| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: highly respected Alabama family. Being a slave owner and
like other slave owners a politician, he was naturally an
original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern
cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature, which it is
unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking
service with that gallant army which had fought the
disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth, and he
chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the
release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the
opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt,
would come, as it comes to all in wartime. Meanwhile he
 An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
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 Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs: The wildest beast that roams our waste places lairs in the
frozen north or the frozen south within a government
reserve, where the curious may view him and feed him bread
crusts from the hand with perfect impunity.
But beyond thirty! And I have gone there, and come back;
and now you may go there, for no longer is it high treason,
punishable by disgrace or death, to cross 30d or 175d.
My name is Jefferson Turck. I am a lieutenant in the navy--
in the great Pan-American navy, the only navy which now
exists in all the world.
I was born in Arizona, in the United States of North
 Lost Continent |