| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: stick with one hand, using his toothpick with the other, and looking
about him with a certain restlessness apparently under the silence
imposed on him by circumstances.
At length the "Supper at Emmaus" was brought forward, to Wills
immense relief, for he was getting so tired of the proceedings that he
had drawn back a little and leaned his shoulder against the wall
just behind the auctioneer. He now came forward again, and his
eye caught the conspicuous stranger, who, rather to his surprise,
was staring at him markedly. But Will was immediately appealed
to by Mr. Trumbull.
"Yes, Mr. Ladislaw, yes; this interests you as a connoissURE,
Middlemarch |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Mother by Owen Wister: that this happened."
"We had been as usual talking about stocks, as we walked on the Riverside
Drive on a Sunday afternoon in May. Ethel had been for some moments
silent. 'Richard,' she finally began, 'if I had had the naming of these
things, I should never have called them securities. Insecurities comes a
great deal nearer what they are. What right has a thing that says on its
face it is worth a thousand dollars to go bobbing up and down in the way
most of them do? I think that securities is almost sarcastic. And have
you noticed the price of those Petunias?'"
"I had, of course, noticed it; but I had not mentioned it to Ethel. 'I
read the papers now,' she explained, 'morning and evening. Of course the
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: today they had hints of a long time ago; and doubtless they have
hints of other things, upon which our scientists have not yet
come. I have friends, perfectly sane and competent people, who
tell me that they can see auras, and use this ability as a means
of judging character. Shall I say that there are no auras, simply
because I do not happen to have this gift of seeing them? In the
same way, having read Gurney's "Phantasms of the Living," I am
not ready to ridicule the claim of the Yogi adepts, that they are
able to project some kind of astral body, and to communicate with
one another from distant places. But granting such occult powers
in a world of economic strife, what follows? Simply new floods of
|
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 The Heritage of the Desert by Zane Grey: He's been a father to me, and I love him."
"I think I love him, too," replied Hare, simply.
With an effort he left her at last and mounted the grassy slope and
climbed high up among the tottering yellow crags; and there he battled
with himself. Whatever the charm of Mescal's surrender, and the
insistence of his love, stern hammer-strokes of fairness, duty, honor,
beat into his brain his debt to the man who had saved him. It was a
long-drawn-out battle not to be won merely by saying right was right. He
loved Mescal, she loved him; and something born in him with his new
health, with the breath of this sage and juniper forest, with the sight
of purple canyons and silent beckoning desert, made him fiercely tena-
The Heritage of the Desert |
