| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: "How?"
"Go into harness again, gird on your sword, run after
adventures, and leave as in old times a little of your fat
on the roadside."
"Ah! hang it!" said Porthos.
"I see you are spoiled, dear friend; you are corpulent, your
arm has no longer that movement of which the late cardinal's
guards have so many proofs."
"Ah! my fist is strong enough I swear," cried Porthos,
extending a hand like a shoulder of mutton.
"So much the better."
Twenty Years After |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: through long reaches may yet remain wholly distinct, one finding its way
satisfactorily to the sea, while the other loses itself in sand or becomes
a stagnant marsh, so our modern male and female movements, taking their
rise from the same material conditions in modern civilisation, and
presenting endless and close analogies with one another in their cause of
development, yet remain fundamentally distinct. By both movements the
future of the race must be profoundly modified for good or evil; both touch
the race in a manner absolutely vital; but both will have to be fought out
on their own ground, and independently: and it can be only by determined,
conscious, and persistent action on the part of woman that the solution of
her own labour problems will proceed co-extensively with that of the other.
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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 Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle: followed, and the others followed after him; and instantly they
were seated the boat was shoved off and the black men began
pulling straight out into the harbor, and so, at some distance
away, around under the stern of the man-of-war.
Not a word was spoken after they had thus left the shore, and
presently they might all have been ghosts, for the silence of the
party. Barnaby True was too full of his own thoughts to talk--and
serious enough thoughts they were by this time, with crimps to
trepan a man at every turn, and press gangs to carry a man off so
that he might never be heard of again. As for the others, they
did not seem to choose to say anything now that they had him
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates |
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 Extracts From Adam's Diary by Mark Twain: thing, she says it is ordered that we work for our living hereafter.
She will be useful. I will superintend.
Ten Days Later
She accuses me of being the cause of our disaster! She says, with
apparent sincerity and truth, that the Serpent assured her that
the forbidden fruit was not apples, it was chestnuts. I said I
was innocent, then, for I had not eaten any chestnuts. She said
the Serpent informed her that "chestnut" was a figurative term
meaning an aged and mouldy joke. I turned pale at that, for I
have made many jokes to pass the weary time, and some of them could
have been of that sort, though I had honestly supposed that they
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