| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: In flakes our atmosphere, what time the horn
Of the celestial Goat doth touch the sun,
Upward in such array saw I the ether
Become, and flaked with the triumphant vapours,
Which there together with us had remained.
My sight was following up their semblances,
And followed till the medium, by excess,
The passing farther onward took from it;
Whereat the Lady, who beheld me freed
From gazing upward, said to me: "Cast down
Thy sight, and see how far thou art turned round."
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: that here, precisely as in Russia, there were rich men who owned everything;
and if one could not find any work, was not the hunger he began to feel
the same sort of hunger?
When Jurgis had been working about three weeks at Brown's, there had come
to him one noontime a man who was employed as a night watchman, and who
asked him if he would not like to take out naturalization papers and
become a citizen. Jurgis did not know what that meant, but the man
explained the advantages. In the first place, it would not cost him
anything, and it would get him half a day off, with his pay just the
same; and then when election time came he would be able to vote--and
there was something in that. Jurgis was naturally glad to accept, and so
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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 Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: Give me the sun that shone!
Give me the eyes, give me the soul,
Give me the lad that's gone!
Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,
Say, could that lad be I?
Merry of soul he sailed on a day
Over the sea to Skye.
Billow and breeze, islands and seas,
Mountains of rain and sun,
All that was good, all that was fair,
All that was me is gone.
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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 Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: herself completely with her offspring. When she has not merely given
life, but given of her whole life, you behold that wonderful,
unexplained, and inexplicable thing--the love of a woman for one of
her children above the others. The outcome of this story is one more
proof of a proven truth--a mother's place cannot be filled. A mother
foresees danger long before a Mlle. Armande can admit the possibility
of it, even if the mischief is done. The one prevents the evil, the
other remedies it. And besides, in the maiden's motherhood there is an
element of blind adoration, she cannot bring herself to scold a
beautiful boy.
A practical knowledge of life, and the experience of business, had
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