| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ursula by Honore de Balzac: This letter agonized Ursula's heart and afflicted her with the
tortures of jealousy, a form of suffering hitherto unknown to her, but
which to this fine organization, so sensitive to pain, threw a pall
over the present and over the future, and even over the past. From the
moment when she received this fatal paper she lay on the doctor's
sofa, her eyes fixed on space, lost in a dreadful dream. In an instant
the chill of death had come upon her warm young life. Alas, worse than
that! it was like the awful awakening of the dead to the sense that
there was no God,--the masterpiece of that strange genius called Jean
Paul. Four times La Bougival called her to breakfast. When the
faithful creature tried to remonstrate, Ursula waved her hand and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: "Quint was much too free."
This gave me, straight from my vision of his face--SUCH a face!--
a sudden sickness of disgust. "Too free with MY boy?"
"Too free with everyone!"
I forbore, for the moment, to analyze this description further than
by the reflection that a part of it applied to several of the members
of the household, of the half-dozen maids and men who were still
of our small colony. But there was everything, for our apprehension,
in the lucky fact that no discomfortable legend, no perturbation
of scullions, had ever, within anyone's memory attached to the kind
old place. It had neither bad name nor ill fame, and Mrs. Grose,
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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 Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne: surface of the globe. The oak and the palm were growing side by side,
the Australian eucalyptus leaned against the Norwegian pine, the
birch-tree of the north mingled its foliage with New Zealand kauris.
It was enough to distract the most ingenious classifier of
terrestrial botany.
Suddenly I halted. I drew back my uncle.
The diffused light revealed the smallest object in the dense and
distant thickets. I had thought I saw - no! I did see, with my own
eyes, vast colossal forms moving amongst the trees. They were
gigantic animals; it was a herd of mastodons - not fossil remains,
but living and resembling those the bones of which were found in the
Journey to the Center of the Earth |
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 Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Falling into deep abysses,
Warning, chiding, spake in this wise :
"O my children! my poor children!
Listen to the words of wisdom,
Listen to the words of warning,
From the lips of the Great Spirit,
From the Master of Life, who made you!
"I have given you lands to hunt in,
I have given you streams to fish in,
I have given you bear and bison,
I have given you roe and reindeer,
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