| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: "I come not, Ambrosia for any of the purposes thou hast named,"
replied Marcela, "but to defend myself and to prove how unreasonable
are all those who blame me for their sorrow and for Chrysostom's
death; and therefore I ask all of you that are here to give me your
attention, for will not take much time or many words to bring the
truth home to persons of sense. Heaven has made me, so you say,
beautiful, and so much so that in spite of yourselves my beauty
leads you to love me; and for the love you show me you say, and even
urge, that I am bound to love you. By that natural understanding which
God has given me I know that everything beautiful attracts love, but I
cannot see how, by reason of being loved, that which is loved for
Don Quixote |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: Mahomet, at last satisfied with cruelty, made an offer of sending
him to the viceroy of the Indies, if he would turn Mussulman. The
hero took fire at this proposal, and answered with the highest
indignation that nothing should make him forsake his heavenly Master
to follow an impostor, and continued in the severest terms to vilify
their false prophet, till Mahomet struck off his head.
Nor did the resentment of Mahomet end here; he divided his body into
quarters, and sent them to different places. The Catholics gathered
the remains of this glorious martyr, and interred them. Every Moor
that passed by threw a stone upon his grave, and raised in time such
a heap, as I found it difficult to remove when I went in search of
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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 Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: property, or at least the property of the firm, must be respected.
And during an absence of the consul's, he seems to have drawn up
with his own hand, and certainly first showed to the king, in his
own house, a new convention. Weber here and Weber there. As an
able man, he was perhaps in the right to prepare and propose
conventions. As the head of a trading company, he seems far out of
his part to be communicating state papers to a sovereign. The
administration of justice was the colour, and I am willing to
believe the purpose, of the new paper; but its effect was to depose
the existing government. A council of two Germans and two Samoans
were to be invested with the right to make laws and impose taxes as
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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 War in the Air by H. G. Wells: Bert thought of the great black moustaches, the triangular nose,
the searching bellow and the glare. His afternoon's dream of a
marvellous seizure and sale of the great Butteridge secret
crumpled up in his mind, dissolved, and vanished. He awoke to
sanity again.
"Wouldn't do. What's the good of thinking of it?" He proceeded
slowly and reluctantly to replace the Butteridge papers in
pockets and portfolio as he had found them. He became aware of a
splendid golden light upon the balloon above him, and of a new
warmth in the blue dome of the sky. He stood up and beheld the
sun, a great ball of blinding gold, setting upon a tumbled sea of
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