| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Koran: for, verily, we are true.
And if they give thee the lie, say, 'Your Lord is of ample mercy,
nor shall His violence be turned back from the sinful people.'
Those who associate others with God will say, 'Had God pleased, we
had not so associated, nor our fathers; nor should we have forbidden
aught.' Thus did they give the lie to those who came before them,
until they tasted of our violence! Say, 'Have ye any knowledge? if so,
bring it forth to us: ye only follow suspicion, and ye do but
conjecture.'
Say, 'God's is the searching argument; and had He pleased He would
have guided you all.'
The Koran |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: determined not to be. She means to take very good care of herself.
She is extremely perfect; she is as hard and clear-cut as some little
figure of a sea-nymph in an antique intaglio, and I will warrant that she
has not a grain more of sentiment or heart than if she was scooped
out of a big amethyst. You can't scratch her even with a diamond.
Extremely pretty,--really, when you know her, she is wonderfully pretty,--
intelligent, determined, ambitious, unscrupulous, capable of
looking at a man strangled without changing color, she is upon
my honor, extremely entertaining."
"It's a fine list of attractions," said Newman; "they would serve
as a police-detective's description of a favorite criminal.
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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 The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson: doubt me there: I have given proofs. Dutton I had to take,
because he knew the pass, and Grady because Dutton would not move
without him; but what call was there to carry you along? You are a
perpetual danger to me with your cursed Irish tongue. By rights
you should now be in irons in the cruiser. And you quarrel with me
like a baby for some trinkets!"
I considered this one of the most unhandsome speeches ever made;
and indeed to this day I can scarce reconcile it to my notion of a
gentleman that was my friend. I retorted upon him with his Scotch
accent, of which he had not so much as some, but enough to be very
barbarous and disgusting, as I told him plainly; and the affair
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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 Gorgias by Plato: circumstances; when we say hastily what we deliberately disapprove; when we
do in a moment of passion what upon reflection we regret; when from any
want of self-control we give another an advantage over us--we are doing not
what we will, but what we wish. All actions of which the consequences are
not weighed and foreseen, are of this impotent and paralytic sort; and the
author of them has 'the least possible power' while seeming to have the
greatest. For he is actually bringing about the reverse of what he
intended. And yet the book of nature is open to him, in which he who runs
may read if he will exercise ordinary attention; every day offers him
experiences of his own and of other men's characters, and he passes them
unheeded by. The contemplation of the consequences of actions, and the
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