| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: So his mother told him a story that her own mother had told to
her, when she herself was younger than little Ernest; a story,
not of things that were past, but of what was yet to come; a
story, nevertheless, so very old, that even the Indians, who
formerly inhabited this valley, had heard it from their
forefathers, to whom, as they affirmed, it had been murmured by
the mountain streams, and whispered by the wind among the
tree-tops. The purport was, that, at some future day, a child
should be born hereabouts, who was destined to become the
greatest and noblest personage of his time, and whose
countenance, in manhood, should bear an exact resemblance to the
The Snow Image |
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: "No, nothing until you proceed to read from the end to the beginning."
I had not finished my sentence when the Professor broke out into a
cry, nay, a roar. A new revelation burst in upon him. He was
transformed!
"Aha, clever Saknussemm!" he cried. "You had first written out your
sentence the wrong way."
And darting upon the paper, with eyes bedimmed, and voice choked with
emotion, he read the whole document from the last letter to the first.
It was conceived in the following terms:
In Sneffels Joculis craterem quem delibat
Umbra Scartaris Julii intra calendas descende,
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 Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: perhaps in vain by the bright gin-palace, perhaps long-suffering
with the drunken wife that ruins him; in India (a woman this time)
kneeling with broken cries and streaming tears, as she drowns her
child in the sacred river; in the brothel, the discard of society,
living mainly on strong drink, fed with affronts, a fool, a thief,
the comrade of thieves, and even here keeping the point of honour
and the touch of pity, often repaying the world's scorn with
service, often standing firm upon a scruple, and at a certain cost,
rejecting riches: - everywhere some virtue cherished or affected,
everywhere some decency of thought and carriage, everywhere the
ensign of man's ineffectual goodness: - ah! if I could show you
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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 De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: Christ, through some divine instinct in him, seems to have always
loved the sinner as being the nearest possible approach to the
perfection of man. His primary desire was not to reform people,
any more than his primary desire was to a relieve suffering. To
turn an interesting thief into a tedious honest man was not his
aim. He would have thought little of the Prisoners' Aid Society
and other modern movements of the kind. The conversion of a
publican into a Pharisee would not have seemed to him a great
achievement. But in a manner not yet understood of the world he
regarded sin and suffering as being in themselves beautiful holy
things and modes of perfection.
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