| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: "Turn it."
"Major Jay Gatsby," I read, "For Valour Extraordinary."
"Here's another thing I always carry. A souvenir of Oxford days. It was
taken in Trinity Quad--the man on my left is now the Earl of Dorcaster."
It was a photograph of half a dozen young men in blazers loafing in an
archway through which were visible a host of spires. There was Gatsby,
looking a little, not much, younger--with a cricket bat in his hand.
Then it was all true. I saw the skins of tigers flaming in his palace
on the Grand Canal; I saw him opening a chest of rubies to ease, with
their crimson-lighted depths, the gnawings of his broken heart.
"I'm going to make a big request of you to-day," he said, pocketing his
The Great Gatsby |
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 Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: satisfied with the consent of his other faculties and
appetites. If he has no such elective taste, by the very
principle on which he chooses any pursuit at all he must
choose the most honest and serviceable, and not the most
highly remunerated. We have here an external problem, not
from or to ourself, but flowing from the constitution of
society; and we have our own soul with its fixed design of
righteousness. All that can be done is to present the
problem in proper terms, and leave it to the soul of the
individual. Now, the problem to the poor is one of
necessity: to earn wherewithal to live, they must find
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