| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: scrambled to the shoulders of his rykor as he heard them coming.
Again it was the officer who had been summoned by U-Van and with
him were three warriors. The one directly behind him was
evidently the same who had brought the food, for his eyes went
wide when he saw Ghek sitting at the table and he looked very
foolish as the dwar turned his stern glance upon him.
"It is even as I said," he cried. "He was not here when I brought
his food."
"But he is here now," said the officer grimly, "and his fetter is
locked about his ankle. Look! it has not been opened--but where
is the key? It should be upon the table at the end opposite him.
The Chessmen of Mars |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: hands, I saw that the sinews stood out like cords of iron. Everything
about him denoted strength of constitution. I noticed in a corner of
the grotto a quantity of moss, and on a sort of ledge carved by nature
on the granite, a loaf of bread, which covered the mouth of an
earthenware jug. Never had my imagination, when it carried me to the
deserts where early Christian anchorites spent their lives, depicted
to my mind a form more grandly religious nor more horribly repentant
than that of this man. You, who have a life-long experience of the
confessional, dear uncle, you may never, perhaps, have seen so awful a
remorse,--remorse sunk in the waves of prayer, the ceaseless
supplication of a mute despair. This fisherman, this mariner, this
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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 An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde: Robert, not for you. You are different. All your life you have
stood apart from others. You have never let the world soil you. To
the world, as to myself, you have been an ideal always. Oh! be that
ideal still. That great inheritance throw not away - that tower of
ivory do not destroy. Robert, men can love what is beneath them -
things unworthy, stained, dishonoured. We women worship when we
love; and when we lose our worship, we lose everything. Oh! don't
kill my love for you, don't kill that!
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Gertrude!
LADY CHILTERN. I know that there are men with horrible secrets in
their lives - men who have done some shameful thing, and who in some
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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 Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: disproportions and discomforts, my ears would have been dull, and
there would have been some ugly temper or other uppermost in my
spirit, and so they would have wasted their songs upon an unworthy
hearer.
Next morning I went along to visit the church. It is a long-backed
red-and-white building, very much restored, and stands in a pleasant
graveyard among those great trees of which I have spoken already.
The sky was drowned in a mist. Now and again pulses of cold wind
went about the enclosure, and set the branches busy overhead, and the
dead leaves scurrying into the angles of the church buttresses. Now
and again, also, I could hear the dull sudden fall of a chestnut
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