| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Poems by Oscar Wilde: The river-horses in the slime trumpeted when
they saw him come
Odorous with Syrian galbanum and smeared with
spikenard and with thyme.
He came along the river bank like some tall
galley argent-sailed,
He strode across the waters, mailed in beauty,
and the waters sank.
He strode across the desert sand: he reached
the valley where you lay:
He waited till the dawn of day: then touched
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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 Lost Princess of Oz by L. Frank Baum: dragon is harmless, unless his steering gear breaks, and he was
manufactured at the famous dragon factory in this City of Thi. Here
he comes, and you may examine him for yourselves."
They heard a low rumble and a shrill squeaking sound, and going out to
the front of the house, they saw coming around the corner a car drawn
by a gorgeous jeweled dragon, which moved its head to right and left
and flashed its eyes like headlights of an automobile and uttered a
growling noise as it slowly moved toward them. When it stopped before
the High Coco-Lorum's house, Toto barked sharply at the sprawling
beast, but even tiny Trot could see that the dragon was not alive.
Its scales were of gold, and each one was set with sparkling jewels,
The Lost Princess of Oz |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: After her mother's death Sophy still stayed on in the old house.
She took a course in millinery in Milwaukee, came home, stuck up
a homemade sign in the parlor window (the untidy cucumber vines
came down), and began her hatmaking in earnest. In five years
she had opened a shop on a side street near Elm, had painted the
old house, installed new plumbing, built a warty stucco porch,
and transformed the weedy, grass-tangled yard into an orderly
stretch of green lawn and bright flower beds. In ten years she
was in Elm Street, and the Chippewa Eagle ran a half column twice
a year describing her spring and fall openings. On these
occasions Aunt Sophy, in black satin and marcel wave and her most
One Basket |
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 Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: of Antiphysis." But, born in an evil generation, which was already,
even in 1500, ripening for the revolution of 1789, he was sensual
and, I fear, cowardly enough to hide his light, not under a bushel,
but under a dunghill; till men took him for a jester of jests; and
his great wisdom was lost to the worse and more foolish generations
which followed him, and thought they understood him.
But as for appealing to natural law for that which is good for men,
and to reason for the power of discerning that same good--if man
cannot find truth by that method, by what method shall he find it?
And thus it happened that, though these philosophers and
encyclopaedists were not men of science, they were at least the
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