| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: asked herself what this force driving through her life arose from.
She thought of no result any more than a tree perpetually pressed
downwards by the wind considers the result of being pressed downwards
by the wind.
During the two or three weeks which had passed since their walk,
half a dozen notes from him had accumulated in her drawer. She would
read them, and spend the whole morning in a daze of happiness;
the sunny land outside the window being no less capable of analysing
its own colour and heat than she was of analysing hers. In these moods
she found it impossible to read or play the piano, even to move being
beyond her inclination. The time passed without her noticing it.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Men of Iron by Howard Pyle: pathetic contrast between the grim, steadfast impassiveness of
the tough old warrior and Myles's passionate exuberance of youth.
At the head of the party rode the Earl and his brother side by
side, each clad cap-a-pie in a suit of Milan armor, the cuirass
of each covered with a velvet juppon embroidered in silver with
the arms and quarterings of the Beaumonts. The Earl wore around
his neck an "S S" collar, with a jewelled St. George hanging from
it, and upon his head a vizored bascinet, ornamented with a
wreath covered with black and yellow velvet and glistening with
jewels.
Lord George, as was said before, was clad in a beautiful suit of
Men of Iron |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: some drunken excess. Is that all of their lives?--of the
portion given to them and these their duplicates swarming the
streets to-day?--nothing beneath?--all? So many a political
reformer will tell you,--and many a private reformer, too, who
has gone among them with a heart tender with Christ's charity,
and come out outraged, hardened.
One rainy night, about eleven o'clock, a crowd of half-clothed
women stopped outside of the cellar-door. They were going home
from the cotton-mill.
"Good-night, Deb," said one, a mulatto, steadying herself
against the gas-post. She needed the post to steady her. So
Life in the Iron-Mills |
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 Land of Footprints by Stewart Edward White: barking of zebra, or to feel the vibrations of many hoofs. There
is a sense of hurried, flurried uneasiness abroad on the veldt.
The lion generally springs on his prey from behind or a little
off the quarter. By the impetus his own weight he hurls his
victim forward, doubling its head under, and very neatly breaking
its neck. I have never seen this done, but the process has been
well observed and attested; and certainly, of the many hundreds
of lion kills I have taken the pains to inspect, the majority had
had their necks broken. Sometimes, but apparently more rarely,
the lion kills its prey by a bite in the back of the neck. I have
seen zebra killed in this fashion, but never any of the buck. It
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