| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: While you thought of nothing, and were still too young to play,
Foreign people thought of you in places far away.
Ay, and when you slept, a baby, over all the English lands
Other little children took the volume in their hands;
Other children questioned, in their homes across the seas:
Who was little Louis, won't you tell us, mother, please?
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Now that you have spelt your lesson, lay it down and go and play,
Seeking shells and seaweed on the sands of Monterey,
Watching all the mighty whalebones, lying buried by the breeze,
Tiny sandpipers, and the huge Pacific seas.
A Child's Garden of Verses |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll: Which the Beaver could well understand.
"Taking Three as the subject to reason about--
A convenient number to state--
We add Seven, and Ten, and then multiply out
By One Thousand diminished by Eight.
"The result we proceed to divide, as you see,
By Nine Hundred and Ninety Two:
Then subtract Seventeen, and the answer must be
Exactly and perfectly true.
"The method employed I would gladly explain,
While I have it so clear in my head,
The Hunting of the Snark |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: lack of intelligence, and those big abundant ruins, and it
strengthened my belief in a perfect conquest of Nature. For
after the battle comes Quiet. Humanity had been strong,
energetic, and intelligent, and had used all its abundant
vitality to alter the conditions under which it lived. And now
came the reaction of the altered conditions.
`Under the new conditions of perfect comfort and security,
that restless energy, that with us is strength, would become
weakness. Even in our own time certain tendencies and desires,
once necessary to survival, are a constant source of failure.
Physical courage and the love of battle, for instance, are no
The Time Machine |
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 Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: "The Amontillado!" ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered
from his astonishment.
"True," I replied; "the Amontillado."
As I said these words I busied myself among the pile of bones
of which I have before spoken. Throwing them aside, I soon un-
covered a quantity of building stone and mortar. With these
materials and with the aid of my trowel, I began vigorously to wall
up the entrance of the niche.
I had scarcely laid the first tier of the masonry when I discovered
that the intoxication of Fortunato had in a great measure worn off.
The earliest indication I had of this was a low moaning cry from
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