| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Jungle Tales of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: picking out his light brown body from the surrounding darkness.
Momaya saw him and knew him. With a cry, she leaped
forward and Tarzan came to meet her. The other women,
turning, saw him, too; but they did not come toward him.
Instead they rose as one, shrieked as one, fled as one.
Momaya threw herself at Tarzan's feet, raising supplicating
hands toward him and pouring forth from her mutilated
lips a perfect cataract of words, not one of which
the ape-man comprehended. For a moment he looked
down upon the upturned, frightful face of the woman.
He had come to slay, but that overwhelming torrent
The Jungle Tales of Tarzan |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: this lake, the king of Swiss lakes.
Francesca was quite of the Italian type, and such as imagination
supposes or pictures, or, if you will, dreams, that Italian women are.
What first struck Rodolphe was the grace and elegance of a figure
evidently powerful, though so slender as to appear fragile. An amber
paleness overspread her face, betraying sudden interest, but it did
not dim the voluptuous glance of her liquid eyes of velvety blackness.
A pair of hands as beautiful as ever a Greek sculptor added to the
polished arms of a statue grasped Rodolphe's arm, and their whiteness
gleamed against his black coat. The rash Frenchman could but just
discern the long, oval shape of her face, and a melancholy mouth
Albert Savarus |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from An Open Letter on Translating by Dr. Martin Luther: When our nature is already all to prone to run from God and
Christ, and trust in humanity, it is indeed difficult to learn to
trust in God and Christ, even though we have vowed to do so and
are therefore obligated to do so. Therefore, this offense is not
to be tolerated whereby those who are weak and of the flesh
participate in idolatry, against the first commandment and our
baptism. Even if one tries nothing other than to switch their
trust from the saints to Christ, through teaching and practice, it
will be difficult to accomplish, that one should come to him and
rightly take hold of him. One need not paint the Devil on the
door - he will already be present.
|
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 Critias by Plato: with my grandfather Dropides, and is now in my possession...In the division
of the earth Poseidon obtained as his portion the island of Atlantis, and
there he begat children whose mother was a mortal. Towards the sea and in
the centre of the island there was a very fair and fertile plain, and near
the centre, about fifty stadia from the plain, there was a low mountain in
which dwelt a man named Evenor and his wife Leucippe, and their daughter
Cleito, of whom Poseidon became enamoured. He to secure his love enclosed
the mountain with rings or zones varying in size, two of land and three of
sea, which his divine power readily enabled him to excavate and fashion,
and, as there was no shipping in those days, no man could get into the
place. To the interior island he conveyed under the earth springs of water
|
