| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Disputation of the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences by Dr. Martin Luther: already dead to canonical rules, and have a right to be
released from them.
14. The imperfect health [of soul], that is to say, the
imperfect love, of the dying brings with it, of necessity,
great fear; and the smaller the love, the greater is the fear.
15. This fear and horror is sufficient of itself alone (to say
nothing of other things) to constitute the penalty of
purgatory, since it is very near to the horror of despair.
16. Hell, purgatory, and heaven seem to differ as do despair,
almost-despair, and the assurance of safety.
17. With souls in purgatory it seems necessary that horror
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: at her for a moment, very much as a dog looks at his own reflection
in a mirror before he turns away. He was at that time absorbed in
the galette. His mother seemed crestfallen that he should display
so little inclination towards the other sex; and expressed her
disappointment with some candour and a very proper reference to the
influence of years.
Sure enough a time will come when he will pay more attention to the
girls, and think a great deal less of his mother: let us hope she
will like it as well as she seemed to fancy. But it is odd enough;
the very women who profess most contempt for mankind as a sex, seem
to find even its ugliest particulars rather lively and high-minded
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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 Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: to please my relative, had never aspired to become a Selected Salic
Scion. I rejoice now that I did so, that I yielded to her temptation.
Ours is a wide country, and most of us know but our own corner of it,
while, thanks to my Aunt, I have been able to add another corner. This,
among many other enlightenments of navel and education, do I owe her; she
stands on the threshold of all that is to come; therefore I were lacking in
deference did I pass her and her Scions by without due mention,--employing
no English but such as fits a theme so stately. Although she never left
the threshold, nor went to Kings Port with me, nor saw the boy, or the
girl, or any part of what befell them, she knew quite well who the boy
was. When I wrote her about him, she remembered one of his grandmothers
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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 Grimm's Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm: he crept behind him, and laid fast hold of his legs, and looked up in
his face and laughed. Then the father started, trembling with fear and
horror, and saw what it was that he had bound himself to do; but as no
gold was come, he made himself easy by thinking that it was only a
joke that the dwarf was playing him, and that, at any rate, when the
money came, he should see the bearer, and would not take it in.
About a month afterwards he went upstairs into a lumber-room to look
for some old iron, that he might sell it and raise a little money; and
there, instead of his iron, he saw a large pile of gold lying on the
floor. At the sight of this he was overjoyed, and forgetting all about
his son, went into trade again, and became a richer merchant than
Grimm's Fairy Tales |
