| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Iliad by Homer: vultures, not women, will gather round him."
Thus he spoke, but Ulysses came up and stood over him. Under this
cover he sat down to draw the arrow from his foot, and sharp was
the pain he suffered as he did so. Then he sprang on to his
chariot and bade the charioteer drive him to the ships, for he
was sick at heart.
Ulysses was now alone; not one of the Argives stood by him, for
they were all panic-stricken. "Alas," said he to himself in his
dismay, "what will become of me? It is ill if I turn and fly
before these odds, but it will be worse if I am left alone and
taken prisoner, for the son of Saturn has struck the rest of the
The Iliad |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: full of information. By means of my card, of my hotel card, of my
watch, and of the boy's fingers, I learned the following: that at
six o'clock that evening he would arrive at my hotel with ten
leopard skins for my inspection. Further, I learned that the
skins were the property of one Captain Ernesto Becucci. Also, I
learned that the boy's name was Eliceo.
The boy was prompt. At six o'clock he was at my room. In his
hand was a small roll addressed to me. On opening it I found it
to be manuscript piano music, the Hora Tranquila Valse, or
"Tranquil Hour Waltz," by Ernesto Becucci. I came for leopard
skins, thought I, and the owner sends me sheet music instead. But
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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 Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: possibility of comparing, as regards quantity, electricities which
differ greatly from each other in intensity. His object now is to
compare frictional with voltaic electricity. Moistening bibulous
paper with the iodide of potassium--a favourite test of his--and
subjecting it to the action of machine electricity, he decomposed
the iodide, and formed a brown spot where the iodine was liberated.
Then he immersed two wires, one of zinc, the other of platinum, each
1/13th of an inch in diameter, to a depth of 5/8ths of an inch in
acidulated water during eight beats of his watch, or 3/20ths of a
second; and found that the needle of his galvanometer swung through
the same arc, and coloured his moistened paper to the same extent,
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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 Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: descending from the woods, each laden with a whole pine-tree for
the winter's firing. At the top of the woods, which do not climb
very high upon this cold ridge, I struck leftward by a path among
the pines, until I hit on a dell of green turf, where a streamlet
made a little spout over some stones to serve me for a water-tap.
'In a more sacred or sequestered bower . . . nor nymph nor faunus
haunted.' The trees were not old, but they grew thickly round the
glade: there was no outlook, except north-eastward upon distant
hill-tops, or straight upward to the sky; and the encampment felt
secure and private like a room. By the time I had made my
arrangements and fed Modestine, the day was already beginning to
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