| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: really best and wisest for you.
But why will she be kind enough to do that for me?
For the very same reason that I do it. For God's sake. Because
God is your Father in heaven, as I am your father on earth, and He
does not wish His little child to be left to the hard teaching of
Nature and Law, but to be helped on by many, many unsought and
undeserved favours, such as are rightly called "Means of Grace;"
and above all by the Gospel and good news that you are God's
child, and that God loves you, and has helped and taught you, and
will help you and teach you, in a thousand ways of which you are
not aware, if only you will be a wise child, and listen to Lady
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli: private person. He kept also the Orsini and Colonnesi factions within
the bounds in which he found them; and although there was among them
some mind to make disturbance, nevertheless he held two things firm:
the one, the greatness of the Church, with which he terrified them;
and the other, not allowing them to have their own cardinals, who
caused the disorders among them. For whenever these factions have
their cardinals they do not remain quiet for long, because cardinals
foster the factions in Rome and out of it, and the barons are
compelled to support them, and thus from the ambitions of prelates
arise disorders and tumults among the barons. For these reasons his
Holiness Pope Leo[*] found the pontificate most powerful, and it is to
The Prince |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift: drawing and spinning out all from yourself; that is to say, if we
may judge of the liquor in the vessel by what issues out, you
possess a good plentiful store of dirt and poison in your breast;
and, though I would by no means lesson or disparage your genuine
stock of either, yet I doubt you are somewhat obliged, for an
increase of both, to a little foreign assistance. Your inherent
portion of dirt does not fall of acquisitions, by sweepings exhaled
from below; and one insect furnishes you with a share of poison to
destroy another. So that, in short, the question comes all to
this: whether is the nobler being of the two, that which, by a
lazy contemplation of four inches round, by an overweening pride,
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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 Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and
pervaded all.
Upon my entrance, Usher rose from a sofa on which he had
been lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth
which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone
cordiality--of the constrained effort of the ennuye man of
the world. A glance, however, at his countenance, convinced me
of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for some moments,
while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity,
half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered,
in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with
The Fall of the House of Usher |
