| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: wood that rises just above the village and climbs the hillside,
and goes down to the river in the valley; such another long
lovely valley, Raymond, as that on which we looked one summer
night, walking to and fro before your house. For many an hour I
strayed through the maze of the forest, turning now to right and
now to left, pacing slowly down long alleys of undergrowth,
shadowy and chill, even under the midday sun, and halting
beneath great oaks; lying on the short turf of a clearing where
the faint sweet scent of wild roses came to me on the wind and
mixed with the heavy perfume of the elder, whose mingled odour
is like the odour of the room of the dead, a vapour of incense
The Great God Pan |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells: people, who faced death--death that you might live."
"I know nothing--" began Graham.
"I cannot tell you now."
Lincoln's face appeared close to them. He bowed
an apology to the girl.
"You find the new world pleasant, Sire?" asked
Lincoln, with smiling deference, and indicating the space
and splendour of the gathering by one comprehensive
gesture." At any rate, you find it changed."
"Yes," said Graham, "changed. And yet, after all,
not so greatly changed."
When the Sleeper Wakes |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: Marquis de Chargeboeuf, taking the precious draft of the petition from
the hands of Bordin that he might have it signed by the four
gentlemen; resolving in his own mind that he would also obtain the
signatures of several august names.
"The life of your young relatives, Monsieur le marquis," said the
minister, "now depends on the turn of a battle. Endeavor to reach the
Emperor on the morning after a victory and they are saved."
He took a pen and himself wrote a private and confidential letter to
the Emperor, and another of ten lines to Marechal Duroc. Then he rang
the bell, asked his secretary for a diplomatic passport, and said
tranquilly to the old lawyer, "What is your honest opinion of that
|
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 Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: tipped, sand-beached islet off the coast, shod and sheathed
and masked with ice so that no man could have told it from the
floe, but at the bottom solid earth, and not shifting ice!
The smashing and rebound of the floes as they grounded and
splintered marked the borders of it, and a friendly shoal ran
out to the northward, and turned aside the rush of the heaviest
ice, exactly as a ploughshare turns over loam. There was danger,
of course, that some heavily squeezed ice-field might shoot up
the beach, and plane off the top of the islet bodily; but that
did not trouble Kotuko and the girl when they made their snow-
house and began to eat, and heard the ice hammer and skid along
The Second Jungle Book |
