| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Fantastic Fables by Ambrose Bierce: The Wolves and the Dogs
The Hen and the Vipers
A Seasonable Joke
The Lion and the Thorn
The Fawn and the Buck
The Kite, the Pigeons, and the Hawk
The Wolf and the Babe
The Wolf and the Ostrich
The Herdsman and the Lion
The Man and the Viper
The Man and the Eagle
Fantastic Fables |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: it was obedience or death for them, as each was accompanied by
a man with a pistol. Most of them, though, were only too glad
to obey me.
Bradley passed the order down into the ship and a moment later
the gun-crew clambered up the narrow ladder and at my direction
trained their piece upon the slow-moving Swede. "Fire a shot
across her bow," I instructed the gun-captain.
Accept it from me, it didn't take that Swede long to see the
error of his way and get the red and white pennant signifying
"I understand" to the masthead. Once again the sails flapped
idly, and then I ordered him to lower a boat and come after me.
The Land that Time Forgot |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: Stepan Arkadyevitch, turning red. Stepan Arkadyevitch reddened at
the mention of that name, because he had been that morning at the
Jew Volgarinov's, and the visit had left an unpleasant
recollection.
Stepan Arkadyevitch believed most positively that the committee
in which he was trying to get an appointment was a new, genuine,
and honest public body, but that morning when Volgarinov had--
intentionally, beyond a doubt--kept him two hours waiting with
other petitioners in his waiting-room, he had suddenly felt
uneasy.
Whether he was uncomfortable that he, a descendant of Rurik,
Anna Karenina |
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 Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: are cloyed by satiety. By a farther step in the same direction he
refused to allow marriages to be contracted[6] at any period of life
according to the fancy of the parties concerned. Marriage, as he
ordained it, must only take place in the prime of bodily vigour,[7]
this too being, as he believed, a condition conducive to the
production of healthy offspring. Or again, to meet the case which
might occur of an old man[8] wedded to a young wife. Considering the
jealous watch which such husbands are apt to keep over their wives, he
introduced a directly opposite custom; that is to say, he made it
incumbent on the aged husband to introduce some one whose qualities,
physical and moral, he admired, to play the husband's part and to
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