| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: white!"
"Empty clam-shells and dry seaweed!" snorted Sea Catch.
"There never has been such a thing in the world as a white seal."
"I can't help that," said Matkah; "there's going to be now."
And she sang the low, crooning seal song that all the mother seals
sing to their babies:
You mustn't swim till you're six weeks old,
Or your head will be sunk by your heels;
And summer gales and Killer Whales
Are bad for baby seals.
Are bad for baby seals, dear rat,
The Jungle Book |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: her. She looked up, bowing almost imperceptibly in response to his
greeting, without rising from the depths of the low chair in which she
lay. Bending forwards, she stirred the fire briskly, and stooped to
pick up a fallen glove, drawing it mechanically over her left hand,
while her eyes wandered in search of its fellow. The glance was
instantly checked, however, for she stretched out a thin, white, all-
but-transparent right hand, with flawless ovals of rose-colored nail
at the tips of the slender, ringless fingers, and pointed to a chair
as if to bid Gaston be seated. He sat down, and she turned her face
questioningly towards him. Words cannot describe the subtlety of the
winning charm and inquiry in that gesture; deliberate in its
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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 Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: ascribed to this gospel a historical value superior to that of
the synoptics, believing it to have been written by an eyewitness
of the events which it relates; and from this source,
accordingly, he drew the larger share of his materials. Now, if
there is any one conclusion concerning the New Testament
literature which must be regarded as incontrovertibly established
by the labours of a whole generation of scholars, it is this,
that the fourth gospel was utterly unknown until about A. D. 170,
that it was written by some one who possessed very little direct
knowledge of Palestine, that its purpose was rather to expound a
dogma than to give an accurate record of events, and that as a
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
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 Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: the situation was pretty threatening. As a direct result of this
letter, on May 7th, a meeting of Communists in the sub-district
of the Moscow-Kazan railway passed a resolution
that, in view of the imminent danger to the Republic,
Communists and their sympathizers should give up an hour
a day of their leisure, and, lumping these hours together, do
every Saturday six hours of manual labor; and, further, that
these Communist "Saturdayings" should be continued "until
complete victory over Kolchak should be assured." That
decision of a local committee was the actual beginning of a
movement which spread all over Russia, and though the
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