| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: her near his master.
"What do you mean?" exclaimed the king, looking at the priest in a way
to give him the fever.
"Sire," said La Balue, insolently, "the affairs of purgatory are in my
ministry, and I am bound to inform you that there is sorcery going on
in this house."
"Ah! little priest, you wish to make game of me!" said the king.
At these words the company were in a terrible state.
"So you treat me with disrespect?" said the king, which made them turn
pale. "Ho, there! Tristan, my friend!" cried Louis XI. from the
window, which he threw up suddenly, "come up here!"
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Octopus by Frank Norris: glasses to their "partners," sitting in long rows of white and
blue and pink against the opposite wall, their mothers and older
sisters in a second dark-clothed rank behind them. A babel of
talk was in the air, mingled with gusts of laughter. Everybody
seemed having a good time. In the increasing heat the
decorations of evergreen trees and festoons threw off a pungent
aroma that suggested a Sunday-school Christmas festival. In the
other stalls, lower down the barn, the young men had brought
chairs, and in these deep recesses the most desperate love-making
was in progress, the young man, his hair neatly parted, leaning
with great solicitation over the girl, his "partner" for the
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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 The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: We stayed three days in this harbour, on one of which
Captain Fitz Roy, with a party, attempted to ascend to the
summit of San Pedro. The woods here had rather a different
appearance from those on the northern part of the island.
The rock, also, being micaceous slate, there was no beach,
but the steep sides dipped directly beneath the water. The
general aspect in consequence was more like that of Tierra
del Fuego than of Chiloe. In vain we tried to gain the
summit: the forest was so impenetrable, that no one who
has not beheld it can imagine so entangled a mass of dying
and dead trunks. I am sure that often, for more than ten
The Voyage of the Beagle |
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 Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu: And happy and simple and sorrowful things.
What hope shall we gather, what dreams shall we sow?
Where the wind calls our wandering footsteps we go.
No love bids us tarry, no joy bids us wait:
The voice of the wind is the voice of our fate.
INDIAN WEAVERS
Weavers, weaving at break of day,
Why do you weave a garment so gay? . . .
Blue as the wing of a halcyon wild,
We weave the robes of a new-born child.
Weavers, weaving at fall of night,
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