| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: women, which will prevent many a tragedy and save many a life.
But, as to the laws of personal health: enough, and more than
enough, is known already, to be applied safely and easily by any
adults, however unlearned, to the preservation not only of their
own health, but of that of their children.
The value of healthy habitations, of personal cleanliness, of pure
air and pure water, of various kinds of food, according as each
tends to make bone, fat, or muscle, provided only--provided only--
that the food be unadulterated; the value of various kinds of
clothing, and physical exercise, of a free and equal development
of the brain power, without undue overstrain in any one direction;
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Death of the Lion by Henry James: the airs had blown upon her. I had never been so throbbingly
present at such an unveiling. But when he had tossed the last
bright word after the others, as I had seen cashiers in banks,
weighing mounds of coin, drop a final sovereign into the tray, I
knew a sudden prudent alarm.
"My dear master, how, after all, are you going to do it? It's
infinitely noble, but what time it will take, what patience and
independence, what assured, what perfect conditions! Oh for a lone
isle in a tepid sea!"
"Isn't this practically a lone isle, and aren't you, as an
encircling medium, tepid enough?" he asked, alluding with a laugh
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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 Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: than have the portrait carried out on men's shoulders, as though
she were dead; how she celebrated her seventieth birthday when
she was sixty-nine, to defeat the gods and prevent their bringing
such a calamity during the celebration as had occurred when she
was sixty, when the Japanese war disturbed her festivities. On
her clothes she wore the ideographs for 'Long Life and
'Happiness,' and most of the presents she gave were emblematic of
some good fortune. Her palace was decorated with great plates of
apples, which by a play on words mean 'Peace,' and with plates of
peaches, which mean 'Longevity.' On her person she wore charms,
one of which she took from her neck and placed on the neck of
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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 Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: Cabala, which sprang up in Alexandria, a system of philosophy
founded on the mystic meaning of the words and the actual letters of
the text of Scripture, which some said was given by the angel Ragiel
to Adam in Paradise, by which Adam talked with angels, the sun and
moon, summoned spirits, interpreted dreams, healed and destroyed;
and by that book of Ragiel, as it was called, Solomon became the
great magician and master of all the spirits and their hoarded
treasures.
So strong, indeed, was the belief in the mysteries of the Cabala,
that Reuchlin, the restorer of Hebrew learning in Germany, and Pico
di Mirandola, the greatest of Italian savants, accepted them; and
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