| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Komal, the banth-god, rushing wide-jawed upon them!
Which had he chosen for his prey? Or was it to be both?
They had not long to wait, for though the Lotharian
attempted to hold the girl between himself and the
terrible fangs, the great beast found him at last.
Then, shrieking, he attempted to fly toward Lothar,
after pushing Thuvia bodily into the face of the man-eater.
But his flight was of short duration. In a moment Komal
was upon him, rending his throat and chest with demoniacal fury.
The girl reached their side a moment later, but it was
with difficulty that she tore the mad beast from its prey.
Thuvia, Maid of Mars |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: they sometimes play, too, and make matches and horse-races, as they
see occasion.
The ladies here do not want the help of assemblies to assist in
matchmaking, or half-pay officers to run away with their daughters,
which the meetings called assemblies in some other parts of England
are recommended for. Here is no Bury Fair, where the women are
scandalously said to carry themselves to market, and where every
night they meet at the play or at the assembly for intrigue; and
yet I observed that the women do not seem to stick on hand so much
in this country as in those countries where those assemblies are so
lately set up--the reason of which, I cannot help saying, if my
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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 The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: this arrangement of his forces and looked again at the picket of men
posted in advance upon the road. Satisfied with what he saw he was
about to give the order to march, when the tricolor cockades of the
two soldiers he had sent to beat the woods to the left caught his eye;
he waited therefore till the two others, who had gone to the right,
should reappear.
"Perhaps the ball will open over there," he said to his officers,
pointing to the woods from which the two men did not emerge.
While the first two made their report Hulot's attention was distracted
momentarily from Marche-a-Terre. The Chouan at once sent his owl's-cry
to an apparently vast distance, and before the men who guarded him
The Chouans |
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 Odyssey by Homer: is no need that he should go abroad on swift ships, that
serve men for horses on the sea, and that cross the great
wet waste. Is it that even his own name may no more be left
upon earth?'
Then Medon, wise of heart, answered her: 'I know not
whether some god set him on or whether his own spirit
stirred him to go to Pylos to seek tidings of his father's
return, or to hear what end he met.'
He spake, and departed through the house of Odysseus, and
on her fell a cloud of consuming grief; so that she might
no more endure to seat her on a chair, whereof there were
The Odyssey |
