| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: the said cross-roads.
Then it was proposed to since out twenty men and their families,
who should be recommended as honest industrious men, expert in, or
at least capable of being instructed in husbandry, curing and
cultivating of land, breeding and feeding cattle, and the like. To
each of these should be parcelled out, in equal distributions, two
hundred acres of this land, so that the whole four thousand acres
should be fully distributed to the said twenty families, for which
they should have no rent to pay, and be liable to no taxes but such
as provided for their own sick or poor, repairing their own roads,
and the like. This exemption from rent and taxes to continue for
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: I was the chief that rais'd him to the crown,
And I'll be chief to bring him down again;
Not that I pity Henry's misery,
But seek revenge on Edward's mockery.
[Exit.]
ACT IV.
SCENE I. London. The Palace
[Enter GLOSTER, CLARENCE, SOMERSET, and MONTAGUE.]
GLOSTER.
Now tell me, brother Clarence, what think you
Of this new marriage with the Lady Grey?
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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 A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: off from this beautiful tree the tall broad green leaves which are its
poetic adornment, and used them to mend the mat on which he was to
sleep.
Fatigued by the heat and his work, he fell asleep under the red
curtains of his wet cave.
In the middle of the night his sleep was troubled by an extraordinary
noise; he sat up, and the deep silence around allowed him to
distinguish the alternative accents of a respiration whose savage
energy could not belong to a human creature.
A profound terror, increased still further by the darkness, the
silence, and his waking images, froze his heart within him. He almost
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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 Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: shall happen. Seven and ten makes seventeen, which I explain
seventeen hundred, and this number added to nine, makes the year
we are now in; for it must be understood of the natural year,
which begins the first of January.
Tamys Rivere twys, etc. The River Thames, frozen twice in one
year, so as men to walk on it, is a very signal accident, which
perhaps hath not fallen out for several hundred years before, and
is the reason why some astrologers have thought that this
prophecy could never be fulfilled, because they imagine such a
thing would never happen in our climate.
From Town of Stoffe, etc. This is a plain designation of the Duke
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