| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: babes to one side already. And that lame butcher would have
killed him and would have run off to the Waingunga while the
villagers here hunted through all our lairs in revenge! Keep him?
Assuredly I will keep him. Lie still, little frog. O thou Mowgli
--for Mowgli the Frog I will call thee--the time will come when
thou wilt hunt Shere Khan as he has hunted thee."
"But what will our Pack say?" said Father Wolf.
The Law of the Jungle lays down very clearly that any wolf
may, when he marries, withdraw from the Pack he belongs to. But
as soon as his cubs are old enough to stand on their feet he must
bring them to the Pack Council, which is generally held once a
The Jungle Book |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: Mrs. Harbottle was only twenty-seven then and Robert a major, but he
had brought her to India out of an episode too colour-flushed to
tone with English hedges; their marriage had come, in short, of his
divorce, and as too natural a consequence. In India it is well
known that the eye becomes accustomed to primitive pigments and high
lights; the aesthetic consideration, if nothing else, demanded
Robert's exchange. He was lucky to get a Piffer regiment, and the
Twelfth were lucky to get him; we were all lucky, I thought, to get
Judy. It was an opinion, of course, a good deal challenged, even in
Rawul Pindi, where it was thought, especially in the beginning, that
acquiescence was the most the Harbottles could hope for. That is
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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 La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: I found a written paper in the drawer of his table, with fifty pieces
of Spanish gold of the kind they call doubloons, worth about five
thousand francs; and in a little sealed box ten thousand francs worth
of diamonds. The paper said that in case he should not return, he left
us this money and these diamonds in trust to found masses to thank God
for his escape and for his salvation.
" 'At that time I still had my husband, who ran off in search of him.
And this is the queer part of the story: he brought back the
Spaniard's clothes, which he had found under a big stone on a sort of
breakwater along the river bank, nearly opposite la Grande Breteche.
My husband went so early that no one saw him. After reading the
La Grande Breteche |
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 Caesar's Commentaries in Latin by Julius Caesar: partem fors obtulit, decucurrit et ad legionem decimam devenit. Milites
non longiore oratione cohortatus quam uti suae pristinae virtutis memoriam
retinerent neu perturbarentur animo hostiumque impetum fortiter
sustinerent, quod non longius hostes aberant quam quo telum adigi posset,
proelii committendi signum dedit. Atque in alteram item cohortandi causa
profectus pugnantibus occurrit. Temporis tanta fuit exiguitas hostiumque
tam paratus ad dimicandum animus ut non modo ad insignia accommodanda sed
etiam ad galeas induendas scutisque tegimenta detrahenda tempus defuerit.
Quam quisque ab opere in partem casu devenit quaeque prima signa
conspexit, ad haec constitit, ne in quaerendis suis pugnandi tempus
dimitteret.
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