| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: me what this latter is;--the excellence of wrestling I call gymnastic, and
I want to know what you call the other.
ALCIBIADES: I do not understand you.
SOCRATES: Then try to do as I do; for the answer which I gave is
universally right, and when I say right, I mean according to rule.
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And was not the art of which I spoke gymnastic?
ALCIBIADES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And I called the excellence in wrestling gymnastic?
ALCIBIADES: You did.
SOCRATES: And I was right?
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: charming bouquet for Madame Hulot, whose expectations, it may be said,
were by no means fulfilled. Like those worthy fold, who take men of
genius to be a sort of monsters, eating, drinking, walking, and
speaking unlike other people, the Baroness had hoped to see Josepha
the opera singer, the witch, the amorous and amusing courtesan; she
saw a calm and well-mannered woman, with the dignity of talent, the
simplicity of an actress who knows herself to be at night a queen, and
also, better than all, a woman of the town whose eyes, attitude, and
demeanor paid full and ungrudging homage to the virtuous wife, the
/Mater dolorosa/ of the sacred hymn, and who was crowning her sorrows
with flowers, as the Madonna is crowned in Italy.
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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 Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: ascending; the slow even tread of bare feet coming up.
The hair on Trooper Peter Halket's forehead slowly stiffened itself. He
had no thought of escaping; he was paralyzed with dread. He took up his
gun. A deadly coldness crept from his feet to his head. He had worked a
maxim gun in a fight when some hundred natives fell and only one white man
had been wounded; and he had never known fear; but tonight his fingers were
stiff on the lock of his gun. He knelt low, tending a little to one side
of the fire, with his gun ready. A stone half sheltered him from anyone
coming up from the other side of the kopje, and the instant the figure
appeared over the edge he intended to fire.
Then, the thought flashed on him; what, and if it were one of his own
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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 Concerning Christian Liberty by Martin Luther: these things for justification or salvation, but that I may thus
comply with the will of the Pope, of the bishop, of such a
community or such a magistrate, or of my neighbour as an example
to him; for this cause I will do and suffer all things, just as
Christ did and suffered much more for me, though He needed not at
all to do so on His own account, and made Himself for my sake
under the law, when He was not under the law. And although
tyrants may do me violence or wrong in requiring obedience to
these things, yet it will not hurt me to do them, so long as they
are not done against God.
>From all this every man will be able to attain a sure judgment
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