| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum: "Of course I cannot understand it," he said. "If your heads
were stuffed with straw, like mine, you would probably all live in
the beautiful places, and then Kansas would have no people at all.
It is fortunate for Kansas that you have brains."
"Won't you tell me a story, while we are resting?" asked the child.
The Scarecrow looked at her reproachfully, and answered:
"My life has been so short that I really know nothing whatever.
I was only made day before yesterday. What happened in the world
before that time is all unknown to me. Luckily, when the farmer
made my head, one of the first things he did was to paint my ears,
so that I heard what was going on. There was another Munchkin with him,
The Wizard of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: stricken crowd beheld the fainting Felipe upheld by the strong
arm of his father, who clutched him by the throat. They saw
another thing, an unearthly spectacle--Don Juan's face grown
young and beautiful as Antinous, with its dark hair and brilliant
eyes and red lips, a head that made horrible efforts, but could
not move the dead, wasted body.
An old servitor cried, "A miracle! a miracle!" and all the
Spaniards echoed, "A miracle! a miracle!"
Dona Elvira, too pious to attribute this to magic, sent for the
Abbot of San-Lucar; and the Prior beholding the miracle with his
own eyes, being a clever man, and withal an Abbot desirous of
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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 Philebus by Plato: state in which she is unaffected by the shocks of the body, say
unconsciousness.
PROTARCHUS: I see.
SOCRATES: And the union or communion of soul and body in one feeling and
motion would be properly called consciousness?
PROTARCHUS: Most true.
SOCRATES: Then now we know the meaning of the word?
PROTARCHUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And memory may, I think, be rightly described as the
preservation of consciousness?
PROTARCHUS: Right.
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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 Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: pipe gurgle for a space, thinking deeply.
"There are complications, I admit. We've grown up under the
terror of Grundy and that innocent but docile
and--yes--formidable lady, his wife. I don't know how far the
complications aren't a disease, a sort of bleaching under the
Grundy shadow.... It is possible there are things I have still
to learn about women.... Man has eaten of the Tree of Knowledge.
His innocence is gone. You can't have your cake and eat it.
We're in for knowledge; let's have it plain and straight. I
should begin, I think, by abolishing the ideas of decency and
indecency...."
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