| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Peter Pan by James M. Barrie: nursery screaming with fury. "You shouldn't say such things,"
Peter retorted. "Of course I'm very sorry, but how could I know
you were in the drawer?"
Wendy was not listening to him. "O Peter," she cried, "if she
would only stand still and let me see her!"
"They hardly ever stand still," he said, but for one moment
Wendy saw the romantic figure come to rest on the cuckoo clock.
"O the lovely!" she cried, though Tink's face was still distorted
with passion.
"Tink," said Peter amiably, "this lady ways she wishes you
were her fairy."
Peter Pan |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: equally agreed.
I said, You know not what you are doing in thus assailing me: What an
argument are you raising about the State! Just as I thought that I had
finished, and was only too glad that I had laid this question to sleep, and
was reflecting how fortunate I was in your acceptance of what I then said,
you ask me to begin again at the very foundation, ignorant of what a
hornet's nest of words you are stirring. Now I foresaw this gathering
trouble, and avoided it.
For what purpose do you conceive that we have come here, said Thrasymachus,
--to look for gold, or to hear discourse?
Yes, but discourse should have a limit.
The Republic |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: "Water?" she whispered. "Are we saved?"
"It is raining," he explained. "We may at least drink.
Already it has revived us both."
"Monsieur Thuran?" she asked. "He did not kill you. Is he dead?"
"I do not know," replied Clayton. "If he lives and this
rain revives him--" But he stopped there, remembering too
late that he must not add further to the horrors which the
girl already had endured.
But she guessed what he would have said.
"Where is he?" she asked.
Clayton nodded his head toward the prostrate form of
The Return of Tarzan |
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 Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: make the discovery; if you happen to be sitting up all night and
have a light in your window, the constable will ring the bell,
but if you happen to be lying dead in somebody's area, you will
be left alone. In this instance, as in many others, the alarm
was raised by some kind of vagabond; I don't mean a common
tramp, or a public-house loafer, but a gentleman, whose business
or pleasure, or both, made him a spectator of the London streets
at five o'clock in the morning. This individual was, as he
said, 'going home,'it did not appear whence or whither, and had
occasion to pass through Paul Street between four and five a.m.
Something or other caught his eye at Number 20; he said,
The Great God Pan |
