| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare: Which I by lacking have supposed dead;
And there reigns Love, and all Love's loving parts,
And all those friends which I thought buried.
How many a holy and obsequious tear
Hath dear religious love stol'n from mine eye,
As interest of the dead, which now appear
But things remov'd that hidden in thee lie!
Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,
Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,
Who all their parts of me to thee did give,
That due of many now is thine alone:
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: of many years of toil and endeavor; until he has reached the
grade to which he aspires he has accomplished nothing; not till
he reaches that grade does his career seem to begin. A desperate
ambition cannot fail to be kindled in a man thus incessantly
goaded on by his youth, his wants, his passions, the spirit of
his age, his hopes, and his age, his hopes, and his fears.
Non-commissioned officers are therefore bent on war - on war
always, and at any cost; but if war be denied them, then they
desire revolutions to suspend the authority of established
regulations, and to enable them, aided by the general confusion
and the political passions of the time, to get rid of their
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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 Proposed Roads To Freedom by Bertrand Russell: He supposed that this process must involve a diminution,
not only in the number of businesses, but also
in the number of capitalists. Indeed, he usually
spoke as though each business were owned by a single
man. Accordingly, he expected that men would be
continually driven from the ranks of the capitalists
into those of the proletariat, and that the capitalists,
in the course of time, would grow numerically weaker
and weaker. He applied this principle not only to
industry but also to agriculture. He expected to
find the landowners growing fewer and fewer while
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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 Youth by Joseph Conrad: and enslaving, like a charm, like a whispered promise of
mysterious delight.
"We had been pulling this finishing spell for eleven
hours. Two pulled, and he whose turn it was to rest sat
at the tiller. We had made out the red light in that bay
and steered for it, guessing it must mark some small
coasting port. We passed two vessels, outlandish and
high-sterned, sleeping at anchor, and, approaching the
light, now very dim, ran the boat's nose against the end
of a jutting wharf. We were blind with fatigue. My
men dropped the oars and fell off the thwarts as if dead.
Youth |
