| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Verses 1889-1896 by Rudyard Kipling: "Our thumbs are rough and tarred,
And the tune is something hard --
May we lift a Deep-sea Chantey such as seamen use at sea?"
Then said the souls of the gentlemen-adventurers --
Fettered wrist to bar all for red iniquity:
"Ho, we revel in our chains
O'er the sorrow that was Spain's;
Heave or sink it, leave or drink it, we were masters of the sea!"
Up spake the soul of a gray Gothavn 'speckshioner --
Verses 1889-1896 |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle: pains," said he, "to single out the very strongest points in the
young man's favor. Don't you see that you alternately give him
credit for having too much imaginition and too little? Too
little, if he could not invent a cause of quarrel which would
give him the sympathy of the jury; too much, if he evolved from
his own inner consciousness anything so outre as a dying
reference to a rat, and the incident of the vanishing cloth. No,
sir, I shall approach this case from the point of view that what
this young man says is true, and we shall see whither that
hypothesis will lead us. And now here is my pocket Petrarch, and
not another word shall I say of this case until we are on the
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: He wondered if she understood what she was reading. Probably not, he
thought. She was astonishingly beautiful. Her beauty seemed to him,
if that were possible, to increase
Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play,
she finished.
"Well?" she said, echoing his smile dreamily, looking up from her book.
As with your shadow I with these did play,
she murmured, putting the book on the table.
What had happened, she wondered, as she took up her knitting, since she
had seen him alone? She remembered dressing, and seeing the moon;
To the Lighthouse |
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 Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: "I have hunted criminals in two hemispheres, and I have found them,"
said Muller simply. The young commissioner smiled and held out his
hand. "Ah, yes, Muller - I keep forgetting the great things you
have done. You are so quiet about it."
"What I have done is only what any one could do who has that
particular faculty. I do only what is in human power to do, and
the cleverest criminal can do no more. Besides which, we all know
that every criminal commits some stupidity, and leaves some trace
behind him. If it is really a crime which we have found the trace
of here, we will soon discover it." Muller's editorial "we" was a
matter of formality. He might with more truth have used the
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