| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dracula by Bram Stoker: LATER.--After lunch Harker and his wife went back to their own room,
and as I passed a while ago I heard the click of the typewriter.
They are hard at it. Mrs. Harker says that knitting together
in chronological order every scrap of evidence they have.
Harker has got the letters between the consignee of the boxes
at Whitby and the carriers in London who took charge of them.
He is now reading his wife's transcript of my diary.
I wonder what they make out of it. Here it is. . .
Strange that it never struck me that the very next house
might be the Count's hiding place! Goodness knows that we
had enough clues from the conduct of the patient Renfield!
Dracula |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Faith of Men by Jack London: placed a small iron pot. When the brew was strong enough (and it
was two days ere it could stand on its own legs), I filled the
kerosene can with it, and lighted the wicks I had braided.
"Now that all was ready, I spoke to Moosu. 'Go forth,' I said, 'to
the chief men of the village, and give them greeting, and bid them
come into my igloo and sleep the night away with me and the gods.'
"The brew was singing merrily when they began shoving aside the
skin flap and crawling in, and I was heaping cracked ice on the
gun-barrel. Out of the priming hole at the far end, drip, drip,
drip into the iron pot fell the liquor--HOOCH, you know. But
they'd never seen the like, and giggled nervously when I made
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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 Protagoras by Plato: tell me what passed, and my attendant here shall give up his place to you.
SOCRATES: To be sure; and I shall be grateful to you for listening.
COMPANION: Thank you, too, for telling us.
SOCRATES: That is thank you twice over. Listen then:--
Last night, or rather very early this morning, Hippocrates, the son of
Apollodorus and the brother of Phason, gave a tremendous thump with his
staff at my door; some one opened to him, and he came rushing in and bawled
out: Socrates, are you awake or asleep?
I knew his voice, and said: Hippocrates, is that you? and do you bring any
news?
Good news, he said; nothing but good.
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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 Exiles by Honore de Balzac: scale of spheres, just as the plant is divided from man by an infinite
number of grades. He peopled the heavens, the stars, the planets, the
sun.
Quoting Saint Paul, he invested man with a new power; he might rise,
from globe to globe, to the very Fount of eternal life. Jacob's
mystical ladder was both the religious formula and the traditional
proof of the fact. He soared through space, carrying with him the
passionate souls of his hearers on the wings of his word, making them
feel the infinite, and bathing them in the heavenly sea. Then the
Doctor accounted logically for hell by circles placed in inverse order
to the shining spheres that lead to God, in which torments and
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