| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: shop business.
I mention this industry the more particularly and the more freely,
tho' it seems to be talking in my own praise, that those of
my posterity, who shall read it, may know the use of that virtue,
when they see its effects in my favour throughout this relation.
George Webb, who had found a female friend that lent him wherewith
to purchase his time of Keimer, now came to offer himself as a
journeyman to us. We could not then employ him; but I foolishly
let him know as a secret that I soon intended to begin a newspaper,
and might then have work for him. My hopes of success, as I told him,
were founded on this, that the then only newspaper, printed by Bradford,
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from King James Bible: SA1 7:1 And the men of Kirjathjearim came, and fetched up the ark of
the LORD, and brought it into the house of Abinadab in the hill, and
sanctified Eleazar his son to keep the ark of the LORD.
SA1 7:2 And it came to pass, while the ark abode in Kirjathjearim, that
the time was long; for it was twenty years: and all the house of Israel
lamented after the LORD.
SA1 7:3 And Samuel spake unto all the house of Israel, saying, If ye do
return unto the LORD with all your hearts, then put away the strange
gods and Ashtaroth from among you, and prepare your hearts unto the
LORD, and serve him only: and he will deliver you out of the hand of the
Philistines.
King James Bible |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: before us here, I would think nae mair--But, gude preserve us,
Earnscliff; what can yon, be!"
CHAPTER III.
Brown Dwarf, that o'er the moorland strays,
Thy name to Keeldar tell!
"The Brown Man of the Moor, that stays
Beneath the heather-bell." JOHN LEYDEN
The object which alarmed the young farmer in the middle of his
valorous protestations, startled for a moment even his less
prejudiced companion. The moon, which had arisen during their
conversation, was, in the phrase of that country, wading or
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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 Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: work gratis, by giving him the nuisances as his perquisites, and
teaching him how to eat them. Certainly (without going the length
of the Caribs, who upheld cannibalism because, they said, it made
war cheap, and precluded entirely the need of a commissariat), this
cardinal virtue of cheapness ought to make Squinado an interesting
object in the eyes of the present generation; especially as he was
at that moment a true sanitary martyr, having, like many of his
human fellow-workers, got into a fearful scrape by meddling with
those existing interests, and "vested rights which are but vested
wrongs," which have proved fatal already to more than one Board of
Health. For last night, as he was sitting quietly under a stone in
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