| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy: soon as twilight succeeded to sunset the flare of the
couch-grass and cabbage-stalk fires began to light up
the allotments fitfully, their outlines appearing and
disappearing under the dense smoke as wafted by the
wind. When a fire glowed, banks of smoke, blown level
along the ground, would themselves become illuminated
to an opaque lustre, screening the workpeople from one
another; and meaning of the "pillar of a cloud", which
was a wall by day and a light by night, could be
understood.
As evening thickened some of the gardening men and
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Call of the Wild by Jack London: He was friendly, in a treacherous sort of way, smiling into one's
face the while he meditated some underhand trick, as, for
instance, when he stole from Buck's food at the first meal. As
Buck sprang to punish him, the lash of Francois's whip sang
through the air, reaching the culprit first; and nothing remained
to Buck but to recover the bone. That was fair of Francois, he
decided, and the half-breed began his rise in Buck's estimation.
The other dog made no advances, nor received any; also, he did not
attempt to steal from the newcomers. He was a gloomy, morose
fellow, and he showed Curly plainly that all he desired was to be
left alone, and further, that there would be trouble if he were
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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 Message by Honore de Balzac: girl of twenty; and, to come to the point, that a woman is no
older than she looks.
This theory set no limits to the age of love, so we struck out,
in all good faith, into a boundless sea. At length, when we had
portrayed our mistresses as young, charming, and devoted to us,
women of rank, women of taste, intellectual and clever; when we
had endowed them with little feet, a satin, nay, a delicately
fragrant skin, then came the admission--on his part that Madame
Such-an-one was thirty-eight years old, and on mine that I
worshiped a woman of forty. Whereupon, as if released on either
side from some kind of vague fear, our confidences came thick and
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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 A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: them, and no reason or necessity whatsoever can procure them a
permission to eat meat, and their country affording no fish, they
live only on roots and pulse. On fast-days they never drink but at
their meat, and the priests never communicate till evening, for fear
of profaning them. They do not think themselves obliged to fast
till they have children either married or fit to be married, which
yet doth not secure them very long from these mortifications,
because their youths marry at the age of ten years, and their girls
younger.
There is no nation where excommunication carries greater terrors
than among the Abyssins, which puts it in the power of the priests
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