| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: children on the island.
Here I stayed about twenty days, left them supplies of all
necessary things, and particularly of arms, powder, shot, clothes,
tools, and two workmen, which I had brought from England with me,
viz. a carpenter and a smith.
Besides this, I shared the lands into parts with them, reserved to
myself the property of the whole, but gave them such parts
respectively as they agreed on; and having settled all things with
them, and engaged them not to leave the place, I left them there.
From thence I touched at the Brazils, from whence I sent a bark,
which I bought there, with more people to the island; and in it,
Robinson Crusoe |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: things evil and some painful things good?--for I am rather disposed to say
that things are good in as far as they are pleasant, if they have no
consequences of another sort, and in as far as they are painful they are
bad.
I do not know, Socrates, he said, whether I can venture to assert in that
unqualified manner that the pleasant is the good and the painful the evil.
Having regard not only to my present answer, but also to the whole of my
life, I shall be safer, if I am not mistaken, in saying that there are some
pleasant things which are not good, and that there are some painful things
which are good, and some which are not good, and that there are some which
are neither good nor evil.
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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 The Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs: he had gained upon the halter--he must needs fight
it all out again from the beginning."
And so the battle went on again as before, the boy
again drawing the iron neck slowly to the right--the
beast fighting and squealing as though possessed of a
thousand devils. A dozen times as the head bent far-
ther and farther toward him the boy loosed his hold
upon the mane and reached quickly down to grasp the
near fore pastern. A dozen times the horse shook off
the new hold, but at length the boy was successful, and
the knee was bent and the hoof drawn up to the elbow.
The Outlaw of Torn |
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 Market-Place by Harold Frederic: so commonplace and yet so elusively suggestive of something
out of the ordinary. It seemed to him now that he had at the
time discerned a certain fateful quality in the apparition.
And he and his wife had actually been talking of old
Kervick at the moment! It was their disagreement over
him which had prevented her explaining about the new
head-gardener. There was an effect of the uncanny in all this.
And what did Gafferson want? How much did he know? The idea
that perhaps old Kervick had found him out, and patched up
with him a scheme of blackmail, occurred to him, and in the
unreal atmosphere of his mood, became a thing of substance.
The Market-Place |
