| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Four Arthurian Romances by Chretien DeTroyes: who will grant them such recompense as shall require their
services. When they had disarmed them all they made them go up
on the wall that they might be seen by the troops below. This
privilege is not to their liking, and when they saw their lord
bound as a prisoner, they were unhappy men. Alexander upon the
walls swears to God and all the saints that he will not let one
of them live, but will kill them all speedily, unless they will
go to surrender to the King before he can seize them. "Go," says
he, "confidently to the King at my command, and cast yourselves
upon his mercy. None of you, except the Count, has deserved to
die. You shall not lose either life or limb if you surrender to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Helen of Troy And Other Poems by Sara Teasdale: To her made half immortal like themselves.
It is to you I owe the cruel gift,
Leda, my mother, and the Swan, my sire,
To you the beauty and to you the bale;
For never woman born of man and maid
Had wrought such havoc on the earth as I,
Or troubled heaven with a sea of flame
That climbed to touch the silent whirling stars
And blotted out their brightness ere the dawn.
Have I not made the world to weep enough?
Give death to me. Yet life is more than death;
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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 Memorabilia by Xenophon: Soc. I mean this, that, given a man knows what he needs to provide,
and has the skill to do so, no matter what the deparment of things may
be--house or city or army--you will find him a good chief and
director[6] of the same.
[6] Or, "representative."
Then Nicomachides: Upon my word, Socrates, I should never have
expected to hear you say that a good housekeeper[7] and steward of an
estate would make a good general.
[7] Or, "economist"; cf. "Cyrop." I. vi. 12.
Soc. Come then, suppose we examine their respective duties, and so
determine[8] whether they are the same or different.
The Memorabilia |
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 Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: plunges a front of precipice into a sea of unusual profundity.
This range of cliff is, from east to west, the true end and
frontier of the island. Only in one spot there projects into the
ocean a certain triangular and rugged down, grassy, stony, windy,
and rising in the midst into a hill with a dead crater: the whole
bearing to the cliff that overhangs it somewhat the same relation
as a bracket to a wall. With this hint you will now be able to
pick out the leper station on a map; you will be able to judge how
much of Molokai is thus cut off between the surf and precipice,
whether less than a half, or less than a quarter, or a fifth, or a
tenth - or, say a twentieth; and the next time you burst into print
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