| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: No more than wax shall be accounted evil,
Wherein is stamp'd the semblance of a devil.
Their smoothness, like a goodly champaign plain,
Lays open all the little worms that creep;
In men, as in a rough-grown grove, remain
Cave-keeping evils that obscurely sleep:
Through crystal walls each little mote will peep:
Though men can cover crimes with bold stern looks,
Poor women's faces are their own faults' books.
No man inveigb against the wither'd flower,
But chide rough winter that the flower hath kill'd!
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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 Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Or enemy to comprehend
What augurs when two lives are broken,
And fear finds nothing left to mend.
He stares in vain for what awaits him,
And sees in Love a coin to toss;
He smiles, and her cold hush berates him
Beneath his hard half of the cross;
They wonder why it ever was;
And she, the unforgiving, hates him
More for her lack than for her loss.
He feeds with pride his indecision,
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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 Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: realities cannot rob him of the glory of his dreams. Then I traced
back a course of life for this latest scion of a race of condottieri,
tracking down his misfortunes, looking for the reasons of the deep
moral and physical degradation out of which the lately revived sparks
of greatness and nobility shone so much the more brightly. My ideas,
no doubt, were passing through his mind, for all processes of thought-
communications are far more swift, I think, in blind people, because
their blindness compels them to concentrate their attention. I had not
long to wait for proof that we were in sympathy in this way. Facino
Cane left off playing, and came up to me. "Let us go out!" he said;
his tones thrilled through me like an electric shock. I gave him my
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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 Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: And now do you be a good boy, and do as you would be done by, which
they did not; and then, when my sister, MADAME
DOASYOUWOULDBEDONEBY, comes on Sunday, perhaps she will take notice
of you, and teach you how to behave. She understands that better
than I do." And so she went.
Tom was very glad to hear that there was no chance of meeting
Grimes again, though he was a little sorry for him, considering
that he used sometimes to give him the leavings of the beer: but
he determined to be a very good boy all Saturday; and he was; for
he never frightened one crab, nor tickled any live corals, nor put
stones into the sea anemones' mouths, to make them fancy they had
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