| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Demons esteemed, and gave the Syrian King
The sacred name of Soter, or of Savior.
Thus Nature works mysteriously with man;
And from the Eternal One, as from a centre,
All things proceed, in fire, air, earth, and water,
And all are subject to one law, which, broken
Even in a single point, is broken in all;
Demons rush in, and chaos comes again.
By this will I compel the stubborn spirits,
That guard the treasures, hid in caverns deep
On Gerizim, by Uzzi the High-Priest,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: leios (level), and in the word oliothanein (to slip) itself, liparon
(sleek), in the word kollodes (gluey), and the like: the heavier sound of
gamma detained the slipping tongue, and the union of the two gave the
notion of a glutinous clammy nature, as in glischros, glukus, gloiodes.
The nu he observed to be sounded from within, and therefore to have a
notion of inwardness; hence he introduced the sound in endos and entos:
alpha he assigned to the expression of size, and nu of length, because they
are great letters: omicron was the sign of roundness, and therefore there
is plenty of omicron mixed up in the word goggulon (round). Thus did the
legislator, reducing all things into letters and syllables, and impressing
on them names and signs, and out of them by imitation compounding other
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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 Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: his imprudences, but I notice he often laments his youth a
deal more bitterly and with a more genuine intonation.
It is customary to say that age should be considered,
because it comes last. It seems just as much to the point,
that youth comes first. And the scale fairly kicks the beam,
if you go on to add that age, in a majority of cases, never
comes at all. Disease and accident make short work of even
the most prosperous persons; death costs nothing, and the
expense of a headstone is an inconsiderable trifle to the
happy heir. To be suddenly snuffed out in the middle of
ambitious schemes, is tragical enough at best; but when a man
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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 Case of the Golden Bullet by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: not seem to know fatigue nor hunger; his whole being is absorbed by
the excitement of the chase. He has done many a brilliant service
to the cause of justice, he has discovered the guilt, or the
innocence, of many in cases where the official department was as
blind as Justice is proverbially supposed to be. Joseph Muller has
become the idol of all who are engaged in this weary business of
hunting down wrong and punishing crime. He is without a peer in his
profession. But he has also become the idol of some of the criminals.
For if he discovers (as sometimes happens) that the criminal is a
good sort after all, he is just as likely to warn his prey, once he
has all proofs of the guilt and a conviction is certain. Possibly
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