| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from United States Declaration of Independence: uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their
Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them
into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing
with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions,
to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers,
incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large
for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed
to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States;
United States Declaration of Independence |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Agesilaus by Xenophon: possessions suited to a man, and being devoted to the breeding of dogs
and horses in large numbers for the chase and warfare, he persuaded
his sister Cynisca to rear chariot horses,[9] and thus by her
victory[10] showed that to keep a stud of that sort, however much it
might be a mark of wealth, was hardly a proof of manly virtue. And
surely in the following opinion we may discern plainly the generosity
of him who entertained it. To win victories over private persons in a
chariot race does not add one tittle to a man's renown. He, rather,
who holds his city dear beyond all things else, who has himself sunk
deep into the heart of her affections, who has obtained to himself all
over the world a host of friends and those the noblest, who can outdo
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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 Rescue by Joseph Conrad: spirits of the dead haunt the places where the living have sinned
and toiled, then they might have seen a white long-boat, pulled
by eight oars and steered by a man sunburnt and bearded, a
cabbage-leaf hat on head, and pistols in his belt, skirting the
black mud, full of twisted roots, in search of a likely opening.
Creek after creek was passed and the boat crept on slowly like a
monstrous water-spider with a big body and eight slender legs. .
. . Did you follow with your ghostly eyes the quest of this
obscure adventurer of yesterday, you shades of forgotten
adventurers who, in leather jerkins and sweating under steel
helmets, attacked with long rapiers the palisades of the strange
The Rescue |
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 Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: the last glimpse of the departed sun.
On the right was a reedy point running out into the bay, and behind
it, on a slight rise of ground, an antique house with tall white
pillars. It was but dimly outlined in the gathering shadows; yet
one could imagine its stately, formal aspect, its precise garden
with beds of old-fashioned flowers and straight paths bordered with
box, and a little arbour overgrown with honeysuckle. I know not by
what subtlety of delicate and indescribable touches--a slight
inclination in one of the pillars, a broken line which might
indicate an unhinged gate, a drooping resignation in the foliage of
the yellowing trees, a tone of sadness in the blending of subdued
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