The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Tanach: Numbers 25: 16 And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying:
Numbers 25: 17 'Harass the Midianites, and smite them;
Numbers 25: 18 for they harass you, by their wiles wherewith they have beguiled you in the matter of Peor, and in the matter of Cozbi, the daughter of the prince of Midian, their sister, who was slain on the day of the plague in the matter of Peor.'
Numbers 26: 1 (25:19) And it came to pass after the plague, (26:1) that the LORD spoke unto Moses and unto Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest, saying:
Numbers 26: 2 'Take the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, from twenty years old and upward, by their fathers' houses, all that are able to go forth to war in Israel.'
Numbers 26: 3 And Moses and Eleazar the priest spoke with them in the plains of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho, saying:
Numbers 26: 4 'Take the sum of the people, from twenty years old and upward, as the LORD commanded Moses and the children of Israel, that came forth out of the land of Egypt.'
Numbers 26: 5 Reuben, the first-born of Israel: the sons of Reuben: of Hanoch, the family of the Hanochites; of Pallu, the family of the Palluites;
Numbers 26: 6 of Hezron, the family of the Hezronites; of Carmi, the family of the Carmites.
Numbers 26: 7 These are the families of the Reubenites; and they that were numbered of them were forty and three thousand and seven hundred and thirty.
 The Tanach |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: not had time to live with his old woman, to show her he was
sorry for her before she died. He had lived with her for forty
years, but those forty years had passed by as it were in a fog.
What with drunkenness, quarreling, and poverty, there had been no
feeling of life. And, as though to spite him, his old woman died
at the very time when he felt he was sorry for her, that he could
not live without her, and that he had behaved dreadfully badly to
her.
"Why, she used to go the round of the village," he remembered. "I
sent her out myself to beg for bread. What a business! She ought
to have lived another ten years, the silly thing; as it is I'll
 The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |