| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Reign of King Edward the Third by William Shakespeare: QUEEN PHILLIP.
Be this a token to express my joy,
[Kisses him.]
For inward passion will not let me speak.
PRINCE EDWARD.
My gracious father, here receive the gift.
[Presenting him with King John's crown.]
This wreath of conquest and reward of war,
Got with as mickle peril of our lives,
As ere was thing of price before this day;
Install your highness in your proper right:
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Before Adam by Jack London: and crossed a wide open space, with the whole band
grunting, bristling, and tusk-gnashing at my heels.
If I had tripped or stumbled in that open space, there
would have been no chance for me. But I didn't. And I
didn't care whether I did or not. I was in such mood
that I would have faced old Saber-Tooth himself, or a
score of arrow-shooting Fire People. Such was the
madness of love...with me. With the Swift One it was
different. She was very wise. She did not take any
real risks, and I remember, on looking back across the
centuries to that wild love-chase, that when the pigs
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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 Adieu by Honore de Balzac: who is tenderly beloved, whose eyes will smile to them at waking, can
understand the sweet yet terrible emotion that shook the colonel's
soul. To him, this sleep was an illusion; the waking might be death,
death in its most awful form. Suddenly, a little goat jumped in three
bounds to the bench, and smelt at Stephanie, who waked at the sound.
She sprang to her feet, but so lightly that the movement did not
frighten the freakish animal; then she caught sight of Philippe, and
darted away, followed by her four-footed friend, to a hedge of elders;
there she uttered the same little cry like a frightened bird, which
the two men had heard near the other gate. Then she climbed an acacia,
and nestling into its tufted top, she watched the stranger with the
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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 An International Episode by Henry James: the ponies, where, although he was not a particularly acute observer,
he saw much to entertain him--especially the ladies just mentioned,
who wandered up and down with the appearance of a kind of aimless
intentness, as if they were looking for something to buy, and who,
tripping in and out of their vehicles, displayed remarkably pretty feet.
It all seemed to Lord Lambeth very odd, and bright, and gay.
Of course, before they got back to the villa, he had had a great
deal of desultory conversation with Bessie Alden.
The young Englishmen spent the whole of that day and the whole
of many successive days in what the French call the intimite
of their new friends. They agreed that it was extremely jolly,
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