| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: "But do not let the suggestions of timidity overpower your better
reason; the danger of neglect can be but as the probability of the
obligation, which, when you consider it with freedom, you find very
little, and that little growing every day less. Open your heart to
the influence of the light, which from time to time breaks in upon
you; when scruples importune you, which you in your lucid moments
know to be vain, do not stand to parley, but fly to business or to
Pekuah; and keep this thought always prevalent, that you are only
one atom of the mass of humanity, and have neither such virtue nor
vice as that you should be singled out for supernatural favours or
afflictions."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: contrast to the roof with its alternating spaces of whiteness and
color, the two aisles lay to right and left in shadow so deep that the
faint gray outlines of their hundred shafts were scarcely visible in
the gloom. I gazed at the marvelous arcades, the scroll-work, the
garlands, the curving lines, and arabesques interwoven and interlaced,
and strangely lighted, until by sheer dint of gazing my perceptions
became confused, and I stood upon the borderland between illusion and
reality, taken in the snare set for the eyes, and almost light-headed
by reason of the multitudinous changes of the shapes about me.
Imperceptibly a mist gathered about the carven stonework, and I only
beheld it through a haze of fine golden dust, like the motes that
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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 Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: She breathed heavily through her nostrils, as if she had
been running. And suddenly she began to pray, not with the
sounding, unctions thees and thous of the Church and Bible;
not elegantly or eloquently, with well-rounded phrases, as
the righteous pray, but threateningly, hoarsely, as a
desperate woman prays. It was not a prayer so much as a cry
of defiance---a challenge.
"Look here, God!" and there was nothing profane as she said
it. "Look here, God! She's done her part. It's up to You
now. Don't You let her die! Look at her. Look at her!"
She choked and shook herself angrily, and went on. "Is that
Fanny Herself |
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 The Jungle Tales of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: watcher in the old tree--Horta, the boar, whose formidable
tusks and diabolical temper preserved him from all but
the most ferocious or most famished of the largest carnivora.
But to Tarzan, meat was meat; naught that was edible or tasty
might pass a hungry Tarzan unchallenged and unattacked.
In hunger, as in battle, the ape-man out-savaged the
dreariest denizens of the jungle. He knew neither fear
nor mercy, except upon rare occasions when some strange,
inexplicable force stayed his hand--a force inexplicable
to him, perhaps, because of his ignorance of his own origin
and of all the forces of humanitarianism and civilization
The Jungle Tales of Tarzan |
