| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: Alexandrians were tearing each other in pieces about some Jacobite and
Melchite controversy, to me incomprehensible, to you unimportant,
because the fighters on both sides seem to have lost (as all parties do
in their old age) the knowledge of what they were fighting for, and to
have so bewildered the question with personal intrigues, spites, and
quarrels, as to make it nearly as enigmatic as that famous contemporary
war between the blue and green factions at Constantinople, which began
by backing in the theatre, the charioteers who drove in blue dresses,
against those wild drove in green; then went on to identify themselves
each with one of the prevailing theological factions; gradually
developed, the one into an aristocratic, the other into a democratic,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: hope of filling it up. Consequently, the authorities are
fascinated with the idea of the sliding scale or concertina army.
This is an hereditary instinct, for you know that when we English
have got together two companies, one machine gun, a sick bullock,
forty generals, and a mass of W. O. forms, we say we possess "an
army corps capable of indefinite extension."
The American army is a beautiful little army. Some day, when all
the Indians are happily dead or drunk, it ought to make the
finest scientific and survey corps that the world has ever seen;
it does excellent work now, but there is this defect in its
nature: It is officered, as you know, from West Point.
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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 The Lost Princess of Oz by L. Frank Baum: side of them, as if escorting them on their way. It looked to Dorothy
as if all her party had been made prisoners, for even mounted on their
animals their heads scarcely reached to the knees of the marching
giants. The girls and Button-Bright were anxious to know what sort of
a city they had entered, and what the people were like who had made
these powerful creatures their slaves. Through the legs of the giants
as they walked, Dorothy could see rows of houses on each side of the
street and throngs of people standing on the sidewalks, but the people
were of ordinary size and the only remarkable thing about them was the
fact that they were dreadfully lean and thin. Between their skin and
their bones there seemed to be little or no flesh, and they were
The Lost Princess of Oz |
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 Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: But Phillips had told his story to the end, concluding:
"Her flight remains a mystery to this day; she vanished
in broad sunlight; they saw her walking in a meadow, and a few
moments later she was not there."
Clarke tried to conceive the thing again, as he sat by
the fire, and again his mind shuddered and shrank back,
appalled before the sight of such awful, unspeakable elements
enthroned as it were, and triumphant in human flesh. Before
him stretched the long dim vista of the green causeway in the
forest, as his friend had described it; he saw the swaying
leaves and the quivering shadows on the grass, he saw the
The Great God Pan |
