| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: difficulties. Sometimes it was a weir which could be shot,
sometimes one so shallow and full of stakes that we must withdraw
the boats from the water and carry them round. But the chief sort
of obstacle was a consequence of the late high winds. Every two or
three hundred yards a tree had fallen across the river, and usually
involved more than another in its fall.
Often there was free water at the end, and we could steer round the
leafy promontory and hear the water sucking and bubbling among the
twigs. Often, again, when the tree reached from bank to bank,
there was room, by lying close, to shoot through underneath, canoe
and all. Sometimes it was necessary to get out upon the trunk
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: over, one way or the other. I escaped from the house and went to
the house of a neighbor where a playmate of mine was very ill
with the malady. When the chance offered I crept into his room
and got into bed with him. I was discovered by his mother and
sent back into captivity. But I had the disease; they could not
take that from me. I came near to dying. The whole village was
interested, and anxious, and sent for news of me every day; and
not only once a day, but several times. Everybody believed I
would die; but on the fourteenth day a change came for the worse
and they were disappointed.
This was a turning-point of my life. (Link number one.)
What is Man? |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Under the Red Robe by Stanley Weyman: had reverted to his own case. But on a sudden he looked at me
again. 'Will you answer a question, M. de Berault?' he said
winningly.
'Perhaps,' I replied.
'Then tell me--it is a tale I am sure worth the telling. What
was it that, in a very evil hour for me, sent you in search of
me?'
'My Lord Cardinal,' I answered
'I did not ask who,' he replied drily. 'I asked, what. You had
no grudge against me?'
'No.'
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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 War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: attracted to the ruling circles where the future, on which the fate of
millions depended, was being shaped. From the irritation of the
older men, the curiosity of the uninitiated. the reserve of the
initiated, the hurry and preoccupation of everyone, and the
innumerable committees and commissions of whose existence he learned
every day, he felt that now, in 1809, here in Petersburg a vast
civil conflict was in preparation, the commander in chief of which was
a mysterious person he did not know, but who was supposed to be a
man of genius- Speranski. And this movement of reconstruction of which
Prince Andrew had a vague idea, and Speranski its chief promoter,
began to interest him so keenly that the question of the army
War and Peace |
