| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: They sat under a shelving rock, on the surface of which were still visible
some old Bushman paintings, their red and black pigments having been
preserved through long years from wind and rain by the overhanging ledge;
grotesque oxen, elephants, rhinoceroses, and a one-horned beast, such as no
man ever has seen or ever shall.
The girls sat with their backs to the paintings. In their laps were a few
fern and ice-plant leaves, which by dint of much searching they had
gathered under the rocks.
Em took off her big brown kapje and began vigorously to fan her red face
with it; but her companion bent low over the leaves in her lap, and at last
took up an ice-plant leaf and fastened it on to the front of her blue
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: increasing on itself by leaps and bounds.
A heavy European drift to the New World has gone on and is going
on; yet Europe, whose population a century ago was 170,000,000,
has to-day 500,000,000. At this rate of increase, provided that
subsistence is not overtaken, a century from now the population of
Europe will be 1,500,000,000. And be it noted of the present rate
of increase in the United States that only one-third is due to
immigration, while two-thirds is due to excess of births over
deaths. And at this present rate of increase, the population of
the United States will be 500,000,000 in less than a century from
now.
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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 Paradise Lost by John Milton: Rocks, waters, woods, and by the shaggy tops
Up-lifting bore them in their hands: Amaze,
Be sure, and terrour, seized the rebel host,
When coming towards them so dread they saw
The bottom of the mountains upward turned;
Till on those cursed engines' triple-row
They saw them whelmed, and all their confidence
Under the weight of mountains buried deep;
Themselves invaded next, and on their heads
Main promontories flung, which in the air
Came shadowing, and oppressed whole legions armed;
Paradise Lost |
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 Lesson of the Master by Henry James: but not a locked door. Now he seemed to see the door quite slammed
in his face. Did he expect her to wait - was she to give him his
time like that: two years at a stretch? He didn't know what he
had expected - he only knew what he hadn't. It wasn't this - it
wasn't this. Mystification bitterness and wrath rose and boiled in
him when he thought of the deference, the devotion, the credulity
with which he had listened to St. George. The evening wore on and
the light was long; but even when it had darkened he remained
without a lamp. He had flung himself on the sofa, where he lay
through the hours with his eyes either closed or gazing at the
gloom, in the attitude of a man teaching himself to bear something,
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