| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: things to learn yet--I hope so; and by economizing and not hurrying
too fast I think they will last weeks and weeks. I hope so. When you
cast up a feather it sails away on the air and goes out of sight;
then you throw up a clod and it doesn't. It comes down, every time.
I have tried it and tried it, and it is always so. I wonder why
it is? Of course it DOESN'T come down, but why should it SEEM to?
I suppose it is an optical illusion. I mean, one of them is.
I don't know which one. It may be the feather, it may be the clod;
I can't prove which it is, I can only demonstrate that one or the other
is a fake, and let a person take his choice.
By watching, I know that the stars are not going to last.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: the olden time. Maitre Mathias was a noble and venerable relic of the
notaries, obscure great men, who gave no receipt for the millions
entrusted to them, but returned those millions in the sacks they were
delivered in, tied with the same twine; men who fulfilled their trusts
to the letter, drew honest inventories, took fatherly interest in
their clients, often barring the way to extravagance and dissipation,
--men to whom families confided their secrets, and who felt so
responsible for any error in their deeds that they meditated long and
carefully over them. Never during his whole notarial life, had any
client found reason to complain of a bad investment or an ill-placed
mortgage. His own fortune, slowly but honorably acquired, had come to
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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 Republic by Plato: acquiesced.
Then, I continued, no physician, in so far as he is a physician, considers
his own good in what he prescribes, but the good of his patient; for the
true physician is also a ruler having the human body as a subject, and is
not a mere money-maker; that has been admitted?
Yes.
And the pilot likewise, in the strict sense of the term, is a ruler of
sailors and not a mere sailor?
That has been admitted.
And such a pilot and ruler will provide and prescribe for the interest of
the sailor who is under him, and not for his own or the ruler's interest?
The Republic |
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 La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: A gleam of joy shone in the dying woman's eyes. Two tears brimmed
over, and fell over her fevered cheeks; then a deep sigh escaped
between her lips. The sudden joy of finding the father's spirit in the
son, who had grown all at once to be a man, almost killed her.
"Angel of heaven," she cried, weeping, "by one word you have effaced
all my sorrows. Ah! I can bear them.--This is my son," she said, "I
bore, I reared this man," and she raised her hands above her, and
clasped them as if in ecstasy, then she lay back on the pillow.
"Mother, your face is growing pale!" cried the lad.
"Some one must go for a priest," she answered, with a dying voice.
Louis wakened Annette, and the terrified old woman hurried to the
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