| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: There was nothing rude or forward in this observation; it was but a
pleased and wondering scrutiny, like that of oxen or the human
infant; yet it wearied my spirits, and soon drove me from the
street.
I took refuge on the terraces, which are here greenly carpeted with
sward, and tried to imitate with a pencil the inimitable attitudes
of the chestnuts as they bear up their canopy of leaves. Ever and
again a little wind went by, and the nuts dropped all around me,
with a light and dull sound, upon the sward. The noise was as of a
thin fall of great hailstones; but there went with it a cheerful
human sentiment of an approaching harvest and farmers rejoicing in
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: five-and-twenty louis one day, you will be accused of gambling on
the next, and your best friends will report that you have lost
twenty-five thousand. If you have a headache, you will be
considered mad. If you are a little hasty, no one can live with
you. If, to make a stand against this armament of pigmies, you
collect your best powers, your best friends will cry out that you
want to have everything, that you aim at domineering, at tyranny.
In short, your good points will become your faults, your faults
will be vices, and your virtues crime.
"If you save a man, you will be said to have killed him; if he
reappears on the scene, it will be positive that you have secured
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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 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: them.
Chapter 32
The particulars which the princess had learned in regard to
Varenka's past and her relations with Madame Stahl were as
follows:
Madame Stahl, of whom some people said that she had worried her
husband out of his life, while others said it was he who had made
her wretched by his immoral behavior, had always been a woman of
weak health and enthusiastic temperament. When, after her
separation from her husband, she gave birth to her only child,
the child had died almost immediately, and the family of Madame
Anna Karenina |
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 Call of the Wild by Jack London: And so well did he face it, that at the end of half an hour the
wolves drew back discomfited. The tongues of all were out and
lolling, the white fangs showing cruelly white in the moonlight.
Some were lying down with heads raised and ears pricked forward;
others stood on their feet, watching him; and still others were
lapping water from the pool. One wolf, long and lean and gray,
advanced cautiously, in a friendly manner, and Buck recognized the
wild brother with whom he had run for a night and a day. He was
whining softly, and, as Buck whined, they touched noses.
Then an old wolf, gaunt and battle-scarred, came forward. Buck
writhed his lips into the preliminary of a snarl, but sniffed
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