| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by L. Frank Baum: "I've tried to eat a lot while I had the chance," said he, "for it's
likely to be a long while between meals in this strange country. But
I'm ready to go, now, at any time you wish."
So, after the Wizard had put the piglets back into his inside pocket,
where they cuddled up and went to sleep, the three climbed into the
buggy and Jim started back to the town.
"Where shall we stay?" asked the girl.
"I think I shall take possession of the House of the Sorcerer,"
replied the Wizard; "for the Prince said in the presence of his people
that he would keep me until they picked another Sorcerer, and the new
Princess won't know but that we belong there."
Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: STRANGER: There is not; but the Sophist will deny these statements. And
indeed how can any rational man assent to them, when the very expressions
which we have just used were before acknowledged by us to be unutterable,
unspeakable, indescribable, unthinkable? Do you see his point, Theaetetus?
THEAETETUS: Of course he will say that we are contradicting ourselves when
we hazard the assertion, that falsehood exists in opinion and in words; for
in maintaining this, we are compelled over and over again to assert being
of not-being, which we admitted just now to be an utter impossibility.
STRANGER: How well you remember! And now it is high time to hold a
consultation as to what we ought to do about the Sophist; for if we persist
in looking for him in the class of false workers and magicians, you see
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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 Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: direction without fixing it anywhere; a man who could do everything
because he willed everything; a prodigious phenomenon of will,
conquering an illness by a battle, and yet doomed to die of disease in
bed after living in the midst of ball and bullets; a man with a code
and a sword in his brain, word and deed; a clear-sighted spirit that
foresaw everything but his own fall; a capricious politician who
risked men by handfuls out of economy, and who spared three heads--
those of Talleyrand, of Pozzo de Borgo, and of Metternich,
diplomatists whose death would have saved the French Empire, and who
seemed to him of greater weight than thousands of soldiers; a man to
whom nature, as a rare privilege, had given a heart in a frame of
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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 Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: persons who have prayed for offspring, and when their prayers were heard,
have fallen into the greatest pains and sufferings. For some have begotten
children who were utterly bad, and have therefore passed all their days in
misery, while the parents of good children have undergone the misfortune of
losing them, and have been so little happier than the others that they
would have preferred never to have had children rather than to have had
them and lost them. And yet, although these and the like examples are
manifest and known of all, it is rare to find any one who has refused what
has been offered him, or, if he were likely to gain aught by prayer, has
refrained from making his petition. The mass of mankind would not decline
to accept a tyranny, or the command of an army, or any of the numerous
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