| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: before they got there.
Then the elephants were chained by their hind legs to their
big stumps of pickets, and extra ropes were fitted to the new
elephants, and the fodder was piled before them, and the hill
drivers went back to Petersen Sahib through the afternoon light,
telling the plains drivers to be extra careful that night, and
laughing when the plains drivers asked the reason.
Little Toomai attended to Kala Nag's supper, and as evening
fell, wandered through the camp, unspeakably happy, in search of a
tom-tom. When an Indian child's heart is full, he does not run
about and make a noise in an irregular fashion. He sits down to a
The Jungle Book |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Child of Storm by H. Rider Haggard: them. Again there was the roar of the meeting shields, but this time
the fight was more prolonged, and, being in the front rank now, I had my
share of it. I remember shooting two Usutu who stabbed at me, after
which my gun was wrenched from my hand. I remember the melee swinging
backwards and forwards, the groans of the wounded, the shouts of victory
and despair, and then Scowl's voice saying:
"We have beat them, Baas, but here come the others."
The third regiment was on our shattered lines. We closed up, we fought
like devils, even the bearer boys rushed into the fray. From all sides
they poured down upon us, for we had made a ring; every minute men died
by hundreds, and, though their numbers grew few, not one of the Amawombe
Child of Storm |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Art of War by Sun Tzu: 69. Cf. TAO TE CHING, ch. 31.
70. Sun Hsing-yen might have quoted Confucius again. See LUN
YU, XIII. 29, 30.
71. Better known as Hsiang Yu [233-202 B.C.].
72. SHIH CHI, ch. 47.
73. SHIH CHI, ch. 38.
74. See XIII. ss. 27, note. Further details on T`ai Kung will
be found in the SHIH CHI, ch. 32 ad init. Besides the tradition
which makes him a former minister of Chou Hsin, two other
accounts of him are there given, according to which he would
appear to have been first raised from a humble private station by
The Art of War |
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 Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: with a sound as of kisses and whispers. To one who found himself
alone, beyond the limits of the village and beyond the hearing of
its voices,--the vast silence, the vast light, seemed full of
weirdness. And these hushes, these transparencies, do not always
inspire a causeless apprehension: they are omens
sometimes--omens of coming tempest. Nature,--incomprehensible
Sphinx!--before her mightiest bursts of rage, ever puts forth her
divinest witchery, makes more manifest her awful beauty ...
But in that forgotten summer the witchery lasted many long
days,--days born in rose-light, buried in gold. It was the
height of the season. The long myrtle-shadowed village was
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