| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: CONCEPTION OF A PAST DURING WHICH THERE HAVE BEEN SUCCESSIVE
EVOLUTIONS ANALOGOUS TO THAT WHICH IS NOW GOING ON; A FUTURE
DURING WHICH SUCCESSIVE OTHER EVOLUTIONS MAY GO ON--EVER THE SAME
IN PRINCIPLE BUT NEVER THE SAME IN CONCRETE RESULT."
That is it--the most we know--alternate eras of evolution and
dissolution. In the past there have been other evolutions similar
to that one in which we live, and in the future there may be other
similar evolutions--that is all. The principle of all these
evolutions remains, but the concrete results are never twice
alike. Man was not; he was; and again he will not be. In
eternity which is beyond our comprehension, the particular
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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 The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: Lucar, a marvelous building erected by the Moors, a mosque of
Allah, which for three centuries had heard the name of Christ,
could not hold the throng that poured in to see the ceremony.
Hidalgos in their velvet mantles, with their good swords at their
sides, swarmed like ants, and were so tightly packed in among the
pillars that they had not room to bend the knees, which never
bent save to God. Charming peasant girls, in the basquina that
defines the luxuriant outlines of their figures, lent an arm to
white-haired old men. Young men, with eyes of fire, walked beside
aged crones in holiday array. Then came couples tremulous with
joy, young lovers led thither by curiosity, newly-wedded folk;
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