Arabian, these thoughts vanished and a
gush of tears somewhat soothed me. But again when I reflected
that they had spurned and deserted me, anger returned, a rage of anger, and
unable to injure anything human, I turned my fury towards inanimate objects.
As night advanced I placed a variety of combustibles around the cottage,
and after having destroyed every vestige of cultivation in the garden, I waited
with forced impatience until the moon had sunk to commence my operations.
Frankenstein |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: rail, and called down to me sarcastically, out of the depths of his
cynic philosopher's beard:
"So you have brought the boat back after all, have you?"
Sarcasm was "his way," and the most that can be said for it is that
it was natural. This did not make it lovable. But it is decorous
and expedient to fall in with one's commander's way. "Yes. I
brought the boat back all right, sir," I answered. And the good
man believed me. It was not for him to discern upon me the marks
of my recent initiation. And yet I was not exactly the same
youngster who had taken the boat away - all impatience for a race
against death, with the prize of nine men's lives at the end.
The Mirror of the Sea |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: place, can speak with a more heavy and disconsolate tongue to human
ears. Each stroke calls up a host of ghostly reverberations in his
mind. And as he stands rooted, it has grown once more so utterly
silent that it seems to him he might hear the church bells ring the
hour out all the world over, not at Chailly only, but in Paris, and
away in outlandish cities, and in the village on the river, where his
childhood passed between the sun and flowers.
IDLE HOURS
The woods by night, in all their uncanny effect, are not rightly to
be understood until you can compare them with the woods by day. The
stillness of the medium, the floor of glittering sand, these trees
|
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 Son of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: with shouts and cries. He lagged further behind until the pursuers
were in sight. They did not see him, for they were not looking
among the branches of the trees for human quarry. The lad kept
just ahead of them. For a mile perhaps they continued the search,
and then they turned back toward the village. Here was the boy's
opportunity, that for which he had been waiting, while the hot
blood of revenge coursed through his veins until he saw his
pursuers through a scarlet haze.
When they turned back he turned and followed them. Akut was
no longer in sight. Thinking that the boy followed he had
gone on further ahead. He had no wish to tempt fate within range
The Son of Tarzan |
