| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: profess to revenge the fact, but the ill-will. The day after,
Brutus with the rest came down from the capitol, and made a
speech to the people, who listened without expressing either any
pleasure or resentment, but showed by their silence that they
pitied Caesar, and respected Brutus. The senate passed acts of
oblivion for what was past, and took measures to reconcile all
parties. They ordered that Caesar should be worshipped as a
divinity, and nothing, even of the slightest consequence, should
be revoked, which he had enacted during his government. At the
same time they gave Brutus and his followers the command of
provinces, and other considerable posts. So that all people now
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells: was driving upward but no longer so steeply. He
gasped for a moment and flung himself at the
levers again. The wind whistled about him. One
further effort and he was almost level. He could
breathe. He turned his head for the first time to see
what had become of his antagonists. Turned back to
the levers for a moment and looked again. For a
moment he could have believed they were annihilated.
And then he saw between the two stages to the east
was a chasm, and down this something, a slender edge,
fell swiftly and vanished, as a sixpence falls down a
When the Sleeper Wakes |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Phantasmagoria and Other Poems by Lewis Carroll: They sought and found undying fame:
They toiled not for reward nor thanks:
Their cheeks are hot with honest shame
For you, the modern mountebanks!
Who preach of Justice - plead with tears
That Love and Mercy should abound -
While marking with complacent ears
The moaning of some tortured hound:
Who prate of Wisdom - nay, forbear,
Lest Wisdom turn on you in wrath,
Trampling, with heel that will not spare,
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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 Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: hill, took all the quickness I possessed. As it was, even, the
wash caught me to the knees, and I came near falling on a stone.
All this time the hurry I was in, and the free air and smell of the
sea, kept my spirits lively; but when I was once in the bush and
began to climb the path I took it easier. The fearsomeness of the
wood had been a good bit rubbed off for me by Master Case's banjo-
strings and graven images, yet I thought it was a dreary walk, and
guessed, when the disciples went up there, they must be badly
scared. The light of the lantern, striking among all these trunks
and forked branches and twisted rope-ends of lianas, made the whole
place, or all that you could see of it, a kind of a puzzle of
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