| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Out of Time's Abyss by Edgar Rice Burroughs: loss to guess. No expression whatever altered the steady gaze
of those large, round eyes; there was no color upon the pasty,
sunken cheeks. A death's head grimaced as though a man long
dead raised his parchment-covered skull from an old grave.
The creature stood about the height of an average man but
appeared much taller from the fact that the joints of his long
wings rose fully a foot above his hairless head. The bare arms
were long and sinewy, ending in strong, bony hands with clawlike
fingers--almost talonlike in their suggestiveness. The white
robe was separated in front, revealing skinny legs and the
further fact that the thing wore but the single garment, which
Out of Time's Abyss |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: Golden Gate. San Diego had come earlier. Then, slowly, as mission after
mission was built along the soft coast wilderness, new ports were
established--at Santa Barbara, and by Point San Luis for San Luis Obispo,
which lay inland a little way up the gorge where it opened among the
hills. Thus the world reached these missions by water; while on land,
through the mountains, a road led to them, and also to many more that
were too distant behind the hills for ships to serve--a rough road, long
and lonely, punctuated with church towers and gardens. For the Fathers
gradually so stationed their settlements that the traveler might each
morning ride out from one mission and by evening of a day's fair journey
ride into the next. A lonely, rough, dangerous road, but lovely, too,
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare: For maiden-tongued he was, and thereof free;
Yet if men mov'd him, was he such a storm
As oft 'twixt May and April is to see,
When winds breathe sweet, unruly though they be.
His rudeness so with his authoriz'd youth
Did livery falseness in a pride of truth.
'Well could he ride, and often men would say
That horse his mettle from his rider takes:
Proud of subjection, noble by the sway,
What rounds, what bounds, what course, what stop he makes!
And controversy hence a question takes,
|
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 Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: thing?
Yes.
Then his way of taking things to pieces must be a very clumsy one,
if he can find out no difference between diamond and charcoal.
Well, perhaps it is: but you must remember that, though he is
very old--as old as the first man who ever lived--he has only been
at school for the last three hundred years or so. And remember,
too, that he is not like you, who have some one else to teach you.
He has had to teach himself, and find out for himself, and make
his own tools, and work in the dark besides. And I think it is
very much to his credit that he ever found out that diamond and
|
