| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: O-Mai the Cruel.
Suddenly Tara, who stood close beside him, clutched his arm and
pointed toward a far corner of the room. Gahan looked and looking
felt the hairs upon his neck rising. He threw his left arm about
the girl and with bared sword stood between her and the hangings
that they watched, and then slowly Gahan of Gathol backed away,
for in this grim and somber chamber, which no human foot had trod
for five thousand years and to which no breath of wind might
enter, the heavy hangings in the far corner had moved. Not gently
had they moved as a draught might have moved them had there been
a draught, but suddenly they had bulged out as though pushed
The Chessmen of Mars |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Old Indian Legends by Zitkala-Sa: "Ah, but after he has killed the red eagle he will seem
handsome enough!" answered the chieftain.
That night the star men in their burial procession in the sky
reached the low northern horizon, before the center fires within
the teepees had flickered out. The ringing laughter which had
floated up through the smoke lapels was now hushed, and only the
distant howling of wolves broke the quiet of the village. But the
lull between midnight and dawn was short indeed. Very early the
oval-shaped door-flaps were thrust aside and many brown faces
peered out of the wigwams toward the top of the highest bluff.
Now the sun rose up out of the east. The red painted avenger
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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 Cratylus by Plato: intended--so well did he know how to give the letters names.
HERMOGENES: I believe you are right.
SOCRATES: And may not the same be said of a king? a king will often be the
son of a king, the good son or the noble son of a good or noble sire; and
similarly the offspring of every kind, in the regular course of nature, is
like the parent, and therefore has the same name. Yet the syllables may be
disguised until they appear different to the ignorant person, and he may
not recognize them, although they are the same, just as any one of us would
not recognize the same drugs under different disguises of colour and smell,
although to the physician, who regards the power of them, they are the
same, and he is not put out by the addition; and in like manner the
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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 The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: industry necessary for the making money is also very demoralising.
In a community like ours, where property confers immense
distinction, social position, honour, respect, titles, and other
pleasant things of the kind, man, being naturally ambitious, makes
it his aim to accumulate this property, and goes on wearily and
tediously accumulating it long after he has got far more than he
wants, or can use, or enjoy, or perhaps even know of. Man will
kill himself by overwork in order to secure property, and really,
considering the enormous advantages that property brings, one is
hardly surprised. One's regret is that society should be
constructed on such a basis that man has been forced into a groove
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