| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: hours, and hours seemed to him minutes. He was surprised when
Lizaveta Petrovna asked him to light a
candle behind a screen, and he found that it was five o'clock in
the afternoon. If he had been told it was only ten o'clock in the
morning he would not have been more surprised. Where he was all
this time, he knew as little as the time of anything. He saw her
swollen face, sometimes bewildered and in agony, sometimes
smiling and trying to reassure him. He saw the old princess too,
flushed and overwrought, with her gray curls in disorder, forcing
herself to gulp down her tears, biting her lips; he saw Dolly too
and the doctor, smoking fat cigarettes, and Lizaveta Petrovna
Anna Karenina |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Adam Bede by George Eliot: with chattering, as if folks who stand by and look on knew a deal
better what the trouble was than those who have to bear it. I've
had to do with such folks in my time--in the south, when I was in
trouble myself. Mr. Irwine is to be a witness himself, by and by,
on her side, you know, to speak to her character and bringing up."
"But the other evidence...does it go hard against her!" said Adam.
"What do you think, Mr. Massey? Tell me the truth."
"Yes, my lad, yes. The truth is the best thing to tell. It must
come at last. The doctors' evidence is heavy on her--is heavy.
But she's gone on denying she's had a child from first to last.
These poor silly women-things--they've not the sense to know it's
Adam Bede |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Tin Woodman of Oz by L. Frank Baum: really had no right to disturb their peace and comfort;
so let us go away."
They easily found the place where they had forced
their way into the enclosure, so the Tin Woodman pushed
aside the underbrush and started first along the path.
The Scarecrow followed next and last came Woot, who
looked back and saw that the Loons were still clinging
to their perches on the trees and watching their former
captives with frightened eyes.
"I guess they're glad to see the last of us,"
remarked the boy, and laughing at the happy ending of
The Tin Woodman of Oz |
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 Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells: proposition: that human society had arrived at a phase when
the complete restatement of its fundamental ideas had become
urgently necessary, a phase when the slow, inadequate,
partial adjustments to two centuries of changing conditions
had to give place to a rapid reconstruction of new
fundamental ideas. And it was a fact of great value in the
drama of these secret dreams that the directive force towards
this fundamentally reconstructed world should be the pen of
an unassuming Harley Street physician, hitherto not suspected
of any great excesses of enterprise.
The written portions of this book were already in a highly
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