| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Heroes by Charles Kingsley: they are all going to their death!'
Then they felled the pines on Pelion, and shaped them with
the axe, and Argus taught them to build a galley, the first
long ship which ever sailed the seas. They pierced her for
fifty oars - an oar for each hero of the crew - and pitched
her with coal-black pitch, and painted her bows with
vermilion; and they named her ARGO after Argus, and worked at
her all day long. And at night Pelias feasted them like a
king, and they slept in his palace-porch.
But Jason went away to the northward, and into the land of
Thrace, till he found Orpheus, the prince of minstrels, where
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: There are times when I reproach myself, when I take myself to task for
my hard heart. Claudine obeys with saintly sweetness. She comes to me,
I tell her to go, she goes, she does not even cry till she is out in
the courtyard. I refuse to see her for a whole week at a time. I tell
her to come at such an hour on Tuesday; and be it midnight or six
o'clock in the morning, ten o'clock, five o'clock, breakfast time,
dinner time, bed time, any particularly inconvenient hour in the day--
she will come, punctual to the minute, beautiful, beautifully dressed,
and enchanting. And she is a married woman, with all the complications
and duties of a household. The fibs that she must invent, the reasons
she must find for conforming to my whims would tax the ingenuity 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 Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Sir John Mandeville: And there spake God first to Samuel, and shewed him the mutation of
Order of Priesthood, and the mystery of the Sacrament. And right
nigh, on the left side, is Gibeon and Ramah and Benjamin, of the
which holy writ speaketh of.
And after men go to Sichem, some-time clept Sichar; and that is in
the province of Samaritans. And there is a full fair vale and a
fructuous; and there is a fair city and a good that men clepe
Neople. And from thence is a journey to Jerusalem. And there is
the well, where our Lord spake to the woman of Samaritan. And
there was wont to be a church, but it is beaten down. Beside that
well King Rehoboam let make two calves of gold and made them to be
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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 A Princess of Parms by Edgar Rice Burroughs: armies of Helium as a prince of the house of Tardos Mors.
The people seemed never to tire of heaping honors upon me,
and no day passed that did not bring some new proof of
their love for my princess, the incomparable Dejah Thoris.
In a golden incubator upon the roof of our palace lay a
snow-white egg. For nearly five years ten soldiers of the
jeddak's Guard had constantly stood over it, and not a day
passed when I was in the city that Dejah Thoris and I did
not stand hand in hand before our little shrine planning for
the future, when the delicate shell should break.
Vivid in my memory is the picture of the last night as we
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