| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: looked askance and intoxicated, broad shoulders, and ragged elbows,
approached the front half of Ivan Nikiforovitch, crossed his hands for
him as though he had been a child, and winked at the old soldier, who
braced his knee against Ivan Nikiforovitch's belly, so, in spite of
the latter's piteous moans, he was squeezed out into the ante-room.
Then they pulled the bolts, and opened the other half of the door.
Meanwhile the clerk and his assistant, breathing hard with their
friendly exertions, exhaled such a strong odour that the court-room
seemed temporarily turned into a drinking-room.
"Are you hurt, Ivan Nikiforovitch? I will tell my mother to send you a
decoction of brandy, with which you need but to rub your back and
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: endless histories, handling the empty shells and playing with the
silence - more and more he could see that he had never introduced
an alien. He had had his great companions, his indulgences - there
were cases in which they had been immense; but what had his
devotion after all been if it hadn't been at bottom a respect? He
was, however, himself surprised at his stiffness; by the end of the
winter the responsibility of it was what was uppermost in his
thoughts. The refrain had grown old to them, that plea for just
one more. There came a day when, for simple exhaustion, if
symmetry should demand just one he was ready so far to meet
symmetry. Symmetry was harmony, and the idea of harmony began to
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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 A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: be told that Allah is a false god set up by the Turks and Arabs, who
will all be damned for taking that liberty; but it should be told that
many English people think so, and that many Turks and Arabs think the
converse about English people. It should be taught that Allah is
simply the name by which God is known to Turks and Arabs, who are just
as eligible for salvation as any Christian. Further, that the
practical reason why a Turkish child should pray in a mosque and an
English child in a church is that as worship is organized in Turkey in
mosques in the name of Mahomet and in England in churches in the name
of Christ, a Turkish child joining the Church of England or an English
child following Mahomet will find that it has no place for its worship
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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 Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: acquired, by a long and dangerous process, the only perfect skeleton
then in the world, and the hideous story of the robber to whom it
had belonged--all these horrors those who list may read for
themselves elsewhere. I hasten past them with this remark--that to
have gone through the toils, dangers, and disgusts which Vesalius
faced, argued in a superstitious and cruel age like his, no common
physical and moral courage, and a deep conscience that he was doing
right, and must do it at all risks in the face of a generation
which, peculiarly reckless of human life and human agony, allowed
that frame which it called the image of God to be tortured, maimed,
desecrated in every way while alive; and yet--straining at the gnat
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