| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: manifestations.
It would never have come into my head, for instance, to walk
up to my father and kiss him or to stroke his hand. I was partly
prevented also from that by the fact that I always looked up to him
with awe, and his spiritual power, his greatness, prevented me from
seeing in him the mere man--the man who was so plaintive and weary
at times, the feeble old man who so much needed warmth and rest.
The only person who could give him that warmth was Masha.
She would go up to him, stroke his hand, caress him, and say
something affectionate, and you could see that he liked it, was
happy, and even responded in kind. It was as if he became a
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: energetically said, there is scarcely anything put in a form to be
generally convincing, or even easily intelligible: and I can well
imagine a reader laying down the book without being at all moved by
it, still less guided, to any definite course of action.
I think, however, if I now say briefly and clearly what I meant my
hearers to understand, and what I wanted, and still would fain have,
them to do, there may afterwards be found some better service in the
passionately written text.
The first lecture says, or tries to say, that, life being very
short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them
in reading valueless books; and that valuable books should, in a
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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 against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Others are flourishing, worse than he,
But he knew too much for the life he led.
And who knows all knows everything
That a patient ghost at last retrieves;
There's more to be known of his harvesting
When Time the thresher unbinds the sheaves;
And there's more to be heard than a wind that grieves
For Briony now in this ageless oak,
Driving the first of its withered leaves
Over the stones where the fountain broke.
Lisette and Eileen
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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 Damaged Goods by Upton Sinclair: but it was a man's duty not to take any chances in such a matter.
"I have not been a man of loose life," he added; "I have not
taken so many chances as other men."
The doctor cut him short with the brief remark that one chance
was all that was necessary. Instead of discussing such
questions, he would make an examination. "We do not say
positively in these cases until we have made a blood test. That
is the one way to avoid the possibility of mistake."
A drop of blood was squeezed out of George's finger on to a
little glass plate. The doctor retired to an adjoining room, and
the victim sat alone in the office, deriving no enjoyment from
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