| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: Well, every Thursday Mother Bellflower came between half past six
and seven in the morning, and went immediately into the
linen-room and began to work. She was a tall, thin, bearded or
rather hairy woman, for she had a beard all over her face, a
surprising, an unexpected beard, growing in improbable tufts, in
curly bunches which looked as if they had been sown by a madman
over that great face, the face of a gendarme in petticoats. She
had them on her nose, under her nose, round her nose, on her
chin, on her cheeks; and her eyebrows, which were extraordinarily
thick and long, and quite gray, bushy and bristling, looked
exactly like a pair of mustaches stuck on there by mistake.
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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 Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: be and how to set about to be it. Whether this can happen,
whether the thing which we call civilization is to be the great
triumph of the ages, or whether the human race is to go back into
the melting pot, is a question being determined by an infinitude
of contests between enlightenment and ignorance: precisely such a
contest as occurs now, when you, the reader, encounter a man who
has thought his way out to the light, and comes to urge you to
perform the act of self-emancipation, to take up the marvellous
new tools of science, and to make yourself, by means of exact
knowledge, the creator of your own life and in part of the life
of the race.
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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 The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: To onset sallying, or in muster rang'd,
Or in retreat sometimes outstretch'd for flight;
Light-armed squadrons and fleet foragers
Scouring thy plains, Arezzo! have I seen,
And clashing tournaments, and tilting jousts,
Now with the sound of trumpets, now of bells,
Tabors, or signals made from castled heights,
And with inventions multiform, our own,
Or introduc'd from foreign land; but ne'er
To such a strange recorder I beheld,
In evolution moving, horse nor foot,
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
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 Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: here I should be safer."
"From me?"
She bent her head slightly, without looking at him.
"Safer from loving me?"
Her profile did not stir, but he saw a tear overflow
on her lashes and hang in a mesh of her veil.
"Safer from doing irreparable harm. Don't let us be
like all the others!" she protested.
"What others? I don't profess to be different from
my kind. I'm consumed by the same wants and the
same longings."
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