| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: production itself, so the disappearance of class culture is to
him identical with the disappearance of all culture.
That culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for the enormous
majority, a mere training to act as a machine.
But don't wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended
abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois
notions of freedom, culture, law, etc. Your very ideas are but
the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and
bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of
your class made into a law for all, a will, whose essential
character and direction are determined by the economical
The Communist Manifesto |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Always just far enough behind to be out of sight,
he kept pace with the little column as it marched
through the torrid heat of the morning, until a little
after noon he was startled by the sudden cry
of a woman in distress, and the answering shout of a man.
The voices came from a point in the jungle a little to
his right and behind him, and without waiting for the
column to return, or even to ascertain if they had
heard the cries, Sing ran rapidly in the direction
of the alarm. For a time he saw nothing, but was guided
by the snapping of twigs and the rustling of bushes ahead,
The Monster Men |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Kidnapped Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum: and then, fortified by this powerful support, Wisk flew back to where
Nuter and Peter and Kilter awaited him, and the four counseled
together and laid plans to rescue their master from his enemies.
It is possible that Santa Claus was not as merry as usual during the
night that succeeded his capture. For although he had faith in the
judgment of his little friends he could not avoid a certain amount of
worry, and an anxious look would creep at times into his kind old eyes
as he thought of the disappointment that might await his dear little
children. And the Daemons, who guarded him by turns, one after
another, did not neglect to taunt him with contemptuous words in his
helpless condition.
A Kidnapped Santa Claus |
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 Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: apparitions. For these no bond of humanity exists, no feeling
of kinship is awakened by their peril; they will assist at a
shipwreck, like the fisher-folk of Lunga, as spectators, and
when the fatal scene is over, and the beach strewn with dead
bodies, they will fence their fields with mahogany, and, after
a decent grace, sup claret to their porridge. It is not
wickedness: it is scarce evil; it is only, in its highest
power, the sense of isolation and the wise disinterestedness
of feeble and poor races. Think how many viking ships had
sailed by these islands in the past, how many vikings had
landed, and raised turmoil, and broken up the barrows of the
|
