| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Russia in 1919 by Arthur Ransome: peasant women at the little chapel of the Iberian Virgin,
where there was a blaze of candles. On the wall of what
used, I think, to be the old town hall, close by the gate, some
fanatic agnostic has set a white inscription on a tablet,
"Religion is opium for the People." The tablet, which has
been there a long time, is in shape not unlike the customary
frame for a sacred picture. I saw an old peasant, evidently
unable to read, cross himself solemnly before the chapel,
and then, turning to the left, cross himself as solemnly
before this anti-religious inscription. It is perhaps
worth while to remark in passing that the new Communist
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: distinguished-looking men, of whom one, at any rate, wears an order;
or else a servant out of livery follows her at a distance of ten
yards. She displays no gaudy colors, no open-worked stockings, no
over-elaborate waist-buckle, no embroidered frills to her drawers
fussing round her ankles. You will see that she is shod with prunella
shoes, with sandals crossed over extremely fine cotton stockings, or
plain gray silk stockings; or perhaps she wears boots of the most
exquisite simplicity. You notice that her gown is made of a neat and
inexpensive material, but made in a way that surprises more than one
woman of the middle class; it is almost always a long pelisse, with
bows to fasten it, and neatly bound with fine cord or an imperceptible
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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 Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: a way out of a dilemma, escaping the necessity of placing
her father's royal guest under forcible restraint,
and at the same time separating the two princes,
who otherwise would have been at each other's throat
the moment she and the guard had departed.
Beside the pimalia stood Astok, his dark eyes narrowed
to mere slits of hate beneath his lowering brows as he
watched the retreating forms of the woman who had aroused
the fiercest passions of his nature and the man whom he
now believed to be the one who stood between his love
and its consummation.
Thuvia, Maid of Mars |
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 Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: from England; of course, the subsequent pretence for taxing America,
and the bloody contest it occasioned, would have been avoided.
But such mistakes are not new; history is full of the errors of states
and princes.
Look round the habitable world, how few
Know their own good, or, knowing it, pursue!
Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not
generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into
execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore
seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forc'd by the occasion.
The Governor of Pennsylvania, in sending it down to the Assembly,
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
