| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: another on the Sunday morning, our own on Sunday afternoon, a
fourth early on Monday; and as there is no emigrant train on Sunday
a great part of the passengers from these four ships was
concentrated on the train by which I was to travel. There was a
babel of bewildered men, women, and children. The wretched little
booking-office, and the baggage-room, which was not much larger,
were crowded thick with emigrants, and were heavy and rank with the
atmosphere of dripping clothes. Open carts full of bedding stood
by the half-hour in the rain. The officials loaded each other with
recriminations. A bearded, mildewed little man, whom I take to
have been an emigrant agent, was all over the place, his mouth full
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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 Witch, et. al by Anton Chekhov: the rye and carry the hay, and then Sunday a holiday again; every
day there were mutterings of distant thunder. It was misty and
looked like rain, and, gazing now at the fields, everyone
thought, God grant we get the harvest in in time; and everyone
felt gay and joyful and anxious at heart.
"Mowers ask a high price nowadays," said Praskovya. "One rouble
and forty kopecks a day."
People kept coming and coming from the fair at Kazanskoe: peasant
women, factory workers in new caps, beggars, children. . . . Here
a cart would drive by stirring up the dust and behind it would
run an unsold horse, and it seemed glad it had not been sold;
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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 Anabasis by Xenophon: pupil of Socrates. He marched with the Spartans,
and was exiled from Athens. Sparta gave him land
and property in Scillus, where he lived for many
years before having to move once more, to settle
in Corinth. He died in 354 B.C.
The Anabasis is his story of the march to Persia
to aid Cyrus, who enlisted Greek help to try and
take the throne from Artaxerxes, and the ensuing
return of the Greeks, in which Xenophon played a
leading role. This occurred between 401 B.C. and
March 399 B.C.
Anabasis |
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 When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells: seemed to be pushed up the running platforms on either
side, and carried away against their will. They would
spring off so soon as they were beyond the thick of
the confusion, and run back towards the conflict.
"It is the Sleeper. Verily it is the Sleeper," shouted
voices. "That is never the Sleeper," shouted
others. More and more faces were turned to him. At
the intervals along this central area Graham noted
openings, pits, apparently the heads of staircases going
down with people ascending out of them and
descending into them. The struggle it seemed centred
When the Sleeper Wakes |
