| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: Parents move the candles;
Till on all the night divine
Turns the bedroom handles.
Till at last the day begins
In the east a-breaking,
In the hedges and the whins
Sleeping birds a-waking.
In the darkness shapes of things,
Houses, trees and hedges,
Clearer grow; and sparrow's wings
Beat on window ledges.
A Child's Garden of Verses |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Under the Red Robe by Stanley Weyman: intertwined with hazel and elder and box that the branches rose
like a solid wall, twelve feet high, on either side of the track.
Down this she passed, and I stood and watched her go, for I dared
not follow. The ride stretched away as straight as a line for
four or five hundred yards, a green path between green walls. To
enter it was to be immediately detected, if she turned, while the
thicket itself permitted no passage. I stood baffled and raging,
and watched her pass along. It seemed an age before she at last
reached the end, and, turning sharply to the right, was in an
instant gone from sight.
I waited then no longer. I started off, and, running as lightly
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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 A Horse's Tale by Mark Twain: with him in it, too, and he is good for two hundred pounds, without
his clothes; and there is no telling how much he does weigh when he
is out on the war-path and has his batteries belted on. He is over
six feet, is young, hasn't an ounce of waste flesh, is straight,
graceful, springy in his motions, quick as a cat, and has a
handsome face, and black hair dangling down on his shoulders, and
is beautiful to look at; and nobody is braver than he is, and
nobody is stronger, except myself. Yes, a person that doubts that
he is fine to see should see him in his beaded buck-skins, on my
back and his rifle peeping above his shoulder, chasing a hostile
trail, with me going like the wind and his hair streaming out
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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 Paradise Lost by John Milton: Easy it may be seen that I intend
Mercy colleague with justice, sending thee
Man's friend, his Mediator, his designed
Both ransom and Redeemer voluntary,
And destined Man himself to judge Man fallen.
So spake the Father; and, unfolding bright
Toward the right hand his glory, on the Son
Blazed forth unclouded Deity: He full
Resplendent all his Father manifest
Expressed, and thus divinely answered mild.
Father Eternal, thine is to decree;
Paradise Lost |
