| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: From whence our love gat being, I will do,
As one, who weeps and tells his tale. One day
For our delight we read of Lancelot,
How him love thrall'd. Alone we were, and no
Suspicion near us. Ofttimes by that reading
Our eyes were drawn together, and the hue
Fled from our alter'd cheek. But at one point
Alone we fell. When of that smile we read,
The wished smile, rapturously kiss'd
By one so deep in love, then he, who ne'er
From me shall separate, at once my lips
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Call of the Wild by Jack London: fast to the hard-packed snow. Men offered odds of two to one that
Buck could not budge the sled. A quibble arose concerning the
phrase "break out." O'Brien contended it was Thornton's privilege
to knock the runners loose, leaving Buck to "break it out" from a
dead standstill. Matthewson insisted that the phrase included
breaking the runners from the frozen grip of the snow. A majority
of the men who had witnessed the making of the bet decided in his
favor, whereat the odds went up to three to one against Buck.
There were no takers. Not a man believed him capable of the feat.
Thornton had been hurried into the wager, heavy with doubt; and
now that he looked at the sled itself, the concrete fact, with the
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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 Recruit by Honore de Balzac: Married in the flower of her age to an old and jealous soldier, the
falseness of her position in the midst of a court noted for its
gallantry contributed much, no doubt, to draw a veil of melancholy
over a face where the charms and the vivacity of love must have shone
in earlier days. Obliged to repress the naive impulses and emotions of
a woman when she simply feels them instead of reflecting about them,
passion was still virgin in the depths of her heart. Her principal
attraction came, in fact, from this innate youth, which sometimes,
however, played her false, and gave to her ideas an innocent
expression of desire. Her manner and appearance commanded respect, but
there was always in her bearing, in her voice, a sort of looking
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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 Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: as of a dinner?)--may easily conceive what sharp paroxysms and
exacerbations of his wound my uncle Toby must have undergone upon that
score only.
--My uncle Toby could not philosophize upon it;--'twas enough he felt it
was so,--and having sustained the pain and sorrows of it for three months
together, he was resolved some way or other to extricate himself.
He was one morning lying upon his back in his bed, the anguish and nature
of the wound upon his groin suffering him to lie in no other position, when
a thought came into his head, that if he could purchase such a thing, and
have it pasted down upon a board, as a large map of the fortification of
the town and citadel of Namur, with its environs, it might be a means of
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