| 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: shawl. They went to fetch her, but she would not come until she chose.
When she did, she had gone to bed and had not risen again from it; never
would, the doctor said.
She was very patient, poor thing. When you went in to ask her how she was
she said always "Better," or "Nearly well!" and lay still in the darkened
room, and never troubled any one. The Mozambiquer took care of her, and
she would not allow any one else to touch her; would not so much as allow
any one else to see her foot uncovered. She was strange in many ways, but
she paid well, poor thing; and now the Mozambiquer was going, and she would
have to take up with some one else.
The landlady prattled on pleasantly, and now carried away the tray with the
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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 Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: not for that there would be more of the First Born than all
the creatures of Barsoom could support, for in so far as I
know none of us ever dies a natural death. Our females
would live for ever but for the fact that we tire of them
and remove them to make place for others. Issus alone of all
is protected against death. She has lived for countless ages."
"Would not the other Barsoomians live for ever but for the doctrine
of the voluntary pilgrimage which drags them to the bosom of Iss
at or before their thousandth year?" I asked him.
"I feel now that there is no doubt but that they are precisely
the same species of creature as the First Born, and I hope that
The Gods of Mars |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: On his quarry in the desert,
On the sick or wounded bison,
But another vulture, watching
From his high aerial look-out,
Sees the downward plunge, and follows;
And a third pursues the second,
Coming from the invisible ether,
First a speck, and then a vulture,
Till the air is dark with pinions.
So disasters come not singly;
But as if they watched and waited,
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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 In the Cage by Henry James: identify or notice her. His original attention had not, she
instinctively knew, been for the young woman at Cocker's; it had
only been for any young woman who might advance to the tune of her
not troubling the quiet air, and in fact the poetic hour, with
ugliness. Ah but then, and just as she had reached the door, came
his second observation, a long light reach with which, visibly and
quite amusedly, he recalled and placed her. They were on different
sides, but the street, narrow and still, had only made more of a
stage for the small momentary drama. It was not over, besides, it
was far from over, even on his sending across the way, with the
pleasantest laugh she had ever heard, a little lift of his hat and
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