| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: again and she knew with a sinking heart that he had not been
thinking about starving. They were always like two people talking
to each other in different languages. But she loved him so much
that, when he withdrew as he had now done, it was like the warm sun
going down and leaving her in chilly twilight dews. She wanted to
catch him by the shoulders and hug him to her, make him realize
that she was flesh and blood and not something he had read or
dreamed. If she could only feel that sense of oneness with him for
which she had yearned since that day, so long ago, when he had come
home from Europe and stood on the steps of Tara and smiled up at
her.
Gone With the Wind |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson: O Bedivere, for on my heart hath fallen
Confusion, till I know not what I am,
Nor whence I am, nor whether I be King.
Behold, I seem but King among the dead.'
Then spake the bold Sir Bedivere: 'My King,
King everywhere! and so the dead have kings,
There also will I worship thee as King.
Yet still thy life is whole, and still I live
Who love thee; but who hates thee, he that brought
The heathen back among us, yonder stands,
Modred, unharmed, the traitor of thine house.'
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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 A Princess of Parms by Edgar Rice Burroughs: yourself, told me that these great brutes, by the uncertainty
of their tempers, often were the means of turning victory
into defeat, since, at a crucial moment, they might elect
to unseat and rend their riders."
"Show me how you accomplish these results," was Tars Tarkas'
only rejoinder.
And so I explained as carefully as I could the entire
method of training I had adopted with my beasts, and later
he had me repeat it before Lorquas Ptomel and the assembled
warriors. That moment marked the beginning of a new existence
for the poor thoats, and before I left the community of
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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 Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: of consent to his modest request, which caused him to lose his
countenance, and his mouth broke up into dimples.
"How did you do it?" asked Dunois, "to keep a grave face before six
thousand crowns?"
"Oh, my lord, I thought first of one of my cases which is tried
tomorrow, and secondly, of my wife who is a sorry plague."
The desire to gain this good round sum made them try again, and the
king amused himself for about an hour at the expression of these
faces, the preparations, jokes, grimaces, and other monkey's
paternosters that they performed; but they were bailing their boats
with a sieve, and for men who preferred closing their fists to opening
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
