| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: throne, but through a grape-shot-and-canistered mutiny of the
proletariat against Capital. That which it imagined to be the most
revolutionary, came about as the most counter-revolutionary event. The
fruit fell into its lap, but it fell from the Tree of Knowledge, not
from the Tree of life.
The exclusive power of the bourgeois republic lasted only from June 24
to the 10th of December, 1848. It is summed up in the framing of a
republican constitution and in the state of siege of Paris.
The new Constitution was in substance only a republicanized edition of
the constitutional charter of 1830. The limited suffrage of the July
monarchy, which excluded even a large portion of the bourgeoisie from
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Pugasaing, the Bowl and Counters,
Kuntassoo, the Game of Plum-stones.
Though the warriors called him Faint-Heart,
Called him coward, Shaugodaya,
Idler, gambler, Yenadizze,
Little heeded he their jesting,
Little cared he for their insults,
For the women and the maidens
Loved the handsome Pau-Puk-Keewis.
He was dressed in shirt of doeskin,
White and soft, and fringed with ermine,
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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 1984 by George Orwell: O'Brien was sitting at a table under a green-shaded lamp, with a mass of
papers on either side of him. He had not bothered to look up when the
servant showed Julia and Winston in.
Winston's heart was thumping so hard that he doubted whether he would be
able to speak. They had done it, they had done it at last, was all he
could think. It had been a rash act to come here at all, and sheer folly
to arrive together; though it was true that they had come by different
routes and only met on O'Brien's doorstep. But merely to walk into such a
place needed an effort of the nerve. It was only on very rare occasions
that one saw inside the dwelling-places of the Inner Party, or even
penetrated into the quarter of the town where they lived. The whole
1984 |
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 Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: coming I tried to talk of other things, but she would only nod
absently in the pauses.
'Last night we dined with him, it was guest night at the mess, and
she was there. I watched her, and she knew it. I don't know
whether she tried, but anyway, she failed. The covenant between
them was written on her forehead whenever she looked at him, though
that was seldom. She dared not look at him. And the little
conversation that they had--you would have laughed--it was a comedy
of stutters. The facile Mrs. Harbottle!'
'You do well to be angry, naturally,' I said; 'but it would be fatal
to let yourself go, Anna.'
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