| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: engineering: another and more influential aim was to be set before
him. He must, in any case, have fallen in love; in any case, his
love would have ruled his life; and the question of choice was, for
the descendant of two such families, a thing of paramount
importance. Innocent of the world, fiery, generous, devoted as he
was, the son of the wild Jacksons and the facile Jenkins might have
been led far astray. By one of those partialities that fill men at
once with gratitude and wonder, his choosing was directed well. Or
are we to say that by a man's choice in marriage, as by a crucial
merit, he deserves his fortune? One thing at least reason may
discern: that a man but partly chooses, he also partly forms, his
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from King James Bible: ought not to be done.
GEN 34:8 And Hamor communed with them, saying, The soul of my son
Shechem longeth for your daughter: I pray you give her him to wife.
GEN 34:9 And make ye marriages with us, and give your daughters unto
us, and take our daughters unto you.
GEN 34:10 And ye shall dwell with us: and the land shall be before you;
dwell and trade ye therein, and get you possessions therein.
GEN 34:11 And Shechem said unto her father and unto her brethren, Let
me find grace in your eyes, and what ye shall say unto me I will give.
GEN 34:12 Ask me never so much dowry and gift, and I will give
according as ye shall say unto me: but give me the damsel to wife.
King James Bible |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: "Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my
hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my
counsel, and would have none of my reproof--" And then come words
so terrible, that I will not speak them here in this happy place:
but what they mean is this:-
That these foolish people are handed over--as you and I shall be
if we do wrong wilfully--to Madam How and her terrible school-
house, which is called Nature and the Law, to be treated just as
the plants and animals are treated, because they did not choose to
behave like men and children of God. And there they learn,
whether they like or not, what they might have learnt from Lady
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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 Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: 1908.
taken by the Government against those who disseminate these
forbidden writings," and begged him to "direct the measures taken
to punish or intimidate the perpetrators of the evil, or to put an
end to it, against the man whom you regard as the real instigator
of it . . . all the more, as I assure you beforehand, that I shall
continue without ceasing till my death to do what the Government
considers evil and what I consider my sacred duty before God."
As every one knows, neither this challenge nor the others that
followed it led to any result, and the arrests and deportations of
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