| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: If two men meet in a salon, one of whom has the right to hate or
despise the other, whether from a knowledge of some private and latent
fact which degrades him, or of a secret condition, or even of a coming
revenge, those two men divine each other's souls, and are able to
measure the gulf which separates or ought to separate them. They
observe each other unconsciously; their minds are preoccupied by
themselves; through their looks, their gestures, an indefinable
emanation of their thought transpires; there's a magnet between them.
I don't know which has the strongest power of attraction, vengeance or
crime, hatred or insult. Like a priest who cannot consecrate the host
in presence of an evil spirit, each is ill at ease and distrustful;
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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 In Darkest England and The Way Out by General William Booth: not a secret source of strength. It is in most cases--it would be in
my own--the secret of paralysis. If I did not feel my Father's hand
in the darkness, and hear His voice in the silence of the night watches
bidding me put my hand to this thing, I would shrink back dismayed;--
but as it is I dare not.
How many are there who have made similar attempts and have failed, and
we have heard of them no more! Yet none of them proposed to deal with
more than the mere fringe of the evil which, God helping me, I will try
to face in all its immensity. Most Schemes that are put forward for
the Improvement of the Circumstances of the People are either avowedly
or actually limited to those whose condition least needs amelioration.
 In Darkest England and The Way Out |