| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: "Revelations," a well-known mystical authority, consist mainly of
proofs of Christ's partiality for her undeserving person.
Assurances of his love, intimacies and caresses and compliments
of the most absurd and puerile sort, addressed by Christ to
Gertrude as an individual, form the tissue of this paltry-minded
recital.[205] In reading such a narrative, we realize the gap
between the thirteenth and the twentieth century, and we feel
that saintliness of character may yield almost absolutely
worthless fruits if it be associated with such inferior
intellectual sympathies. What with science, idealism, and
democracy, our own imagination has grown to need a God of an
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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 Door in the Wall, et. al. by H. G. Wells: course, there'd be no way of getting fuel into the thing. Every
now and then the cone dips, and out comes the flare."
"I see," said Raut. He looked over his shoulder. "The moon
gets brighter," he said.
"Come along," said Horrocks abruptly, gripping his shoulder
again, and moving him suddenly towards the railway crossing. And
then came one of those swift incidents, vivid, but so rapid that
they leave one doubtful and reeling. Halfway across, Horrocks'
hand suddenly clenched upon him like a vice, and swung him backward
and through a half-turn, so that he looked up the line. And there
a chain of lamp-lit carriage-windows telescoped swiftly as it came
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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 Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs: launch while I walked a hundred yards ahead, in the hope of
bagging something further for our larder.
We had covered about half the distance to the river, when I
suddenly came face to face with a man. He was as primitive
and uncouth in appearance as the Grabritins--a shaggy,
unkempt savage, clothed in a shirt of skin cured with the
head on, the latter surmounting his own head to form a
bonnet, and giving to him a most fearful and ferocious
aspect.
The fellow was armed with a long spear and a club, the
latter dangling down his back from a leathern thong about
Lost Continent |
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 Stories From the Old Attic by Robert Harris: to be walking by just as the man tossed a shovel full down the road
the opposite way the man used to drive in and out. "I see you
aren't messing up the part of the road you use," sneered the neighbor.
A few minutes later another neighbor happened by and saw the
man toss a shovel full of gravel down the other part of the road. "I
see you are fixing only the part of the road you use, and not the
part others must use," sneered the second neighbor.
The shoveler stood still with a shovel full of gravel as the
second man left. Now unsure of what to do with it that would be
agreeable to his neighbors, he decided simply to dump it out onto
his driveway on the very spot whence he had scooped it up. Just as
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