| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: fellers about him."
In him the animal man chiefly was developed. In physical
endurance and contentment he was cousin to the pine and the rock. I
asked him once if he was not sometimes tired at night, after working
all day; and he answered, with a sincere and serious look,
"Gorrappit, I never was tired in my life." But the intellectual and
what is called spiritual man in him were slumbering as in an infant.
He had been instructed only in that innocent and ineffectual way in
which the Catholic priests teach the aborigines, by which the pupil
is never educated to the degree of consciousness, but only to the
degree of trust and reverence, and a child is not made a man, but
Walden |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Paradise Lost by John Milton: Passed frequent, and his eye with choice regard
From Paneas, the fount of Jordan's flood,
To Beersaba, where the Holy Land
Borders on Egypt and the Arabian shore;
So wide the opening seemed, where bounds were set
To darkness, such as bound the ocean wave.
Satan from hence, now on the lower stair,
That scaled by steps of gold to Heaven-gate,
Looks down with wonder at the sudden view
Of all this world at once. As when a scout,
Through dark?;nd desart ways with?oeril gone
Paradise Lost |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: he realized, as a toy pop-gun charged with a tethered cork.
Numa, ravenous with hunger, had long since learned the
futility of roaring and moaning as he searched for prey,
but now that it was as surely his as though already he had
felt the soft flesh beneath his still mighty paw, he opened his
huge jaws, and gave vent to his long-pent rage in a series of
deafening roars that made the air tremble.
"Run, Jane!" cried Clayton. "Quick! Run for the shelter!"
But her paralyzed muscles refused to respond, and she stood
mute and rigid, staring with ghastly countenance at the
living death creeping toward them.
The Return of Tarzan |
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 Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain: and was gradually adding to his store. He and his wife were very
nearly happy, but not quite, for they had no children. The longing for
the treasure of a child had grown stronger and stronger as the years
slipped away, but the blessing never came--and was never to come.
With this pair lived the judge's widowed sister, Mrs. Rachel Pratt,
and she also was childless--childless, and sorrowful for that reason,
and not to be comforted. The women were good and commonplace people,
and did their duty, and had their reward in clear consciences and the
community's approbation. They were Presbyterians, the judge was a freethinker.
Pembroke Howard, lawyer and bachelor, aged almost forty, was another
old Virginian grandee with proved descent from the First Families.
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