The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Animal Farm by George Orwell: ruthlessly. He ordered the hens' rations to be stopped, and decreed that
any animal giving so much as a grain of corn to a hen should be punished
by death. The dogs saw to it that these orders were carried out. For five
days the hens held out, then they capitulated and went back to their
nesting boxes. Nine hens had died in the meantime. Their bodies were
buried in the orchard, and it was given out that they had died of
coccidiosis. Whymper heard nothing of this affair, and the eggs were duly
delivered, a grocer's van driving up to the farm once a week to take them
away.
All this while no more had been seen of Snowball. He was rumoured to be
hiding on one of the neighbouring farms, either Foxwood or Pinchfield.
 Animal Farm |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: be, wrong? Wrong to the universe; wrong to mankind; wrong to
God. And yet in another sense, and that plainer and nearer,
every man of men, who wishes truly, must be right. He is
right to himself, and in the measure of his sagacity and
candour. That let him do in all sincerity and zeal, not
sparing a thought for contrary opinions; that, for what it is
worth, let him proclaim. Be not afraid; although he be
wrong, so also is the dead, stuffed Dagon he insults. For
the voice of God, whatever it is, is not that stammering,
inept tradition which the people holds. These truths survive
in travesty, swamped in a world of spiritual darkness and
|
The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Oakdale Affair by Edgar Rice Burroughs: an accessory after the fact in the matter of two crimes
at least? These new friends, it seemed, were about to
topple him into the abyss which he had studiously
avoided for so long a time. But why should he permit
it? What were they to him?
A freight train was puffing into the siding at the Pay-
son station. Bridge could hear the complaining brakes
a mile away. It would be easy to leave the town and his
dangerous companions far behind him; but even as the
thought forced its way into his mind another obtruded
itself to shoulder aside the first. It was recollection of the
 The Oakdale Affair |
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 Heroes by Charles Kingsley: ground, and when daylight came waded to the shore; and saw
nothing round but sand and desolate salt pools, for they had
come to the quicksands of the Syrtis, and the dreary treeless
flats which lie between Numidia and Cyrene, on the burning
shore of Africa. And there they wandered starving for many a
weary day, ere they could launch their ship again, and gain
the open sea. And there Canthus was killed, while he was
trying to drive off sheep, by a stone which a herdsman threw.
And there too Mopsus died, the seer who knew the voices of
all birds; but he could not foretell his own end, for he was
bitten in the foot by a snake, one of those which sprang from
|