The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Daisy Miller by Henry James: I don't know why she wanted you to know, but she said to me three times,
'Mind you tell Mr. Winterbourne.' And then she told me to ask
if you remembered the time you went to that castle in Switzerland.
But I said I wouldn't give any such messages as that. Only, if she
is not engaged, I'm sure I'm glad to know it."
But, as Winterbourne had said, it mattered very little.
A week after this, the poor girl died; it had been a terrible
case of the fever. Daisy's grave was in the little
Protestant cemetery, in an angle of the wall of imperial Rome,
beneath the cypresses and the thick spring flowers.
Winterbourne stood there beside it, with a number of other mourners,
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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: been, howsoever covered with slain, which is has not cost the women of the
race more in actual bloodshed and anguish to supply, then it has cost the
men who lie there. We pay the first cost on all human life.
In supplying the men for the carnage of a battlefield, women have not
merely lost actually more blood, and gone through a more acute anguish and
weariness, in the long months of bearing and in the final agony of
childbirth, than has been experienced by the men who cover it; but, in the
long months and years of rearing that follow, the women of the race go
through a long, patiently endured strain which no knapsacked soldier on his
longest march has ever more than equalled; while, even in the matter of
death, in all civilised societies, the probability that the average woman
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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 The Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: hunters. And I remember now that he had three sons. These things
happened many, many Rains ago, and very far away--among the
fields of Bhurtpore. What came to those fields at the next
reaping, Hathi?"
"They were reaped by me and by my three sons," said Hathi.
"And to the ploughing that follows the reaping?" said Mowgli.
"There was no ploughing," said Hathi.
"And to the men that live by the green crops on the ground?"
said Mowgli.
"They went away."
"And to the huts in which the men slept?" said Mowgli.
The Second Jungle Book |
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 Richard III by William Shakespeare: A YOUNG SON OF CLARENCE (Edward, Earl of Warwick)
HENRY, EARL OF RICHMOND, afterwards KING HENRY VII
CARDINAL BOURCHIER, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY
THOMAS ROTHERHAM, ARCHBISHOP OF YORK
JOHN MORTON, BISHOP OF ELY
DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM
DUKE OF NORFOLK
EARL OF SURREY, his son
EARL RIVERS, brother to King Edward's Queen
MARQUIS OF DORSET and LORD GREY, her sons
EARL OF OXFORD
Richard III |