| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: say, one after the other, the old girl sitting there holding
stakes at the foot of the bed, and the damned little innocents. .
. He broke off. 'I don't often rip out about the kids,' he said;
'but when I do, there's something fetches loose.'
'Captain,' said Herrick faintly, 'is there nothing else?'
'I'll prophesy if you like,' said the captain with renewed
vigour. 'Refuse this, because you think yourself too honest, and
before a month's out you'll be jailed for a sneak-thief. I give
you the word fair. I can see it, Herrick, if you can't; you're
breaking down. Don't think, if you refuse this chance, that
you'll go on doing the evangelical; you're about through with
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: and the consequent nervous indigestion, but mainly by excess of
starch and deficiency of mineral salts in the diet. Job, however,
has never heard of the fasting cure for disease, and so he takes
him a potsherd to scrape himself withal, and he sits among the
ashes--a highly unsanitary procedure enforced by his religious
ritual. So naturally he feels like a worm, and abhors himself,
and cries out: "I know that Thou canst do all things, and that no
purpose of Thine can be restrained." By which utter, unreasoning
humility he succeeds in appeasing the Great Fear, and his friends
make a sacrifice of seven bullocks and seven rams--a feast for a
whole templeful of priests--and then "the Lord gave Job twice as
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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 Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain: the stile leading into Widow Douglas' grounds. Very
well, he thought, let them bury it there; it won't be
hard to find.
Now there was a voice -- a very low voice -- Injun
Joe's:
"Damn her, maybe she's got company -- there's
lights, late as it is."
"I can't see any."
This was that stranger's voice -- the stranger of the
haunted house. A deadly chill went to Huck's heart --
this, then, was the "revenge" job! His thought was,
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer |
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 An Open Letter on Translating by Dr. Martin Luther: primping and preening to continue without cost.
And again, you know that there is not a single passage from God
demanding us to call upon either saints or angels to intercede for
us, and that there is no example of such in the Scriptures. One
finds that the beloved angels spoke with the fathers and the
prophets, but that none of them had ever been asked to intercede
for them. Why even Jacob the patriarch did not ask the angel with
whom he wrestled for any intercession. Instead, he only took from
him a blessing. In fact, on finds the very opposite in revelation
as the angel will not allow itself to be worshipped by John. [Rev.
22] So the worship of saints shows itself as nothing but human
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