| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Smalcald Articles by Dr. Martin Luther: living. But, again, how can I alone stop all the mouths of the
devil? especially of those (as they all are poisoned) who will
not hear or notice what we write, but solely exercise
themselves with all diligence how they may most shamefully
pervert and corrupt our word in every letter. These I let the
devil answer, or at last Gods wrath, as they deserve. I often
think of the good Gerson who doubts whether anything good
should be [written and] published. If it is not done, many
souls are neglected who could be delivered: but if it is done,
the devil is there with malignant, villainous tongues without
number which envenom and pervert everything, so that
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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 Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: privately to men whose lips are sealed with terror; of what I
have buried with my own hand on the bare mountain, when there
was not a bird in heaven. Does the air, then, carry secrets?
Are the hills of glass? Do the stones we tread upon preserve
the footprint to betray us? Oh, Lucy, Lucy, that we should
have come to such a country!'
'But this,' returned my mother, 'is no very new or very
threatening event. You are accused of some concealment. You
will pay more taxes in the future, and be mulcted in a fine.
It is disquieting, indeed, to find our acts so spied upon,
and the most private known. But is this new? Have we not
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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 Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: enough worldliness to adopt the habits of gallantry of the first years
of that reign, should it ever be revived. At the present moment she is
strictly virtuous from policy, possibly from inclination. Married for
the last seven years to the Marquis de Listomere, one of those
deputies who expect a peerage, she may also consider that such conduct
will promote the ambitions of her family. Some women are reserving
their opinion of her until the moment when Monsieur de Listomere
becomes a peer of France, when she herself will be thirty-six years of
age,--a period of life when most women discover that they are the
dupes of social laws.
The marquis is a rather insignificant man. He stands well at court;
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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 Grimm's Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm: require a new one. Thereupon the wedding was celebrated, and the lion
was again taken into favour, because, after all, he had told the
truth.
THE KING OF THE GOLDEN MOUNTAIN
There was once a merchant who had only one child, a son, that was very
young, and barely able to run alone. He had two richly laden ships
then making a voyage upon the seas, in which he had embarked all his
wealth, in the hope of making great gains, when the news came that
both were lost. Thus from being a rich man he became all at once so
very poor that nothing was left to him but one small plot of land; and
there he often went in an evening to take his walk, and ease his mind
Grimm's Fairy Tales |
