| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from 1984 by George Orwell: it into the gutter as though it had been a cabbage-stalk.
'The proles are human beings,' he said aloud. 'We are not human.'
'Why not?' said Julia, who had woken up again.
He thought for a little while. 'Has it ever occurred to you,' he said,
'that the best thing for us to do would be simply to walk out of here
before it's too late, and never see each other again?'
'Yes, dear, it has occurred to me, several times. But I'm not going to do
it, all the same.'
'We've been lucky,' he said 'but it can't last much longer. You're young.
You look normal and innocent. If you keep clear of people like me, you
might stay alive for another fifty years.'
1984 |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Stories From the Old Attic by Robert Harris: with water and molded into something beautiful."
"So that's how you make cement, huh?"
"No," someone said, "that's how you make a Christian."
* * *
An officer came upon a young soldier so weighted down with weapons
and ammunition that he couldn't move. "You know why you aren't
attacking the enemy, don't you?" asked the officer.
"Yes," replied the soldier. "I'm waiting for more ammunition."
* * *
Once in a pleasant garden there stood a tree, from which, legend
said, God himself would one day reign. But instead, a group of
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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 Two Noble Kinsmen by William Shakespeare: Does bind me to her.
THESEUS.
What's your request? Deliver you for all.
1. QUEEN.
We are 3. Queenes, whose Soveraignes fel before
The wrath of cruell Creon; who endured
The Beakes of Ravens, Tallents of the Kights,
And pecks of Crowes, in the fowle feilds of Thebs.
He will not suffer us to burne their bones,
To urne their ashes, nor to take th' offence
Of mortall loathsomenes from the blest eye
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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 Emma by Jane Austen: the real misery of the business to her. Frank Churchill had behaved
very ill by herself--very ill in many ways,--but it was not so much
his behaviour as her own, which made her so angry with him.
It was the scrape which he had drawn her into on Harriet's account,
that gave the deepest hue to his offence.--Poor Harriet! to be a second
time the dupe of her misconceptions and flattery. Mr. Knightley
had spoken prophetically, when he once said, "Emma, you have been
no friend to Harriet Smith."--She was afraid she had done her nothing
but disservice.--It was true that she had not to charge herself,
in this instance as in the former, with being the sole and original
author of the mischief; with having suggested such feelings as might
Emma |
