| 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: I asked what he thought would happen. He answered in
almost the same words as those used by Martov, that life
itself would compel the Bolsheviks to alter their policy or
to go. Sooner or later the peasants would make their will
felt, and they were against the bourgeoisie and against the
Bolsheviks. No bourgeois reaction could win permanently
against the Soviet, because it could have nothing to offer,
no idea for which people would fight. If by any chance
Kolchak, Denikin and Co. were to win, they would have to
kill in tens of thousands where the Bolsheviks have had to
kill in hundreds, and the result would be the complete ruin
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: Here the princess shook her head, swaying the beautiful blond curls,
full of heather, with a touching gesture. This plaintive expression of
grievous doubts and hidden sorrows is indescribable. Daniel understood
them all; and he looked at the princess with keen emotion.
"And yet, the night on which I last saw him, after the revolution of
July, I was on the point of giving way to the desire I felt to take
his hand and press it before all the world, under the peristyle of the
opera-house. But the thought came to me that such a proof of gratitude
might be misinterpreted; like so many other little things done from
noble motives which are called to-day the follies of Madame de
Maufrigneuse--things which I can never explain, for none but my son
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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 Child of Storm by H. Rider Haggard: them by work in many years. Therefore I must take them from a certain
tribe I know which is at war with the Zulus. But this I cannot do
unless I have a gun. If I had a good gun, Inkoosi--one that only goes
off when it is asked, and not of its own fancy, I who have some name
could persuade a number of men whom I know, who once were servants of my
father, or their sons, to be my companions in this venture."
"Do I understand that you wish me to give you one of my good guns with
two mouths to it (i.e. double-barrelled), a gun worth at least twelve
oxen, for nothing, O Saduko?" I asked in a cold and scandalised voice.
"Not so, O Watcher-by-Night," he answered; "not so, O
He-who-sleeps-with-one-eye-open" (another free and difficult rendering
Child of Storm |
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 Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: pronounce the j;--and the songs of the cane-fields,--strangely
pleasing, full of quaverings and long plaintive notes, like the
call of the cranes ... Tou', tou' pays blanc! ... Afterward
Camaniere had leased the place;--everything must have been
changed; even the songs could not be the same. Tou', tou' pays
blare!--Danie qui commande ...
And then Paris; and the university, with its wild
under-life,--some debts, some follies; and the frequent fond
letters from home to which he might have replied so much
oftener;--Paris, where talent is mediocrity; Paris, with its
thunders and its splendors and its seething of passion;--Paris,
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