| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells: The scene upon which Graham looked was very
wild and strange. The snow had now almost ceased;
only a belated flake passed now and again across the
picture. But the broad stretch of level before them
was a ghastly white, broken only by gigantic masses
and moving shapes and lengthy strips of impenetrable
darkness, vast ungainly Titans of shadow. All about
them, huge metallic structures, iron girders, inhumanly
vast as it seemed to him, interlaced, and the
edges of wind-wheels, scarcely moving in the lull, I
passed in great shining curves steeper and steeper up
When the Sleeper Wakes |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: up; she was sick: not from fear, I'm certain, but from pain. He
carried her in; I followed, grumbling execrations and vengeance.
"What prey, Robert?" hallooed Linton from the entrance. "Skulker
has caught a little girl, sir," he replied; "and there's a lad
here," he added, making a clutch at me, "who looks an out-and-
outer! Very like the robbers were for putting them through the
window to open the doors to the gang after all were asleep, that
they might murder us at their ease. Hold your tongue, you foul-
mouthed thief, you! you shall go to the gallows for this. Mr.
Linton, sir, don't lay by your gun." "No, no, Robert," said the
old fool. "The rascals knew that yesterday was my rent-day: they
Wuthering Heights |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Desert Gold by Zane Grey: XIX
The Secret of Forlorn River
In the early morning Gale, seeking solitude where he could brood
over his trouble, wandered alone. It was not easy for him to elude
the Yaqui, and just at the moment when he had cast himself down in
a secluded shady corner the Indian appeared, noiseless, shadowy,
mysterious as always.
"Malo," he said, in his deep voice.
"Yes, Yaqui, it's bad--very bad," replied Gale.
The Indian had been told of the losses sustained by Belding and
his rangers.
Desert Gold |
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 Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: truth of the ideas of sense; for we are not infrequently deceived in the
same manner when awake; as when persons in the jaundice see all objects
yellow, or when the stars or bodies at a great distance appear to us much
smaller than they are. For, in fine, whether awake or asleep, we ought
never to allow ourselves to be persuaded of the truth of anything unless
on the evidence of our reason. And it must be noted that I say of our
reason, and not of our imagination or of our senses: thus, for example,
although we very clearly see the sun, we ought not therefore to determine
that it is only of the size which our sense of sight presents; and we may
very distinctly imagine the head of a lion joined to the body of a goat,
without being therefore shut up to the conclusion that a chimaera exists;
Reason Discourse |
