| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: Order. The party of Order draws in its shoulders, lets the bourgeois
republicans tumble down heels over head, and throws itself upon the
shoulders of the armed power. Finally, still of the mind that it is
sustained by the shoulders of the armed power, the party of Order
notices one fine morning that these shoulders have turned into bayonets.
Each party kicks backward at those that are pushing forward, and leans
forward upon those that are crowding backward; no wonder that, in this
ludicrous posture, each loses its balance, and, after having cut the
unavoidable grimaces, breaks down amid singular somersaults.
Accordingly, the revolution moves along a downward line. It finds
itself in this retreating motion before the last February-barricade is
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: shadow in which he had lived had, to attest itself, almost no
margin left. Since it was in Time that he was to have met his
fate, so it was in Time that his fate was to have acted; and as he
waked up to the sense of no longer being young, which was exactly
the sense of being stale, just as that, in turn, was the sense of
being weak, he waked up to another matter beside. It all hung
together; they were subject, he and the great vagueness, to an
equal and indivisible law. When the possibilities themselves had
accordingly turned stale, when the secret of the gods had grown
faint, had perhaps even quite evaporated, that, and that only, was
failure. It wouldn't have been failure to be bankrupt,
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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 Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: gentlemen should have no quarter. This was a great loss to the
Royalists, for now the men foreseeing the great hardships they were
like to suffer, began to slip away, and the Lord Goring was obliged
to forbid any to desert on pain of present death, and to keep
parties of horse continually patrolling to prevent them;
notwithstanding which many got away.
21st. The town desired the Lord Goring to give them leave to send
a message to Lord Fairfax, to desire they might have liberty to
carry on their trade and sell their bays and says, which Lord
Goring granted; but the enemy's general returned, that they should
have considered that before they let the Royalists into the town;
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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 The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: "She won't come."
"I'll bring her," said Canute grimly.
"No, no. I don't want her, she will scold all the time."
"Well, I will bring your father."
She spoke again and it seemed as though her mouth was close up
to the key-hole. She spoke lower than he had ever heard her speak
before, so low that he had to put his ear up to the lock to hear
her.
"I don't want him either, Canute,--I'd rather have you."
For a moment she heard no noise at all, then something like a
groan. With a cry of fear she opened the door, and saw Canute
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
