| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Iliad by Homer: him, with a cry as of death and with his keen blade drawn, and
Aeneas seized a great stone, so huge that two men, as men now
are, would be unable to lift it, but Aeneas wielded it quite
easily.
Aeneas would then have struck Achilles as he was springing
towards him, either on the helmet, or on the shield that covered
him, and Achilles would have closed with him and despatched him
with his sword, had not Neptune lord of the earthquake been quick
to mark, and said forthwith to the immortals, "Alas, I am sorry
for great Aeneas, who will now go down to the house of Hades,
vanquished by the son of Peleus. Fool that he was to give ear to
The Iliad |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: "You wait till you get married, my dear," said
her only friend, drawing closer to the fence.
"Harry will get you one."
His hopeful craze seemed to mock her own want
of hope with so bitter an aptness that in her ner-
vous irritation she could have screamed at him out-
right. But she only said in self-mockery, and
speaking to him as though he had been sane,
"Why, Captain Hagberd, your son may not even
want to look at me."
He flung his head back and laughed his throaty
To-morrow |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: would unhinge his whole family, and be next to an undoing
him in the world; that therefore I ought not to desire it of him,
and that no wife in the world that valued her family and her
husband's prosperity would insist upon such a thing.
This plunged me again, for when I considered the thing
calmly, and took my husband as he really was, a diligent,
careful man in the main work of laying up an estate for his
children, and that he knew nothing of the dreadful circumstances
that he was in, I could not but confess to myself that my
proposal was very unreasonable, and what no wife that had
the good of her family at heart would have desired.
Moll Flanders |
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 The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: I caught the world's first murmur, large and clear,
Flung from a singing river's endless race.
Then, through a magic twilight from below,
I heard its grand sad song as in a dream:
Life's wild infinity of mirth and woe
It sang me; and, with many a changing gleam,
Across the music of its onward flow
I saw the cottage lights of Wessex beam.
Thomas Hood
The man who cloaked his bitterness within
This winding-sheet of puns and pleasantries,
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