| 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: be one living nightmare of hideous watchfulness and dread.
Numa must be taught that the killing of an ape brought
immediate punishment and no rewards. It would take but
a few lessons to insure the former safety of the tribe.
This must be some old lion whose failing strength and
agility had forced him to any prey that he could catch;
but even a single lion, undisputed, could exterminate
the tribe, or at least make its existence so precarious
and so terrifying that life would no longer be a
pleasant condition.
"Let him hunt among the Gomangani," thought Tarzan.
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 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: by the way they look at me here. And you have been keeping
on this house and furniture entirely for me and the boy!
You don't want it yourself, and the expense is unnecessary.
But whatever we do, wherever we go, you won't take him
away from me, Jude dear? I could not let him go now!
The cloud upon his young mind makes him so pathetic to me;
I do hope to lift it some day! And he loves me so.
You won't take him away from me?"
"Certainly I won't, dear little girl! We'll get nice lodgings,
wherever we go. I shall be moving about probably--getting a job
here and a job there."
Jude the Obscure |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Flame and Shadow by Sara Teasdale: At Sea
In the pull of the wind I stand, lonely,
On the deck of a ship, rising, falling,
Wild night around me, wild water under me,
Whipped by the storm, screaming and calling.
Earth is hostile and the sea hostile,
Why do I look for a place to rest?
I must fight always and die fighting
With fear an unhealing wound in my breast.
Dust
When I went to look at what had long been hidden,
|
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 Soul of a Bishop by H. G. Wells: is a persuasion, it falls far short of perception....
"We don't know directly," Scrope said to himself with a
checking gesture of the hand, "we don't see. We can't. We hold on
to the remembered glimpse, we go over our reasons."...
And it was clear too just because God is thus manifest like the
momentary drawing of a curtain, sometimes to this man for a time
and sometimes to that, but never continuously to any, and because
the perception of him depends upon the ability and quality of the
perceiver, because to the intellectual man God is necessarily a
formula, to the active man a will and a commandment, and to the
emotional man love, there can be no creed defining him for all
|
