| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Desert Gold by Zane Grey: He sat up after a while and again watched the fire. Nell's sweet
face floated like a wraith in the pale smoke--glowed and flushed
and smiled in the embers. Other faces shone there--his sister's
--that of his mother. Gale shook off the tender memories. This
desolate wilderness with its forbidding silence and its dark
promise of hell on the morrow--this was not the place to unnerve
oneself with thoughts of love and home. But the torturing paradox
of the thing was that this was just the place and just the night
for a man to be haunted.
By and by Gale rose and walked down a shadowy aisle
between the mesquites. On his way back the Yaqui joined him.
 Desert Gold |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Sir John Mandeville: Mount Sinai, and of Babylon the more and the less, and to other
places that I have spoken before, now is time, if it like you, for
to tell you of the marches and isles and diverse beasts, and of
diverse folk beyond these marches.
For in those countries beyond be many diverse countries and many
great kingdoms, that be departed by the four floods that come from
paradise terrestrial. For Mesopotamia and the kingdom of Chaldea
and Arabia be between the two rivers of Tigris and of Euphrates;
and the kingdom of Media and of Persia be between the rivers of
Nile and of Tigris; and the kingdom of Syria, whereof I have spoken
before, and Palestine and Phoenicia be between Euphrates and the
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