| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela: going out there. Look, he's limping."
"I guess the bee stung him all right."
Blondie, without turning to look at the wounded man,
announced with enthusiasm that he could shoot off the
top of a tequila bottle at thirty paces without aiming.
"Come on, friend, stand up," he said to the waiter.
He dragged him out by the hand to the patio of the
hotel and set a tequila bottle on his head. The poor
devil refused. Insane with fright, he sought to escape,
but Blondie pulled his gun and took aim.
"Come on, you son of a sea cook! If you keep on
The Underdogs |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: tolerate me? Not a bit of it. I have begged again and again to be
taken to the bosom of my German comrades. I have pleaded that the
Super-Proletarians of all lands should unite. I have pointed out
that the German Social-Democratic party has done nothing at its
Congresses for the last ten years except the things I told them
to do ten years before, and that its path is white with the bones
of the Socialist superstitions I and my fellow Fabians have
slain. Useless. They do not care a rap whether I am a Socialist
or not. All they want to know is; Am I orthodox? Am I correct in
my revolutionary views? Am I reverent to the revolutionary
authorities? Because I am a genuine free-thinker they look at me
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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 Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: of the eastern part of England, and of that I come now to speak.
We enter Cambridgeshire out of Suffolk, with all the advantage in
the world; the county beginning upon those pleasant and agreeable
plains called Newmarket Heath, where passing the Devil's Ditch,
which has nothing worth notice but its name, and that but fabulous
too, from the hills called Gogmagog, we see a rich and pleasant
vale westward, covered with corn-fields, gentlemen's seats,
villages, and at a distance, to crown all the rest, that ancient
and truly famous town and university of Cambridge, capital of the
county, and receiving its name from, if not, as some say, giving
name to it; for if it be true that the town takes its name of
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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 Phaedrus by Plato: of them to be what they are?
PHAEDRUS: You may very likely be right, Socrates.
SOCRATES: The method which proceeds without analysis is like the groping
of a blind man. Yet, surely, he who is an artist ought not to admit of a
comparison with the blind, or deaf. The rhetorician, who teaches his pupil
to speak scientifically, will particularly set forth the nature of that
being to which he addresses his speeches; and this, I conceive, to be the
soul.
PHAEDRUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: His whole effort is directed to the soul; for in that he seeks
to produce conviction.
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