| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll: would you like THAT?'
`Now, if you'll only attend, Kitty, and not talk so much, I'll
tell you all my ideas about Looking-glass House. First, there's
the room you can see through the glass--that's just the same as
our drawing room, only the things go the other way. I can see
all of it when I get upon a chair--all but the bit behind the
fireplace. Oh! I do so wish I could see THAT bit! I want so
much to know whether they've a fire in the winter: you never CAN
tell, you know, unless our fire smokes, and then smoke comes up
in that room too--but that may be only pretence, just to make
it look as if they had a fire. Well then, the books are
Through the Looking-Glass |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: could have reduced to so miserable a state of mind, a man whose
language argued him to be of rank and education much superior to
the vulgar. He was also surprised to see how much particular
information a person who had lived in that country so short a
time, and in so recluse a manner, had been able to collect
respecting the dispositions and private affairs of the
inhabitants.
"It is no wonder," he said to himself, "that with such extent of
information, such a mode of life, so uncouth a figure, and
sentiments so virulently misanthropic, this unfortunate should be
regarded by the vulgar as in league with the Enemy of Mankind."
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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 Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: He who had first spoken turned toward the man who
squatted before the control board.
"Now!" he whispered. There was no other order given.
Every man upon the craft had evidently been well schooled
in each detail of that night's work. Silently the dark hull
crept beneath the cathedral arches of the dark and silent grove.
Thuvia of Ptarth, gazing toward the east, saw the blacker blot
against the blackness of the trees as the craft topped the
buttressed garden wall. She saw the dim bulk incline gently
downward toward the scarlet sward of the garden.
She knew that men came not thus with honourable intent.
Thuvia, Maid of Mars |
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 Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: importance. The steamship, the hydraulic lift, the patent road-maker, the
railway-train, the electric tram-car, the steam-driven mill, the Maxim gun
and the torpedo boat, once made, may perform their labours with the
guidance and assistance of comparatively few hands; but a whole army of men
of science, engineers, clerks, and highly-trained workmen is necessary for
their invention, construction, and maintenance. In the domains of art, of
science, of literature, and above all in the field of politics and
government, an almost infinite extension has taken place in the fields of
male labour. Where in primitive times woman was often the only builder,
and patterns she daubed on her hut walls or traced on her earthen vessels
the only attempts at domestic art; and where later but an individual here
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