| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: how I had thrown the man over my head and also make him a present
of the "bang-spear," as he called it. I refused to give him my
rifle, but promised to show him the trick he wished to learn if
he would guide me in the right direction. He told me that he
would do so tomorrow, that it was too late today and that I might
come to their village and spend the night with them. I was loath
to lose so much time; but the fellow was obdurate, and so I
accompanied them. The two dead men they left where they had
fallen, nor gave them a second glance--thus cheap is life upon Caspak.
These people also were cave-dwellers, but their caves showed the
result of a higher intelligence that brought them a step nearer
The Land that Time Forgot |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: it is held by plain men of no pretensions that his mouth is, in the
circumstance, almost necessarily closed. Your Church and Damien's
were in Hawaii upon a rivalry to do well: to help, to edify, to set
divine examples. You having (in one huge instance) failed, and
Damien succeeded, I marvel it should not have occurred to you that
you were doomed to silence; that when you had been outstripped in
that high rivalry, and sat inglorious in the midst of your well-
being, in your pleasant room - and Damien, crowned with glories and
horrors, toiled and rotted in that pigsty of his under the cliffs
of Kalawao - you, the elect who would not, were the last man on
earth to collect and propagate gossip on the volunteer who would
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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 A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: dead, the man and his wife, and five children. There', says he, 'they
are shut up; you see a watchman at the door'; and so of other houses.
'Why,' says I, 'what do you here all alone? ' 'Why,' says he, 'I am a
poor, desolate man; it has pleased God I am not yet visited, though my
family is, and one of my children dead.' 'How do you mean, then,' said
I, 'that you are not visited?' 'Why,' says he, 'that's my house' (pointing
to a very little, low-boarded house), 'and there my poor wife and two
children live,' said he, 'if they may be said to live, for my wife and one
of the children are visited, but I do not come at them.' And with that
word I saw the tears run very plentifully down his face; and so they
did down mine too, I assure you.
A Journal of the Plague Year |
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 Chouans by Honore de Balzac: betraying him. I met you; I knew you at once by one of those
presentiments which never mislead us; yet I tried to doubt my
recognition, for the more I came to love you, the more the certainty
appalled me. When I saved you from the hands of Hulot, I abjured the
part I had taken; I resolved to betray the slaughterers, and not their
victim. I did wrong to play with men, with their lives, their
principles, with myself, like a thoughtless girl who sees only
sentiments in this life. I believed you loved me; I let myself cling
to the hope that my life might begin anew; but all things have
revealed my past,--even I myself, perhaps, for you must have
distrusted a woman so passionate as you have found me. Alas! is there
The Chouans |
