| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: "'Best not,' hissed the Lakeman.
"'But I must,'--and the rope was once more drawn back for the stroke.
"Steelkilt here hissed out something, inaudible to all but the
Captain; who, to the amazement of all hands, started back, paced the
deck rapidly two or three times, and then suddenly throwing down his
rope, said, 'I won't do it--let him go--cut him down: d'ye hear?'
But as the junior mates were hurrying to execute the order, a pale
man, with a bandaged head, arrested them--Radney the chief mate.
Ever since the blow, he had lain in his berth; but that morning,
hearing the tumult on the deck, he had crept out, and thus far had
watched the whole scene. Such was the state of his mouth, that he
Moby Dick |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: revery or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a
light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked
at each other and smiled as if at their own nervousness and folly,
and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming
of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then,
after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and
six hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another
chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and
tremulousness and meditation as before.
But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent
revel. The tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye
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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 Chinese Boy and Girl by Isaac Taylor Headland: but that isn't bad."
When a child is born it is considered one year old, and its years
are reckoned not from its birthdays but from its New Year's days.
If it has the good fortune to be born the day before two days old
it is reckoned two years old being one year old when born and two
years old on its first New Year's day.
The first great event in a child's life occurs when it is
one month old. It is then given its first public reception.
Its head is shaved amid kicking and screaming, its mother is up
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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 Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: work; which is capable more or less of madness, whether solitary
or epidemic. It may be very active; it may be very quick at
catching at new and grand ideas--all the more quick, perhaps, on
account of its own secret malaise and self-discontent; but it will
be irritable, spasmodic, hysterical. It will be apt to mistake
capacity of talk for capacity of action, excitement for
earnestness, virulence for force, and, too often; cruelty for
justice. It will lose manful independence, individuality,
originality; and when men act, they will act from the
consciousness of personal weakness, like sheep rushing over a
hedge, leaning against each other, exhorting each other to be
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