| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: trying to get her mind on her problem, trying to figure some way
out, but each time she collected her thoughts, fresh gusts of rage
and fear shook her. There must be some way out, there must be
someone somewhere who had money she could borrow. Money couldn't
just dry up and blow away. Somebody had to have money. Then the
laughing words of Ashley came back to her:
"Only one person, Rhett Butler . . . who has money."
Rhett Butler. She walked quickly into the parlor and shut the door
behind her. The dim gloom of drawn blinds and winter twilight
closed about her. No one would think of hunting for her here and
she wanted time to think, undisturbed. The idea which had just
Gone With the Wind |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Before Adam by Jack London: momentarily louder, and soon I saw him approaching, my
father--at least, by all the evidence of the times, I
am driven to conclude that he was my father.
He was not an extremely prepossessing father, as
fathers go. He seemed half man, and half ape, and yet
not ape, and not yet man. I fail to describe him.
There is nothing like him to-day on the earth, under
the earth, nor in the earth. He was a large man in his
day, and he must have weighed all of a hundred and
thirty pounds. His face was broad and flat, and the
eyebrows over-hung the eyes. The eyes themselves were
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft: mnemonic lapse, I was for some time kept under strict medical
care.
When I saw that my attempts to conceal the lapse had failed,
I admitted it openly, and became eager for information of all
sorts. Indeed, it seemed to the doctors that I lost interest in
my proper personality as soon as I found the case of amnesia accepted
as a natural thing.
They noticed that my chief efforts were
to master certain points in history, science, art, language, and
folklore - some of them tremendously abstruse, and some childishly
simple - which remained, very oddly in many cases, outside my
Shadow out of Time |
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 Mysterious Island by Jules Verne: was to go south, exactly opposite to that part of the coast where Harding
might have landed. After a walk of a mile and a half, the shore presented
no curve which would permit them to return to the north. This promontory,
of which they had turned the point, must be attached to the mainland. The
castaways, although their strength was nearly exhausted, still marched
courageously forward, hoping every moment to meet with a sudden angle which
would set them in the first direction. What was their disappointment, when,
after trudging nearly two miles, having reached an elevated point composed
of slippery rocks, they found themselves again stopped by the sea.
"We are on an islet," said Pencroft, "and we have surveyed it from one
extremity to the other."
The Mysterious Island |
