| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Heroes by Charles Kingsley: Then Medeia clapped her hands together, and cried, 'Sing
louder, Orpheus, sing a bolder strain; wake up these hapless
sluggards, or none of them will see the land of Hellas more.'
Then Orpheus lifted his harp, and crashed his cunning hand
across the strings; and his music and his voice rose like a
trumpet through the still evening air; into the air it rushed
like thunder, till the rocks rang and the sea; and into their
souls it rushed like wine, till all hearts beat fast within
their breasts.
And he sung the song of Perseus, how the Gods led him over
land and sea, and how he slew the loathly Gorgon, and won
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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 End of the Tether by Joseph Conrad: a mass of printed figures and began to scan them at-
tentively for the twentieth time this trip at least.
With his elbows propped, his head between his hands,
he seemed to lose himself in the study of an abstruse
problem in mathematics. It was the list of the winning
numbers from the last drawing of the great lottery
which had been the one inspiring fact of so many years
of his existence. The conception of a life deprived of
that periodical sheet of paper had slipped away from
him entirely, as another man, according to his nature,
would not have been able to conceive a world without
End of the Tether |
