| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: and then he added, 'You must be careful when you plant your
friendship that you mean it to stay, and blossom. It will not come
easily up by the roots, and it will leave an ugly hole.'
He was helping her out of her rickshaw, and as they followed the
servant who carried her wraps the few yards to the door, she left
her hand lightly on his arm. It was the seal, he thought, of her
unwritten bond that there should be no uprooting of the single
flower he cherished; and he went back almost buoyantly because of it
to the woman who had been sitting in the sackcloth and ashes of
misfortune, turning over the expedients for which his step might
make occasion.
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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 Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Thoris, unless Thurid and Matai Shang had already succeeded in
stealing her.
We had scarcely started up the runway when Woola suddenly
displayed the wildest excitement. He leaped back and forth,
snapping at my legs and harness, until I thought that he was mad,
and finally when I pushed him from me and started once more to
ascend he grasped my sword arm between his jaws and dragged me back.
No amount of scolding or cuffing would suffice to make him
release me, and I was entirely at the mercy of his brute strength
The Warlord of Mars |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: understand these relations I should sometimes have to consider them one by
one and sometimes only to bear them in mind, or embrace them in the
aggregate, I thought that, in order the better to consider them
individually, I should view them as subsisting between straight lines,
than which I could find no objects more simple, or capable of being more
distinctly represented to my imagination and senses; and on the other
hand, that in order to retain them in the memory or embrace an aggregate
of many, I should express them by certain characters the briefest
possible. In this way I believed that I could borrow all that was best
both in geometrical analysis and in algebra, and correct all the defects
of the one by help of the other.
Reason Discourse |
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 Kenilworth by Walter Scott: what have we here?" Then addressing the lady, in a tone betwixt
entreaty and command, he added, "Uds precious! madam, what make
you here out of bounds? Retire--retire--there is life and death
in this matter.--And you, friend, whoever you may be, leave this
house--out with you, before my dagger's hilt and your costard
become acquainted.--Draw, Mike, and rid us of the knave!"
"Not I, on my soul," replied Lambourne; "he came hither in my
company, and he is safe from me by cutter's law, at least till we
meet again.--But hark ye, my Cornish comrade, you have brought a
Cornish flaw of wind with you hither, a hurricanoe as they call
it in the Indies. Make yourself scarce--depart--vanish--or we'll
Kenilworth |
