| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Chinese Boy and Girl by Isaac Taylor Headland: go with the boys and girls to their games. Let us play
with their toys and be entertained by the shows that entertain
them, and see if they are not of the same flesh and
blood, heart and sentiment as we. We shall find that the
boys and girls live together, work together, study together,
play together, have their heads shaved alike and quarrel
with each other until they are seven years old, the period
which brings to an end the life of the Chinese child. From
this period it is the boy or the girl.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen: and mouth.
"That's glorious fun!" said the sprite. If a good thought passed through a
man's mind, then a grin was seen in the mirror, and the sprite laughed
heartily at his clever discovery. All the little sprites who went to his
school--for he kept a sprite school--told each other that a miracle had
happened; and that now only, as they thought, it would be possible to see how
the world really looked. They ran about with the mirror; and at last there was
not a land or a person who was not represented distorted in the mirror. So
then they thought they would fly up to the sky, and have a joke there. The
higher they flew with the mirror, the more terribly it grinned: they could
hardly hold it fast. Higher and higher still they flew, nearer and nearer to
Fairy Tales |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Iliad by Homer: whom I chose for myself when he took Lesbos--all of surpassing
beauty. I will give him these, and with them her whom I erewhile
took from him, the daughter of Briseus; and I swear a great oath
that I never went up into her couch, nor have been with her after
the manner of men and women.
"All these things will I give him now, and if hereafter the gods
vouchsafe me to sack the city of Priam, let him come when we
Achaeans are dividing the spoil, and load his ship with gold and
bronze to his liking; furthermore let him take twenty Trojan
women, the loveliest after Helen herself. Then, when we reach
Achaean Argos, wealthiest of all lands, he shall be my son-in-law
The Iliad |
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 Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: HAD, to make him by the loss of it so bleed and yet live?
Something--and this reached him with a pang--that HE, John Marcher,
hadn't; the proof of which was precisely John Marcher's arid end.
No passion had ever touched him, for this was what passion meant;
he had survived and maundered and pined, but where had been HIS
deep ravage? The extraordinary thing we speak of was the sudden
rush of the result of this question. The sight that had just met
his eyes named to him, as in letters of quick flame, something he
had utterly, insanely missed, and what he had missed made these
things a train of fire, made them mark themselves in an anguish of
inward throbs. He had seen OUTSIDE of his life, not learned it
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