| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: Ctesippus said: Men of Chios, Thurii, or however and whatever you call
yourselves, I wonder at you, for you seem to have no objection to talking
nonsense.
Fearing that there would be high words, I again endeavoured to soothe
Ctesippus, and said to him: To you, Ctesippus, I must repeat what I said
before to Cleinias--that you do not understand the ways of these
philosophers from abroad. They are not serious, but, like the Egyptian
wizard, Proteus, they take different forms and deceive us by their
enchantments: and let us, like Menelaus, refuse to let them go until they
show themselves to us in earnest. When they begin to be in earnest their
full beauty will appear: let us then beg and entreat and beseech them to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay: went out suddenly like an extinguished flame. Where the crustacean
had stood, there was nothing. Yet through this "nothing' he could
not see the landscape. Something was standing there that intercepted
the light, though it possessed neither shape, colour, nor substance.
And now the object, which could no longer be perceived by vision,
began to be felt by emotion. A delightful, springlike sense of
rising sap, of quickening pulses of love, adventure, mystery, beauty,
femininity - took possession of his being, and, strangely enough, he
identified it with the monster. Why that invisible brute should
cause him to feel young, sexual, and audacious, he did not ask
himself, for he was fully occupied with the effect. But it was as if
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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 Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: There he was kept until almost flayed by the acid. It was ordered
that these two delinquents should never afterwards be called by any
other names than "Crop-Ear" and "Cherry."
But the Prince's severest joke, which, strange to say, in no wise
lessened his popularity among the serfs, occurred a month or two
later. One of his leading passions was the chase,--especially the
chase in his own forests, with from one to two hundred men, and no
one to dispute his Lordship. On such occasions, a huge barrel of
wine, mounted upon a sled, always accompanied the crowd, and the
quantity which the hunters received depended upon the satisfaction
of Prince Alexis with the game they collected.
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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 Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: pilot-house and grasping the wheel, standing astride the dead
body of the helmsman. With all my strength I threw the helm
to starboard; but it was too late to effect the purpose of
our skipper. The best I did was to scrape alongside the sub.
I heard someone shriek an order into the engine-room; the boat
shuddered and trembled to the sudden reversing of the engines,
and our speed quickly lessened. Then I saw what that madman of
a skipper planned since his first scheme had gone wrong.
With a loud-yelled command, he leaped to the slippery deck of the
submersible, and at his heels came his hardy crew. I sprang from
the pilot-house and followed, not to be left out in the cold when
The Land that Time Forgot |
