| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Tin Woodman of Oz by L. Frank Baum: With its four great legs it advanced straight toward
the Scarecrow, but the Tin Woodman and the Tin Soldier
both sprang in front of their friend and flourished
their weapons.
"Keep off!" said the Tin Woodman, warningly, or I'll
chop you with my axe."
"Keep off!" said the Tin Soldier, "or I'll cut you
with my sword."
"Would you really do that?" asked the Hip-po-gy-raf,
in a disappointed voice.
"We would," they both replied, and the Tin Woodman
The Tin Woodman of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: in Brazil and the Antilles and Mexico and the far West--it
was in the face of Lady Cressage that he seemed to discern
the most genuine interest.
Why should she frighten him, then, by daylight? The
whimsical theory that the wine at dinner had given him
a spurious courage occurred to him. He shrugged his
shoulders at it, and, with his hands in his pockets,
turned toward the stables.
The stable-yard is, from some points of view,
the prettiest thing about Hadlow. There is a big,
uneven, grass-grown space, in the centre of which,
The Market-Place |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: pivot-hole; but suddenly finding his path made plain to him by
elbowed lances of fire.
Now, as the lightning rod to a spire on shore is intended to carry
off the perilous fluid into the soil; so the kindred rod which at sea
some ships carry to each mast, is intended to conduct it into the
water. But as this conductor must descend to considerable depth,
that its end may avoid all contact with the hull; and as moreover, if
kept constantly towing there, it would be liable to many mishaps,
besides interfering not a little with some of the rigging, and more
or less impeding the vessel's way in the water; because of all this,
the lower parts of a ship's lightning-rods are not always overboard;
Moby Dick |
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 Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: I was ignorant, considered me as a novice whom they had a right to
cheat, and who was to learn, at the usual expense, the art of
fraud. They exposed me to the theft of servants and the exaction
of officers, and saw me plundered upon false pretences, without any
advantage to themselves but that of rejoicing in the superiority of
their own knowledge."
"Stop a moment," said the Prince; "is there such depravity in man
as that he should injure another without benefit to himself? I can
easily conceive that all are pleased with superiority; but your
ignorance was merely accidental, which, being neither your crime
nor your folly, could afford them no reason to applaud themselves;
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