| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne: flexible trunks were grouting and turning up the soil under the trees
like a legion of serpents. I could hear the crashing noise of their
long ivory tusks boring into the old decaying trunks. The boughs
cracked, and the leaves torn away by cartloads went down the
cavernous throats of the vast brutes.
So, then, the dream in which I had had a vision of the prehistoric
world, of the tertiary and post-tertiary periods, was now realised.
And there we were alone, in the bowels of the earth, at the mercy of
its wild inhabitants!
My uncle was gazing with intense and eager interest.
"Come on!" said he, seizing my arm. "Forward! forward!"
Journey to the Center of the Earth |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: not forget this--I'll go to your landlady."
"Pooh!" She shrugged her shoulders and laughed. "I'll tell her you forced
your way in here and tried to assault me. Who will she believe?--with your
bitten hand. You go and find your Schafers."
A sensation of glorious, intoxicating happiness flooded Viola. She rolled
her eyes at him. "If you don't go away this moment I'll bite you again,"
she said, and the absurd words started her laughing. Even when the door
was closed, hearing him descending the stairs, she laughed, and danced
about the room.
What a morning! Oh, chalk it up. That was her first fight, and she'd won
--she'd conquered that beast--all by herself. Her hands were still
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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 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: The city of Naum, which we were approaching, is a frontier of the
Chinese empire, and is fortified in their fashion. We wanted, as I
have said, above two days' journey of this city when messengers
were sent express to every part of the road to tell all travellers
and caravans to halt till they had a guard sent for them; for that
an unusual body of Tartars, making ten thousand in all, had
appeared in the way, about thirty miles beyond the city.
This was very bad news to travellers: however, it was carefully
done of the governor, and we were very glad to hear we should have
a guard. Accordingly, two days after, we had two hundred soldiers
sent us from a garrison of the Chinese on our left, and three
Robinson Crusoe |
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 Heroes by Charles Kingsley: in his life.
There came a lady to him through the wood, taller than he, or
any mortal man; but beautiful exceedingly, with great gray
eyes, clear and piercing, but strangely soft and mild. On
her head was a helmet, and in her hand a spear. And over her
shoulder, above her long blue robes, hung a goat-skin, which
bore up a mighty shield of brass, polished like a mirror.
She stood and looked at him with her clear gray eyes; and
Perseus saw that her eye-lids never moved, nor her eyeballs,
but looked straight through and through him, and into his
very heart, as if she could see all the secrets of his soul,
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