| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: God shall hear most of all when you are in the greatest need and
fear. Why, then, are you so foolish here, where there is
immeasurably greater need and eternal hurt, and do not want to
ask for faith, hope, love, humility, obedience, chastity,
gentleness, peace, righteousness, unless you are already free of
all your unbelief, doubt, pride, disobedience, unchastity, anger,
covetousness and unrighteousness. Although the more you find
yourself lacking in these things, the more and more diligently
you ought to pray or cry.
So blind are we: with our bodily sickness and need we run to God;
with the soul's sickness we run from Him, and are unwilling to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Phantasmagoria and Other Poems by Lewis Carroll: Let me explain my visit.
"Houses are classed, I beg to state,
According to the number
Of Ghosts that they accommodate:
(The Tenant merely counts as WEIGHT,
With Coals and other lumber).
"This is a 'one-ghost' house, and you
When you arrived last summer,
May have remarked a Spectre who
Was doing all that Ghosts can do
To welcome the new-comer.
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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 The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: best she could do, and that this ship had never had
a chance since he had been on board of her. Not
that he could remember. The last captain. . . .
He paused.
"Has he been so very unlucky?" I asked with
frank incredulity. Mr. Burns turned his eyes away
from me. No, the late captain was not an unlucky
man. One couldn't say that. But he had not
seemed to want to make use of his luck.
Mr. Burns--man of enigmatic moods--made
this statement with an inanimate face and staring
The Shadow Line |
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 Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: are seen to go off in vast flights like a cloud. And sometimes
again, when the wind grows fair, they go away a few and a few as
they come, not staying at all upon the coast.
Note. - This passing and re-passing of the swallows is observed
nowhere so much, that I have heard of, or in but few other places,
except on this eastern coast, namely, from above Harwich to the
east point of Norfolk, called Winterton Ness, North, which is all
right against Holland. We know nothing of them any farther north,
the passage of the sea being, as I suppose, too broad from
Flamborough Head and the shore of Holderness in Yorkshire, etc.
I find very little remarkable on this side of Suffolk, but what is
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