| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Anabasis by Xenophon: and was exiled from Athens. Sparta gave him land
and property in Scillus, where he lived for many
years before having to move once more, to settle
in Corinth. He died in 354 B.C.
The Anabasis is his story of the march to Persia
to aid Cyrus, who enlisted Greek help to try and
take the throne from Artaxerxes, and the ensuing
return of the Greeks, in which Xenophon played a
leading role. This occurred between 401 B.C. and
March 399 B.C.
PREPARER'S NOTE
Anabasis |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: way from the days when powdered heads were plentiful in
these alleys, with jolly, port-wine faces underneath.
Even in the chief thoroughfares Irish washings flutter at
the windows, and the pavements are encumbered with
loiterers.
These loiterers are a true character of the scene.
Some shrewd Scotch workmen may have paused on their way
to a job, debating Church affairs and politics with their
tools upon their arm. But the most part are of a
different order - skulking jail-birds; unkempt, bare-foot
children; big-mouthed, robust women, in a sort of uniform
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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 White Moll by Frank L. Packard: transformed into some motionless, inanimate thing, his fingers still
gripping at another sheaf of banknotes that he had been in the act
of scooping out from the narrow aperture.
And then again Rhoda Gray stared, and stared now as though bereft
of her senses; and upon her crept, cold and deadly, a fear and a
terror that seemed to engulf her very soul itself. That head that
looked like a jack-in-the-box was gone; the gray beard seemed
suddenly to be shorn away, and the gray hair too, and to fall and
flutter to the table, and the bent shoulders were not bent any more,
and it wasn't Nicky Viner at all - only a clever, a wonderfully
clever, impersonation that had been helped out by the poor and
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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 The Riverman by Stewart Edward White: the limited illumination cast downward by the lamp beneath its wide
shade, the graceful, white figure against the shadow of the easy
chair, the oval face cut in half by the lamplight to show plainly
the red lips with the quaint upward quirks at the corners, and dimly
the inscrutable eyes and the hair with the soft shadows. With a
sigh he fell asleep.
Some time in the night he was awakened by a persistent tapping on
the door. In the woodsman's manner, he was instantly broad awake.
He lit the gas and opened the door to admit Newmark, partially
dressed over his night gown.
"Orde," said he briefly and without preliminary, "didn't you tell me
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