| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: The reason they gave for this was the extraordinary richness of the
soil, made so, as above, by the falling or washing of the rains
from the hills adjacent, by which, though no other land thereabouts
had such a kind of grass, yet all other meadows and low grounds of
the valley were extremely rich in proportion.
There are abundance of good families, and of very ancient lines in
the neighbourhood of this town of Dorchester, as the Napiers, the
Courtneys, Strangeways, Seymours, Banks, Tregonells, Sydenhams, and
many others, some of which have very great estates in the county,
and in particular Colonel Strangeways, Napier, and Courtney. The
first of these is master of the famous swannery or nursery of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: haunted his mind, and the man who had been buried alive appeared to
him with his terrible coffin.
Both the young Cossacks soon took a good standing among their fellows.
They often sallied out upon the steppe with comrades from their kuren,
and sometimes too with the whole kuren or with neighbouring kurens, to
shoot the innumerable steppe-birds of every sort, deer, and goats. Or
they went out upon the lakes, the river, and its tributaries allotted
to each kuren, to throw their nets and draw out rich prey for the
enjoyment of the whole kuren. Although unversed in any trade exercised
by a Cossack, they were soon remarked among the other youths for their
obstinate bravery and daring in everything. Skilfully and accurately
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: burgher families, and required a certain number of aldermen and
burgomasters in the pedigree of every bride-elect before admitting her
to the family. They sought their wives in Bruges or Ghent, in Liege or
in Holland; so that the time-honored domestic customs might be
perpetuated around their hearthstones. This social group became more
and more restricted, until, at the close of the last century, it
mustered only some seven or eight families of the parliamentary
nobility, whose manners and flowing robes of office and magisterial
gravity (partly Spanish) harmonized well with the habits of their
life.
The inhabitants of Douai held the family in a religious esteem 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 A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: from evil, and for them the Lord has not died.'
The young Fisherman's eyes filled with tears when he heard the
bitter words of the Priest, and he rose up from his knees and said
to him, 'Father, the Fauns live in the forest and are glad, and on
the rocks sit the Mermen with their harps of red gold. Let me be
as they are, I beseech thee, for their days are as the days of
flowers. And as for my soul, what doth my soul profit me, if it
stand between me and the thing that I love?'
'The love of the body is vile,' cried the Priest, knitting his
brows, 'and vile and evil are the pagan things God suffers to
wander through His world. Accursed be the Fauns of the woodland,
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