| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Jungle Tales of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Mbonga went down with a scream of terror. He was
too frightened even to attempt to defend himself.
He just lay beneath his antagonist in a paralysis of fear,
screaming at the top of his lungs. Tarzan half rose
and kneeled above the black. He turned Mbonga over and
looked him in the face, exposing the man's throat, then he
drew his long, keen knife, the knife that John Clayton,
Lord Greystoke, had brought from England many years before.
He raised it close above Mbonga's neck. The old black
whimpered with terror. He pleaded for his life in a tongue
which Tarzan could not understand.
The Jungle Tales of Tarzan |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: it, as by the action on his mind of the failure of response of the
outer world, sinking back to vague anguish. It seemed to him he
had waited an age for some stir of the great grim hush; the life of
the town was itself under a spell - so unnaturally, up and down the
whole prospect of known and rather ugly objects, the blankness and
the silence lasted. Had they ever, he asked himself, the hard-
faced houses, which had begun to look livid in the dim dawn, had
they ever spoken so little to any need of his spirit? Great
builded voids, great crowded stillnesses put on, often, in the
heart of cities, for the small hours, a sort of sinister mask, and
it was of this large collective negation that Brydon presently
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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 The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain: impossible things one reads about in books, and never sees in life."
He was well stirred up now; cheerful, even gleeful. He tapped his
old wife on the cheek, and said humorously, "Why, we're rich, Mary,
rich; all we've got to do is to bury the money and burn the papers.
If the gambler ever comes to inquire, we'll merely look coldly upon
him and say: 'What is this nonsense you are talking? We have never
heard of you and your sack of gold before;' and then he would look
foolish, and--"
"And in the meantime, while you are running on with your jokes, the
money is still here, and it is fast getting along toward burglar-
time."
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg |
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 King James Bible: the Red sea.
PSA 106:23 Therefore he said that he would destroy them, had not Moses
his chosen stood before him in the breach, to turn away his wrath, lest
he should destroy them.
PSA 106:24 Yea, they despised the pleasant land, they believed not his
word:
PSA 106:25 But murmured in their tents, and hearkened not unto the
voice of the LORD.
PSA 106:26 Therefore he lifted up his hand against them, to overthrow
them in the wilderness:
PSA 106:27 To overthrow their seed also among the nations, and to
King James Bible |
