| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from 1492 by Mary Johntson: gentle and simple, the twelve friars and Father Buil. Seventeen
ships, nigh fifteen hundred men of Europe, swinging
with the tide before the land we were to make Spanish.
The watch raised a cry. Springing from his bed Juan Lepe
came on deck to find there confusion, and under the moon
in the clear water, swimming forms, swimming from us
in a kind of desperate haste and strength. There was shouting
to man the boat. One jostling against me cried that
they were the captive Indians. They had broken bonds,
lifted hatch, knocked down the watch, leaped over side.
Another shouted. No, the Caribs were safe. These were
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: the certainty of making himself heard.
It was a bad blow, at first, to find that he had not been
arrested for murder; but Ascham, who had come to him at once,
explained that he needed rest, and the time to "review" his
statements; it appeared that reiteration had made them a little
confused and contradictory. To this end he had willingly
acquiesced in his removal to a large quiet establishment, with an
open space and trees about it, where he had found a number of
intelligent companions, some, like himself, engaged in preparing
or reviewing statements of their cases, and others ready to lend
an interested ear to his own recital.
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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 Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: sunshine, and flowers, and green grass, and the song of birds, and
happy human smiles, and who would educate by them--if we would let
Him--His human children from the cradle to the grave; in such a
world as this, will you grudge any particle of that education,
even any harmless substitute for it, to those spirits in prison
whose surroundings too often tempt them, from the cradle to the
grave, to fancy that the world is composed of bricks and iron, and
governed by inspectors and policemen? Preach to those spirits in
prison, as you know far better than we parsons how to preach; but
let them have besides some glimpses of the splendid fact, that
outside their prison-house is a world which God, not man, has
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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 Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter by Beatrix Potter: Sometimes Peter Rabbit had no
cabbages to spare.
When this happened, the Flopsy
Bunnies went across the field to a
rubbish heap, in the ditch outside
Mr. McGregor's garden.
Mr. McGregor's rubbish heap
was a mixture. There were jam
pots and paper bags, and mountains
of chopped grass from the
mowing machine (which always
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