| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Grimm's Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm: well that he could not escape death. He sat for a while very
sorrowfully, then suddenly he felt in his pocket and found his tobacco
pipe, which was still half full. 'This shall be my last pleasure,'
thought he, pulled it out, lit it at the blue light and began to
smoke. When the smoke had circled about the cavern, suddenly a little
black dwarf stood before him, and said: 'Lord, what are your
commands?' 'What my commands are?' replied the soldier, quite
astonished. 'I must do everything you bid me,' said the little man.
'Good,' said the soldier; 'then in the first place help me out of this
well.' The little man took him by the hand, and led him through an
underground passage, but he did not forget to take the blue light with
Grimm's Fairy Tales |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: sword, seized Pierre by his collar.
For some seconds they gazed with frightened eyes at one another's
unfamiliar faces and both were perplexed at what they had done and
what they were to do next. "Am I taken prisoner or have I taken him
prisoner?" each was thinking. But the French officer was evidently
more inclined to think he had been taken prisoner because Pierre's
strong hand, impelled by instinctive fear, squeezed his throat ever
tighter and tighter. The Frenchman was about to say something, when
just above their heads, terrible and low, a cannon ball whistled,
and it seemed to Pierre that the French officer's head had been torn
off, so swiftly had he ducked it.
War and Peace |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: of pupils; or they may have been the writings of some contemporary
transferred by accident to the more celebrated name of Plato, or of some
Platonist in the next generation who aspired to imitate his master. Not
that on grounds either of language or philosophy we should lightly reject
them. Some difference of style, or inferiority of execution, or
inconsistency of thought, can hardly be considered decisive of their
spurious character. For who always does justice to himself, or who writes
with equal care at all times? Certainly not Plato, who exhibits the
greatest differences in dramatic power, in the formation of sentences, and
in the use of words, if his earlier writings are compared with his later
ones, say the Protagoras or Phaedrus with the Laws. Or who can be expected
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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 Crowd by Gustave le Bon: been transformed into a crowd puts them in possession of a sort
of collective mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a
manner quite different from that in which each individual of them
would feel, think, and act were he in a state of isolation.
There are certain ideas and feelings which do not come into
being, or do not transform themselves into acts except in the
case of individuals forming a crowd. The psychological crowd is
a provisional being formed of heterogeneous elements, which for a
moment are combined, exactly as the cells which constitute a
living body form by their reunion a new being which displays
characteristics very different from those possessed by each of
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