| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll: Though with only one ship and one bell:
And he feared he must really decline, for his part,
Undertaking another as well.
The Beaver's best course was, no doubt, to procure
A second-hand dagger-proof coat--
So the Baker advised it-- and next, to insure
Its life in some Office of note:
This the Banker suggested, and offered for hire
(On moderate terms), or for sale,
Two excellent Policies, one Against Fire,
And one Against Damage From Hail.
 The Hunting of the Snark |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: that Jupiter isn't even a mustard-seed to - like the planet Goobra,
for instance, which you couldn't squeeze inside the orbit of
Halley's comet without straining the rivets. Tourists from Goobra
(I mean parties that lived and died there - natives) come here, now
and then, and inquire about our world, and when they find out it is
so little that a streak of lightning can flash clear around it in
the eighth of a second, they have to lean up against something to
laugh. Then they screw a glass into their eye and go to examining
us, as if we were a curious kind of foreign bug, or something of
that sort. One of them asked me how long our day was; and when I
told him it was twelve hours long, as a general thing, he asked me
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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 Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: ...the caves of the small
...essed of ingots, gold, money,
...know of the existence of this treasure, which
...lions of Roman crowns, and which he
...ck from the small
...ings have been made
...ngle in the second;
...tire to him
...ar Spada."
Faria followed him with an excited look. "and now," he said,
when he saw that Dantes had read the last line, "put the two
 The Count of Monte Cristo |
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 Misalliance by George Bernard Shaw: TARLETON. Begin with yourself, if you dont mind. Ive a good deal of
business to do still before I die. Havnt you?
THE MAN. No. Thats just it: Ive no business to do. Do you know
what my life is? I spend my days from nine to six--nine hours of
daylight and fresh air--in a stuffy little den counting another man's
money. Ive an intellect: a mind and a brain and a soul; and the use
he makes of them is to fix them on his tuppences and his
eighteenpences and his two pound seventeen and tenpences and see how
much they come to at the end of the day and take care that no one
steals them. I enter and enter, and add and add, and take money and
give change, and fill cheques and stamp receipts; and not a penny of
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