| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: we shortened the skiff's painter.
Daylight showed us that between the stern of the skiff and
destruction was no more than a score of feet. And how it did
blow! There were times, in the gusts, when the wind must have
approached a velocity of seventy or eighty miles an hour. But the
anchors held, and so nobly that our final anxiety was that the
for'ard bitts would be jerked clean out of the boat. All day the
sloop alternately ducked her nose under and sat down on her stern;
and it was not till late afternoon that the storm broke in one
last and worst mad gust. For a full five minutes an absolute dead
calm prevailed, and then, with the suddenness of a thunderclap,
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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 Koran: and whosoever is in the earth, and the sun, and the moon, and the
stars, and the mountains, and the beasts, and many among men, though
many a one deserves the torments?
Whomsoever God abases there is none to honour him; verily, God
does what He pleases.
These are two disputants who dispute about their Lord, but those who
misbelieve, for them are cut out garments of fire, there shall be
poured over their heads boiling water, wherewith what is in their
bellies shall be dissolved and their skins too, and for them are maces
of iron. Whenever they desire to come forth therefrom through pain,
they are sent back into it: 'And taste ye the torment of the burning!'
The Koran |
