| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Of this great world grew small and smaller,
Till it seemed the sky and the land and the ocean
Closed at last in a mist all golden
Around us two. And we stood for a season
Like gods outflung from chaos, dreaming
That we were the king and the queen of the fire
That reddened the clouds of love that held us
Blind to the new world soon to be ours --
Ours to seize and sway. The passion
Of that great love was a nameless passion,
Bright as the blaze of the sun at noonday,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Camille by Alexandre Dumas: The last time she had come to see me she had sat in the same
place where she was now sitting; only, since then, she had been
the mistress of another man, other kisses than mine had touched
her lips, toward which, in spite of myself, my own reached out,
and yet I felt that I loved this woman as much, more perhaps,
than I had ever loved her.
It was difficult for me to begin the conversation on the subject
which brought her. Marguerite no doubt realized it, for she went
on:
"I have come to trouble you, Armand, for I have two things to
ask: pardon for what I said yesterday to Mlle. Olympe, and pity
Camille |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Wyoming by William MacLeod Raine: that bunch of Circle 66 cows you looked at on your way in?"
They discussed business for a few minutes, after which she went
back to her patient and he to his work.
"Ain't she a straight-up little gentleman for fair?" the foreman
asked himself in rhetorical and exuberant question, slapping his
hat against his leg as he strode toward the corral. "Think of her
coming at me like she did, the blamed little thoroughbred. Y'u
bet she knows me down to the ground and how sudden I got over any
fool notions I might a-started to get in my cocoanut. But the way
she came back at me, quick as lightning and then some, pretendin'
all that foolishness and knowin' all the time I'd savez the
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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 The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer: clings in my memory. In his long, yellow robe, his masklike,
intellectual face bent forward amongst the riot of singular objects upon
the table, his great, high brow gleaming in the light of the shaded
lamp above him, and with the abnormal eyes, filmed and green,
raised to us, he seemed a figure from the realms of delirium.
But, most amazing circumstance of all, he and his surroundings tallied,
almost identically, with the dream-picture which had come to me as I
lay chained in the cell!
Some of the large jars about the place held anatomy specimens.
A faint smell of opium hung in the air, and playing with the tassel
of one of the cushions upon which, as upon a divan, Fu-Manchu was seated,
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu |
