| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: idea until she hatches it. A strange assemblage of virtues and
defects! which her Spanish nature had strengthened in Madame
Evangelista, and over which her French experience had cast the glaze
of its politeness.
This character, slumbering in married happiness for sixteen years,
occupied since then with the trivialities of social life, this nature
to which a first hatred had revealed its strength, awoke now like a
conflagration; at the moment of the woman's life when she was losing
the dearest object of her affections and needed another element for
the energy that possessed her, this flame burst forth. Natalie could
be but three days more beneath her influence! Madame Evangelista,
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne: itself before me, whilst the Hansbach, following the caprice of
another incline, had gone with my companions away into unknown depths.
How was I to return? There was not a trace of their footsteps or of
my own, for the foot left no mark upon the granite floor. I racked my
brain for a solution of this impracticable problem. One word
described my position. Lost!
Lost at an immeasurable depth! Thirty leagues of rock seemed to weigh
upon my shoulders with a dreadful pressure. I felt crushed.
I tried to carry back my ideas to things on the surface of the earth.
I could scarcely succeed. Hamburg, the house in the Königstrasse, my
poor Gräuben, all that busy world underneath which I was wandering
Journey to the Center of the Earth |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: with the man who sat next to him.
The manufacturer, Mr. Wilson, from the time of the entrance
of the stranger, had regarded him with an air of disturbed and
uneasy curiosity. He seemed to himself to have met and been
acquainted with him somewhere, but he could not recollect.
Every few moments, when the man spoke, or moved, or smiled, he
would start and fix his eyes on him, and then suddenly withdraw
them, as the bright, dark eyes met his with such unconcerned coolness.
At last, a sudden recollection seemed to flash upon him, for he stared
at the stranger with such an air of blank amazement and alarm, that
he walked up to him.
Uncle Tom's Cabin |
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 United States Declaration of Independence: that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends,
it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute
new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing
its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect
their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments
long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;
and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed
to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing
United States Declaration of Independence |
