| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott: was convinced the Marquis of A---- had as sincere intentions
towards the public as himself or any man; and if, upon a
conference, they could have agreed upon the measures by which it
was to be pursued, his experience and his interest should have
gone to support the present administration. Upon the engagement
betwixt Ravenswood and his daughter, he spoke in a dry and
confused manner. He regretted so premature a step as the
engagement of the young people should have been taken, and
conjured the Master to remember he had never given any
encouragement thereunto; and observed that, as a transaction
inter minores, and without concurrence of his daughter's
The Bride of Lammermoor |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, etc. by Oscar Wilde: in the morning to Scotland Yard for some detectives to be sent down
immediately. Just as they were passing out of the dining-room,
midnight began to boom from the clock tower, and when the last
stroke sounded they heard a crash and a sudden shrill cry; a
dreadful peal of thunder shook the house, a strain of unearthly
music floated through the air, a panel at the top of the staircase
flew back with a loud noise, and out on the landing, looking very
pale and white, with a little casket in her hand, stepped Virginia.
In a moment they had all rushed up to her. Mrs. Otis clasped her
passionately in her arms, the Duke smothered her with violent
kisses, and the twins executed a wild war-dance round the group.
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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 Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: "I am so! Our pastor says I sustain him in the faith!"
"I'll bet you do! With Paul's money! But just to show you how liberal I am,
I'm going to send a check for ten bucks to this Beecher Ingram, because a lot
of fellows are saying the poor cuss preaches sedition and free love, and
they're trying to run him out of town."
"And they're right! They ought to run him out of town! Why, he preaches--if
you can call it preaching--in a theater, in the House of Satan! You don't
know what it is to find God, to find peace, to behold the snares that the
devil spreads out for our feet. Oh, I'm so glad to see the mysterious
purposes of God in having Paul harm me and stop my wickedness--and Paul's
getting his, good and plenty, for the cruel things he did to me, and I hope he
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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 Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: The hold was now almost entirely emptied; the mats (of which
there went forty to the short ton) had been stacked on deck, and
now crowded the ship's waist and forecastle. It was our task to
disembowel and explore six thousand individual mats, and
incidentally to destroy a hundred and fifty tons of valuable
food. Nor were the circumstances of the day's business less
strange than its essential nature. Each man of us, armed with a
great knife, attacked the pile from his own quarter, slashed into
the nearest mat, burrowed in it with his hands, and shed forth
the rice upon the deck, where it heaped up, overflowed, and
was trodden down, poured at last into the scuppers, and
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