| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: nothing by what name the man is named, so he be one of us."
And Peter said, "It must be hard for you all to understand one another, if
you are of so many different kinds?"
The stranger answered, "There is a sign by which we all know one another,
and by which all the world may know us." (By this shall all men know that
ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.)
And Peter said, "What is that sign?"
But the stranger was silent.
"Oh, a kind of freemasonry!" said Peter, leaning on his elbow towards the
stranger, and looking up at him from under his pointed cap. "Are there any
more of you here in this country?"
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Moon-Face and Other Stories by Jack London: what sensations you experience."
"In the first place, I cannot see you," I said, and I could hear his gleeful
laugh from the midst of the emptiness. "Of course," I continued, "you cannot
escape your shadow, but that was to be expected. When you pass between my eye
and an object, the object disappears, but so unusual and incomprehensible is
its disappearance that it seems to me as though my eyes had blurred. When you
move rapidly, I experience a bewildering succession of blurs. The blurring
sensation makes my eyes ache and my brain tired."
"Have you any other warnings of my presence?" he asked.
"No, and yes," I answered. "When you are near me I have feelings similar to
those produced by dank warehouses, gloomy crypts, and deep mines. And as
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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 Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson: the earth.
The beech had, in some violent gale, been half-uprooted, and had
torn up a considerable stretch of turf and it was under this that
old Lawless had dug out his forest hiding-place. The roots served
him for rafters, the turf was his thatch; for walls and floor he
had his mother the earth. Rude as it was, the hearth in one
corner, blackened by fire, and the presence in another of a large
oaken chest well fortified with iron, showed it at one glance to be
the den of a man, and not the burrow of a digging beast.
Though the snow had drifted at the mouth and sifted in upon the
floor of this earth cavern, yet was the air much warmer than
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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 Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: His laughter was submarine and profound
Like the old man of the seats
Hidden under coral islands
Where worried bodies of drowned men drift down in the green silence,
Dropping from fingers of surf.
I looked for the head of Mr. Apollinax rolling under a chair,
Or grinning over a screen
With seaweed in its hair.
I heard the beat of centaurs’ hoofs over the hard turf
As his dry and passionate talk devoured the afternoon.
"He is a charming man"--"But after all what did he mean?"--
Prufrock/Other Observations |
