| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Grimm's Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm: However, he would enter into no parley with them, but only asked them
if they would go in peace or not. Then they turned upon him and tried
to seize him; but he drew his sword. 'Heads Off!' cried he; and with
the word the traitors' heads fell before him, and Heinel was once more
king of the Golden Mountain.
DOCTOR KNOWALL
There was once upon a time a poor peasant called Crabb, who drove with
two oxen a load of wood to the town, and sold it to a doctor for two
talers. When the money was being counted out to him, it so happened
that the doctor was sitting at table, and when the peasant saw how
well he ate and drank, his heart desired what he saw, and would
Grimm's Fairy Tales |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: the corn and tobacco fields, where the great body of the hands
were at work, and where scenes of cruelty were enacted and
witnessed. But, after the whipping of Aunt Esther, I saw many
cases of the same shocking nature, not only in my master's house,
but on Col. Lloyd's plantation. One of the first which I saw,
and which greatly agitated me, was the whipping of a woman
belonging to Col. Lloyd, named Nelly. The offense alleged
against Nelly, was one of the commonest and most indefinite in
the whole catalogue of offenses usually laid to the charge of
slaves, viz: "impudence." This may mean almost anything, or
nothing at all, just according to the caprice of the master or
My Bondage and My Freedom |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: the hard ropes shredded into oakum till one's finger-tips grow dull
with pain, the menial offices with which each day begins and
finishes, the harsh orders that routine seems to necessitate, the
dreadful dress that makes sorrow grotesque to look at, the silence,
the solitude, the shame - each and all of these things I have to
transform into a spiritual experience. There is not a single
degradation of the body which I must not try and make into a
spiritualising of the soul.
I want to get to the point when I shall be able to say quite
simply, and without affectation that the two great turning-points
in my life were when my father sent me to Oxford, and when society
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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: a right merry soul withal."
"But hearken, O my most gracious Sovereign," said the Sheriff. "I sent
a warrant to him with thine own royal seal attached, by a right
lusty knave, but he beat the messenger and stole the warrant.
And he killeth thy deer and robbeth thine own liege subjects even upon
the great highways."
"Why, how now," quoth the King wrathfully. "What wouldst thou have me do?
Comest thou not to me with a great array of men-at-arms and retainers,
and yet art not able to take a single band of lusty knaves without armor
on breast, in thine own county! What wouldst thou have me do? Art thou
not my Sheriff? Are not my laws in force in Nottinghamshire? Canst thou
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood |
