| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Reign of King Edward the Third by William Shakespeare: Play, spend, give, riot, waste, do what thou wilt,
So thou wilt hence awhile and leave me here.
[Exit Lodowick.]
Now, my soul's playfellow, art thou come
To speak the more than heavenly word of yea
To my objection in thy beauteous love?
COUNTESS.
My father on his blessing hath commanded--
KING EDWARD.
That thou shalt yield to me?
COUNTESS.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: above this house, I saw that his breast and arms were scored with
long white scars, and asked him what had caused them. I remember
well how his face changed as I spoke, from kindliness to the hue of
blackest hate, and how he answered speaking to himself rather than
to me.
'Devils,' he said, 'devils set on their work by the chief of all
devils that live upon the earth and shall reign in hell. Hark you,
my son Thomas, there is a country called Spain where your mother
was born, and there these devils abide who torture men and women,
aye, and burn them living in the name of Christ. I was betrayed
into their hands by him whom I name the chief of the devils, though
Montezuma's Daughter |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: the good in preference to the bad, and, rejecting what is vulgar
and discordant, to follow by fine instinctive taste all that
possesses grace and charm and loveliness. Ultimately, in its due
course, this taste is to become critical and self-conscious, but at
first it is to exist purely as a cultivated instinct, and 'he who
has received this true culture of the inner man will with clear and
certain vision perceive the omissions and faults in art or nature,
and with a taste that cannot err, while he praises, and finds his
pleasure in what is good, and receives it into his soul, and so
becomes good and noble, he will rightly blame and hate the bad, now
in the days of his youth, even before he is able to know the reason
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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 Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: of bed and missing, and had begun a search.
"'Sleep-walking,' said the doctor.
"All of us went back to the house, and the doctor told us some
remarkable stories about the strange things people had done while in
that condition. I was feeling rather chilly after my trip out, and, as
my wife was out of the room at the time, I pulled open the door of an
old wardrobe that stood in the room and dragged out a big quilt I had
seen in there. With it tumbled out the bag of money for stealing which
Bob was to be tried--and convicted--in the morning.
"'How the jumping rattlesnakes did that get there?' I yelled, and all
hands must have seen how surprised I was. Bob knew in a flash.
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