| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne: "_Spetelsk,_" said he.
"A leper!" my uncle repeated.
This word produced a repulsive effect. The horrible disease of
leprosy is too common in Iceland; it is not contagious, but
hereditary, and lepers are forbidden to marry.
These apparitions were not cheerful, and did not throw any charm over
the less and less attractive landscapes. The last tufts of grass had
disappeared from beneath our feet. Not a tree was to be seen, unless
we except a few dwarf birches as low as brushwood. Not an animal but
a few wandering ponies that their owners would not feed. Sometimes we
could see a hawk balancing himself on his wings under the grey cloud,
Journey to the Center of the Earth |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Paradise Lost by John Milton: As from blest voices, uttering joy, Heaven rung
With jubilee, and loud Hosannas filled
The eternal regions: Lowly reverent
Towards either throne they bow, and to the ground
With solemn adoration down they cast
Their crowns inwove with amarant and gold;
Immortal amarant, a flower which once
In Paradise, fast by the tree of life,
Began to bloom; but soon for man's offence
To Heaven removed, where first it grew, there grows,
And flowers aloft shading the fount of life,
Paradise Lost |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: The result of our having everything out was simply to reduce
our situation to the last rigor of its elements. She herself had
seen nothing, not the shadow of a shadow, and nobody in the house
but the governess was in the governess's plight; yet she accepted
without directly impugning my sanity the truth as I gave it to her,
and ended by showing me, on this ground, an awestricken tenderness,
an expression of the sense of my more than questionable privilege,
of which the very breath has remained with me as that of the sweetest
of human charities.
What was settled between us, accordingly, that night, was that we
thought we might bear things together; and I was not even sure that,
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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 The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: "Suppose that it were possible to read the minds of all the young men
in Paris at one glance (as, it appears, will be done at the Day of
Judgment with all the millions upon millions that have groveled in all
spheres, and worn all uniforms or the uniform of nature), and to ask
them whether happiness at six-and-twenty is or is not made up of the
following items--to wit, to own a saddle-horse and a tilbury, or a
cab, with a fresh, rosy-faced Toby Joby Paddy no bigger than your
fist, and to hire an unimpeachable brougham for twelve francs an
evening; to appear elegantly arrayed, agreeably to the laws that
regulate a man's clothes, at eight o'clock, at noon, four o'clock in
the afternoon, and in the evening; to be well received at every
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