| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Before Adam by Jack London: have torn me limb from limb. As it was, to my death I
carried an injured shoulder that ached and went lame in
rainy weather and that was a mark of is handiwork.
The Swift One was sick at the time I received this
injury. It must have been a touch of the malaria from
which we sometimes suffered; but whatever it was, it
made her dull and heavy. She did not have the
accustomed spring to her muscles, and was indeed in
poor shape for flight when Red-Eye cornered her near
the lair of the wild dogs, several miles south from the
caves. Usually, she would have circled around him,
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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 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle: pass, I say!' He dashed her to one side, and, rushing to the
window, cut at me with his heavy weapon. I had let myself go, and
was hanging by the hands to the sill, when his blow fell. I was
conscious of a dull pain, my grip loosened, and I fell into the
garden below.
"I was shaken but not hurt by the fall; so I picked myself up and
rushed off among the bushes as hard as I could run, for I
understood that I was far from being out of danger yet. Suddenly,
however, as I ran, a deadly dizziness and sickness came over me.
I glanced down at my hand, which was throbbing painfully, and
then, for the first time, saw that my thumb had been cut off and
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: stones, enchanters' wands, mysteries and mummeries, were as
fashionable--as they will probably be again some day.
You have all heard of Cagliostro--"pupil of the sage Althotas,
foster-child of the Scheriff of Mecca, probable son of the last king
of Trebizond; named also Acharat, and 'Unfortunate child of Nature;'
by profession healer of diseases, abolisher of wrinkles, friend of
the poor and impotent; grand-master of the Egyptian Mason-lodge of
High Science, spirit-summoner, gold-cook, Grand-Cophta, prophet,
priest, Thaumaturgic moralist, and swindler"--born Giuseppe Balsamo
of Palermo;--of him, and of his lovely Countess Seraphina--nee
Lorenza Feliciani? You have read what Goethe--and still more
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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 Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon: subtlest philosophers. The contemplative atheist is
rare: a Diagoras, a Bion, a Lucian perhaps, and
some others; and yet they seem to be more than
they are; for that all that impugn a received re-
ligion, or superstition, are by the adverse part
branded with the name of atheists. But the great
atheists, indeed are hypocrites; which are ever
handling holy things, but without feeling; so as
they must needs be cauterized in the end. The
causes of atheism are: divisions in religion, if they
be many; for any one main division, addeth zeal to
Essays of Francis Bacon |
