| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Poems by T. S. Eliot: Of a broken violin on an August afternoon:
"I am always sure that you understand
My feelings, always sure that you feel,
Sure that across the gulf you reach your hand.
You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles' heel.
You will go on, and when you have prevailed
You can say: at this point many a one has failed.
But what have I, but what have I, my friend,
To give you, what can you receive from me?
Only the friendship and the sympathy
Of one about to reach her journey's end.
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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 Vision Splendid by William MacLeod Raine: ashamed at what she had done, but plainly eager in her innocence
to be forgiven.
Jeff spoke gently. "Nellie."
Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. "Aren't we ever going to be
friends again?"
Through the open door he could see the fire glowing in the grate
and the chocolate set on the little table. He knew she had
prepared for his coming and how greatly she would be hurt if he
rejected her advances.
"Of course we're friends."
"Then you'll come in, just for a few minutes."
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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 Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne: And, wonderfully interested, we peered all along the high wall,
peeping into every fissure which might open out into a gallery.
And so we arrived at a place where the shore was much narrowed. Here
the sea came to lap the foot of the steep cliff, leaving a passage no
wider than a couple of yards. Between two boldly projecting rocks
appeared the mouth of a dark tunnel.
There, upon a granite slab, appeared two mysterious graven letters,
half eaten away by time. They were the initials of the bold and
daring traveller:
[Runic initials appear here]
"A. S.," shouted my uncle. "Arne Saknussemm! Arne Saknussemm
Journey to the Center of the Earth |
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: lovely coming in of day. I heard the runnel with delight; I looked
round me for something beautiful and unexpected; but the still
black pine-trees, the hollow glade, the munching ass, remained
unchanged in figure. Nothing had altered but the light, and that,
indeed, shed over all a spirit of life and of breathing peace, and
moved me to a strange exhilaration.
I drank my water-chocolate, which was hot if it was not rich, and
strolled here and there, and up and down about the glade. While I
was thus delaying, a gush of steady wind, as long as a heavy sigh,
poured direct out of the quarter of the morning. It was cold, and
set me sneezing. The trees near at hand tossed their black plumes
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