| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Chinese Boy and Girl by Isaac Taylor Headland: upon the dust of the earth.
"When the time for the battle came, he called upon the
Chief of the Wind and the Master of the Rain to assist him,
and there arose a great tempest. But the Chief sent the
Daughter of Heaven to quell the storm, and then seized and
slew the rebel. His spirit ascended to the Fire-Star (Mars)
--the embodiment of which he was while upon earth,--
where it resides and influences the conduct of warfare even
to the present time."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: when the church-folds and clergy were safe in church at the services.
One evening in April in the year 1308, Tirechair came home in a
remarkably bad temper. For three days past everything had been in good
order on the King's highway. Now, as an officer of the peace, nothing
annoyed him so much as to feel himself useless. He flung down his
halbert in a rage, muttered inarticulate words as he pulled off his
doublet, half red and half blue, and slipped on a shabby camlet
jerkin. After helping himself from the bread-box to a hunch of bread,
and spreading it with butter, he seated himself on a bench, looked
round at his four whitewashed walls, counted the beams of the ceiling,
made a mental inventory of the household goods hanging from the nails,
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