| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: questions, but I would not talk to them, and finally my captor
announced that he would lead me back to my cell.
An officer ordered several other warriors to accompany him,
and a moment later we were retracing the way I had just come.
My friend walked close beside me, asking many silly questions
about the country from which I had come, until finally his
fellows paid no further attention to him or his gabbling.
Gradually, as he spoke, he lowered his voice, so that presently he was
able to converse with me in a low tone without attracting attention.
The Warlord of Mars |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: kill."
"Have you much with you?"
"No, not much," said the wary Italian, "only my winnings. But they
would make a pretty fortune for a beggar and turn him into an honest
man for the rest of his life."
Diard led the marquis along a lonely street where he remembered to
have seen a house, the door of which was at the end of an avenue of
trees with high and gloomy walls on either side of it. When they
reached this spot he coolly invited the marquis to precede him; but as
if the latter understood him he preferred to keep at his side. Then,
no sooner were they fairly in the avenue, then Diard, with the agility
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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 Lysis by Plato: friends, or for not revealing some secret of their lives; (in friendship
too there must be reserves;) they do not intrude upon one another, and they
mutually rejoice in any good which happens to either of them, though it may
be to the loss of the other. They may live apart and have little
intercourse, but when they meet, the old tie is as strong as ever--
according to the common saying, they find one another always the same. The
greatest good of friendship is not daily intercourse, for circumstances
rarely admit of this; but on the great occasions of life, when the advice
of a friend is needed, then the word spoken in season about conduct, about
health, about marriage, about business,--the letter written from a distance
by a disinterested person who sees with clearer eyes may be of inestimable
Lysis |
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 Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: cognisance of themselves. The particulars of that matter will not be
set forth in documentary form, but only through process of myself
acting as plaintiff and petitioner, and producing none but ocular
evidence."
Among the throng of tchinovniks some one gave a start, and thereby
caused others of the more apprehensive sort to fall to trembling in
their shoes.
"Without saying does it go that the prime conspirators ought to
undergo deprivation of rank and property, and that the remainder ought
to be dismissed from their posts; for though that course would cause a
certain proportion of the innocent to suffer with the guilty, there
Dead Souls |
