| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: at all give a good idea of the appearance of the head and beak
when fresh; the latter becoming hard and contracted. [5]
20th. -- A long day's ride to Bathurst. Before joining the
highroad we followed a mere path through the forest; and
the country, with the exception of a few squatters' huts, was
very solitary. We experienced this day the sirocco-like wind
of Australia, which comes from the parched deserts of the
interior. Clouds of dust were travelling in every direction;
and the wind felt as if it had passed over a fire. I afterwards
heard that the thermometer out of doors had stood at
119 degs., and in a closed room at 96 degs. In the afternoon we
The Voyage of the Beagle |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: Mr. Casaubon, as might be expected, spent a great deal of his time
at the Grange in these weeks, and the hindrance which courtship
occasioned to the progress of his great work--the Key to all
Mythologies--naturally made him look forward the more eagerly
to the happy termination of courtship. But he had deliberately
incurred the hindrance, having made up his mind that it was now time
for him to adorn his life with the graces of female companionship,
to irradiate the gloom which fatigue was apt to hang over the intervals
of studious labor with the play of female fancy, and to secure in this,
his culminating age, the solace of female tendance for his declining years.
Hence he determined to abandon himself to the stream of feeling,
Middlemarch |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: of the baleful green eyes following through the darkness.
Numa did not roar now--instead, he moved stealthily,
like the shadow of a great cat; but yet he took no step
that did not reach the sensitive ears of the ape-man.
Tarzan wondered if he would stalk him to his cabin door.
He hoped not, for that would mean a night's sleep curled in
the crotch of a tree, and he much preferred the bed of
grasses within his own abode. But he knew just the tree
and the most comfortable crotch, if necessity demanded that
he sleep out. A hundred times in the past some great jungle
cat had followed him home, and compelled him to seek shelter
The Return of Tarzan |
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 Walden by Henry David Thoreau: highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its
details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and
critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry
information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how
this might be done.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to
front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn
what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I
had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is
so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite
necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of
Walden |
