| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: turning their eyes towards me, as it were to watch that I might
not escape. I was amazed to see such actions and behaviour in
brute beasts; and concluded with myself, that if the inhabitants
of this country were endued with a proportionable degree of
reason, they must needs be the wisest people upon earth. This
thought gave me so much comfort, that I resolved to go forward,
until I could discover some house or village, or meet with any of
the natives, leaving the two horses to discourse together as they
pleased. But the first, who was a dapple gray, observing me to
steal off, neighed after me in so expressive a tone, that I
fancied myself to understand what he meant; whereupon I turned
Gulliver's Travels |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Desert Gold by Zane Grey: the clumps of cacti. The desert seemed all of a sameness to
Dick--a wilderness of rocks and jagged growths hemmed in by
lowering ranges, always looking close, yet never growing any nearer.
The moon slanted back toward the west, losing its white radiance,
and the gloom of the earlier evening began to creep into the washes
and to darken under the mesas. By and by Ladd entered an arroyo,
and here the travelers turned and twisted with the meanderings
of a dry stream bed. At the head of a canyon they had to take
once more to the rougher ground. Always it led down, always it
grew rougher, more rolling, with wider bare spaces, always the
black ranges loomed close.
Desert Gold |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence: She went upstairs as soon as possible, and went to bed quite early. But
at half past nine she got up, and went outside to listen. There was no
sound. She slipped on a dressing-gown and went downstairs. Clifford and
Mrs Bolton were playing cards, gambling. They would probably go on
until midnight.
Connie returned to her room, threw her pyjamas on the tossed bed, put
on a thin tennis-dress and over that a woollen day-dress, put on rubber
tennis-shoes, and then a light coat. And she was ready. If she met
anybody, she was just going out for a few minutes. And in the morning,
when she came in again, she would just have been for a little walk in
the dew, as she fairly often did before breakfast. For the rest, the
Lady Chatterley's Lover |
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 Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: was so unlucky as to pay some attention to a young lady with whom he
danced at a ridotto, the provincial name for the entertainments often
given by the military to the townsfolk, or vice versa, in garrison
towns. A scheme for inveigling the gallant captain into matrimony was
immediately set on foot, one of those schemes by which mothers secure
accomplices in a human heart by touching all its motive springs, while
they convert all their friends into fellow-conspirators. Like all
people possessed by one idea, these ladies press everything into the
service of their great project, slowly elaborating their toils, much
as the ant-lion excavates its funnel in the sand and lies in wait at
the bottom for its victim. Suppose that no one strays, after all, into
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