| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay: preserve them both."
"It won't take me long to decide. Digrung, I gave you a last chance
to change your mind."
"As long as it's in my power I shall go on, and warn my sister
against her criminal friends."
Maskull again clutched at him, but this time with violence.
Instructed in his actions by some new and horrible instinct, he
pressed the young man tightly to his body with all three arms. A
feeling of wild, sweet delight immediately passed through him. Then
for the first time he comprehended the triumphant joys of
"absorbing." It satisfied the hunger of the will, exactly as food
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne: disposal, so that he was able to vary our bill of fare now and then.
For dessert he gave us a few cups of coffee, and never was coffee so
delicious.
"Now," said my uncle, "now is the time for high tide, and we must not
lose the opportunity to study this phenomenon."
"What! the tide!" I cried. "Can the influence of the sun and moon be
felt down here?"
"Why not? Are not all bodies subject throughout their mass to the
power of universal attraction? This mass of water cannot escape the
general law. And in spite of the heavy atmospheric pressure on the
surface, you will see it rise like the Atlantic itself."
Journey to the Center of the Earth |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: Queen's Navee. When all have betted, one of the party begins
to strip the pine-apple head, and the person whose guess is
furthest out has to pay for the sherry. My equanimity was
disturbed by shouts of THE AMERICAN COMMODORE, and I found
that Austin had entered and lost about a bottle of sherry!
He turned with great composure and addressed me. 'I am
afraid I must look to you, Uncle Louis.' The Sunday School
racket is only an experiment which I took up at the request
of the late American Land Commissioner; I am trying it for a
month, and if I do as ill as I believe, and the boys find it
only half as tedious as I do, I think it will end in a month.
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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 Critias by Plato: cisterns, some open to the heaven, others roofed over, to be used in winter
as warm baths; there were the kings' baths, and the baths of private
persons, which were kept apart; and there were separate baths for women,
and for horses and cattle, and to each of them they gave as much adornment
as was suitable. Of the water which ran off they carried some to the grove
of Poseidon, where were growing all manner of trees of wonderful height and
beauty, owing to the excellence of the soil, while the remainder was
conveyed by aqueducts along the bridges to the outer circles; and there
were many temples built and dedicated to many gods; also gardens and places
of exercise, some for men, and others for horses in both of the two islands
formed by the zones; and in the centre of the larger of the two there was
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