| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: the drummer-boy, hurrying with white face over fallen comrades,
batter and bemaul this slip of skin from the loins of peaceable
donkeys.
Generally a man is never more uselessly employed than when he is at
this trick of bastinadoing asses' hide. We know what effect it has
in life, and how your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating.
But in this state of mummy and melancholy survival of itself, when
the hollow skin reverberates to the drummer's wrist, and each dub-
a-dub goes direct to a man's heart, and puts madness there, and
that disposition of the pulses which we, in our big way of talking,
nickname Heroism:- is there not something in the nature of a
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie: figurehead leaders, had been the author of the Russian
Revolution.
In the centre of the page was his portrait.
"So that's who Number 1 is," said Tommy with his mouth full of
eggs and bacon. "Not a doubt about it, I must push on."
He paid for his breakfast, and betook himself to Whitehall. There
he sent up his name, and the message that it was urgent. A few
minutes later he was in the presence of the man who did not here
go by the name of "Mr. Carter." There was a frown on his face.
"Look here, you've no business to come asking for me in this way.
I thought that was distinctly understood?"
Secret Adversary |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay: "Did you hear me speaking?"
"I heard your voice, but no one else's."
"I've just had my death foretold, so I suppose I have not long to
live. Leehallfae prophesied the same thing."
Corpang shook his head. "What value do you set on life?" he asked.
"Very little. But it's a fearful thing all the same."
"Your death is?"
"No, but this warning."
They stopped talking. A profound silence reigned. Neither of the
two men seemed to know what to do next, or where to go. Then both of
them heard the sound of drumming. It was slow, emphatic, and
|
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 Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: of Potash or some other Salt, no bigger than a needle's point, in
such a lava stream as I have been telling of. How it has run
round and round, and will run round age after age, in an endless
chain of change. How it began by being molten fire underground,
how then it became part of a hard cold rock, lifted up into a
cliff, beaten upon by rain and storm, and washed down into the
soil of the plain, till, perhaps, the little atom of mineral met
with the rootlet of some great tree, and was taken up into its sap
in spring, through tiny veins, and hardened the next year into a
piece of solid wood. And then how that tree was cut down, and its
logs, it may be, burnt upon the hearth, till the little atom of
|
