| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Reign of King Edward the Third by William Shakespeare: Thou shalt retain as great a Seigniorie:
For we create thee Earl of Richmond here.
And now go forwards with our pedigree:
Who next succeeded Phillip le Bew?
ARTOIS.
Three sons of his, which all successfully
Did sit upon their father's regal Throne,
Yet died, and left no issue of their loins.
KING EDWARD.
But was my mother sister unto those?
ARTOIS.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: reach the chateau, and stand between her cousins and death. As all
present looked at the heroic girl, pale, her features drawn, her veil
aside, her whip in her hand, standing on the threshold of the door,
whence her burning glance grasped the whole scene and comprehended it,
each knew from the almost imperceptible motion which crossed the
soured and bittered face of Corentin, that the real adversaries had
met. A terrible duel was about to begin.
Noticing the box, now in the hands of Corentin, the countess raised
her whip and sprang rapidly towards him. Striking his hands with so
violent a blow that the casket fell to the ground, she seized it,
flung it into the middle of the fire, and stood with her back to 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 Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: your letter is, you have found the means to stumble into that
confession. "LESS THAN ONE-HALF of the island," you say, "is
devoted to the lepers." Molokai - "MOLOKAI AHINA," the "grey,"
lofty, and most desolate island - along all its northern side
plunges a front of precipice into a sea of unusual profundity.
This range of cliff is, from east to west, the true end and
frontier of the island. Only in one spot there projects into the
ocean a certain triangular and rugged down, grassy, stony, windy,
and rising in the midst into a hill with a dead crater: the whole
bearing to the cliff that overhangs it somewhat the same relation
as a bracket to a wall. With this hint you will now be able to
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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 The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle: knew the ground better than they did, so crawling here,
stooping there, and, anon, running across some little open,
he soon left them far behind, coming out, at last, upon another
road about eight hundred paces distant from the one he had left.
Here he stood for a moment, listening to the distant shouts of
the seven men as they beat up and down in the thickets like hounds
that had lost the scent of the quarry. Then, buckling his belt
more tightly around his waist, he ran fleetly down the road toward
the eastward and Sherwood.
But Robin had not gone more than three furlongs in that direction
when he came suddenly to the brow of a hill, and saw beneath
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood |
