| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Black Beauty by Anna Sewell: that very few people could pick a quarrel with him.
He was very fond of making little songs, and singing them to himself.
One he was very fond of was this:
"Come, father and mother,
And sister and brother,
Come, all of you, turn to
And help one another."
And so they did; Harry was as clever at stable-work as a much older boy,
and always wanted to do what he could. Then Polly and Dolly used to come
in the morning to help with the cab -- to brush and beat the cushions,
and rub the glass, while Jerry was giving us a cleaning in the yard,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Herland by Charlotte Gilman: said triumphantly. "Don't they cooperate pretty well? You can't
beat it. This place is just like an enormous anthill--you know an
anthill is nothing but a nursery. And how about bees? Don't they
manage to cooperate and love one another?
As the birds do love the Spring
Or the bees their careful king,
as that precious Constable had it. Just show me a combination
of male creatures, bird, bug, or beast, that works as well, will
you? Or one of our masculine countries where the people work
together as well as they do here! I tell you, women are the natural
cooperators, not men!"
Herland |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Macbeth by William Shakespeare: Both the Worlds suffer,
Ere we will eate our Meale in feare, and sleepe
In the affliction of these terrible Dreames,
That shake vs Nightly: Better be with the dead,
Whom we, to gayne our peace, haue sent to peace,
Then on the torture of the Minde to lye
In restlesse extasie.
Duncane is in his Graue:
After Lifes fitfull Feuer, he sleepes well,
Treason ha's done his worst: nor Steele, nor Poyson,
Mallice domestique, forraine Leuie, nothing,
Macbeth |
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 Message by Honore de Balzac: older than she looks.
This theory set no limits to the age of love, so we struck out,
in all good faith, into a boundless sea. At length, when we had
portrayed our mistresses as young, charming, and devoted to us,
women of rank, women of taste, intellectual and clever; when we
had endowed them with little feet, a satin, nay, a delicately
fragrant skin, then came the admission--on his part that Madame
Such-an-one was thirty-eight years old, and on mine that I
worshiped a woman of forty. Whereupon, as if released on either
side from some kind of vague fear, our confidences came thick and
fast, when we found that we were in the same confraternity of
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