| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: gilt mouldings, in which he had so often hidden himself as a boy.
There the satinwood book-case filled with his dog-eared schoolbooks.
On the wall behind it was hanging the same ragged Flemish tapestry
where a faded king and queen were playing chess in a garden,
while a company of hawkers rode by, carrying hooded birds on their
gauntleted wrists. How well he remembered it all! Every moment
of his lonely childhood came back to him as he looked round.
He recalled the stainless purity of his boyish life, and it seemed horrible
to him that it was here the fatal portrait was to be hidden away.
How little he had thought, in those dead days, of all that was in store
for him!
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Mistress Wilding by Rafael Sabatini: JUSTICE
It has fallen to my lot in the course of this veridical chronicle of Mr.
Anthony Wilding's connection with the Rebellion in the West, and of his
wedding and post-nuptial winning of Ruth Westmacott, to relate certain
matters of incident and personality that may be accounted strange. But
the strangest yet remains to be related. For in spite of all that had
passed between Sir Rowland Blake and the Westmacotts on that memorable
night of Sunday to Monday, on which the battle of Sedgemoor was lost and
won, towards the end of that same month of July we find him not only
back at Lupton House, but once again the avowed suitor of Mr. Wilding's
widow. For effrontery this is a matter of which it is to be doubted
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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 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: I, who had a subtle game to play, had nothing now to do but
to single out from them all the properest man that might be
for my purpose; that is to say, the man who was most likely
to depend upon the hearsay of a fortune, and not inquire too
far into the particulars; and unless I did this I did nothing, for
my case would not bear much inquiry.
I picked out my man without much difficulty, by the judgment
I made of his way of courting me. I had let him run on with
his protestations and oaths that he loved me above all the world;
that if I would make him happy, that was enough; all which I
knew was upon supposition, nay, it was upon a full satisfaction,
Moll Flanders |
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 Proposed Roads To Freedom by Bertrand Russell: possibility of our system.
[61] See the discussion of this question in the preceding chapter.
The question of the number of hours of work
necessary to produce general material comfort is
partly technical, partly one of organization. We
may assume that there would no longer be unproductive
labor spent on armaments, national defense,
advertisements, costly luxuries for the very rich, or
any of the other futilities incidental to our competitive
system. If each industrial guild secured for a term of
years the advantages, or part of the advantages, of
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