| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Grimm's Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm: When he came to the outskirts of the forest, he said to his followers:
'Just stay waiting here, I alone will soon finish off the giants.'
Then he bounded into the forest and looked about right and left. After
a while he perceived both giants. They lay sleeping under a tree, and
snored so that the branches waved up and down. The little tailor, not
idle, gathered two pocketsful of stones, and with these climbed up the
tree. When he was halfway up, he slipped down by a branch, until he
sat just above the sleepers, and then let one stone after another fall
on the breast of one of the giants. For a long time the giant felt
nothing, but at last he awoke, pushed his comrade, and said: 'Why are
you knocking me?' 'You must be dreaming,' said the other, 'I am not
Grimm's Fairy Tales |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Stories From the Old Attic by Robert Harris: rise into the air, and be sustained there, and move forward, why that
clearly violates everything we know about the law of gravity and the
laws of physics. If we have learned anything from a thousand years
of study of the natural world, it is that an object heavier than air
must return immediately to earth when it is tossed into the sky."
"Hear, hear," two or three people muttered.
"Now, if you perhaps mean that these 'airplanes,' as you call
them, are somehow flung into the air for a short distance and then
fall to the ground, well, then perhaps that would be possible." The
professor looked expectantly and a bit condescendingly at the
traveler, hoping that the man would take this face-saving opportunity.
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: eyes, and he stopped. Yes. At that moment I hear Rozovsky
shouting in his fine, Jewish voice. Lozinsky threw away the
cigarette and stepped from the door. And Rozovsky appeared at the
window. His childish face, with the limpid black eyes, was red
and moist. He also had clean linen on, the trousers were too
wide, and he kept pulling them up and trembled all over. He
approached his pitiful face to my window. 'Kryltzoff, it's true
that the doctor has prescribed cough mixture for me, is it not? I
am not well. I'll take some more of the mixture.' No one
answered, and he looked inquiringly, now at me, now at the
inspector. What he meant to say I never made out. Yes. Suddenly
Resurrection |
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 Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare: I smiling credit her false-speaking tongue,
Outfacing faults in love with love's ill rest.
But wherefore says my love that she is young?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love's best habit is a soothing tongue,
And age, in love, loves not to have years told.
Therefore, I'll lie with love, and love with me,
Since that our faults in love thus smother'd be.
II.
Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,
That like two spirits do suggest me still;
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