| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Case of the Golden Bullet by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: more than other people see, even if it does bring you into disfavour
with the Powers that Be?"
"Then you don't believe me yet?"
"You mean about the beautiful Mrs. Kniepp?
"And yet I tell you I am right. It was an intentional suicide."
"Muller, Muller, you must keep better watch over your imagination
and your tongue! It is a dangerous thing to spread rumours about
persons high in favor with the Arch-duke. But you had better tell
me what you think about this affair," continued the doctor,
pointing back towards the room they had just left.
"There's a woman in the case."
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: found half his grain devoured. Thousands of mice-marks and rat-marks
scattered about showed a second cause of ruin. The church was a
Noah's-ark. But anger turned the Spaniard white as a bit of cambric
when, trying to estimate the extent of the destruction and his
consequence losses, he noticed that the grain at the bottom of the
heap, near the floor, was sprouting from the effects of water, which
Max had managed to introduce by means of tin tubes into the very
centre of the pile of wheat. The pigeons and the rats could be
explained by animal instinct; but the hand of man was plainly visible
in this last sign of malignity.
Fario sat down on the steps of a chapel altar, holding his head
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: and she was too honest a woman to marry one and keep an irresistible
passion for the other in her heart. To remain unmarried, to weary her
cousins' love by no decision, and then to take the one who was
faithful to her in spite of her caprices, was a solution of the
difficulty not so much sought for by her as vaguely admitted. As she
fell asleep that night she told herself the wisest course to follow
was to let things take their chance. Chance is, in love, the
providence of women.
The next morning Michu went to Paris, whence he returned a few days
later with four fine horses for his new masters. In six weeks' time
the hunting would begin, and the young countess sagely reflected that
|
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 Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: "Well, in the following autumn the woodcock were very plentiful,
and as my gout had left me for a time, I dragged myself as far as
the forest. I had already killed four or five of the long-billed
birds, when I knocked over one which fell into a ditch full of
branches, and I was obliged to get into it, in order to pick it
up, and I found that it had fallen close to a dead, human body.
Immediately the recollection of the mad woman struck me like a
blow in the chest. Many other people had perhaps died in the wood
during that disastrous year, but though I do not know why, I was
sure, sure, I tell you, that I should see the head of that
wretched maniac.
|
