| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Miracle Mongers and Their Methods by Harry Houdini: Fleet Street, the prices being half-a-crown,
eighteen pence and one shilling.
According to London Tit-Bits, ``De Heiterkeit
had the honor of exhibiting before Louis
XIV., the Emperor of Austria, the King of
Sicily and the Doge of Venice, and his name
having reached the Inquisition, that holy office
proposed experimenting on him to find out
whether he was fireproof externally as well as
internally. He was preserved from this
unwelcome ordeal, however, by the interference
Miracle Mongers and Their Methods |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: not of uniform delight, but uniform hardship."
"Those men," answered Imlac, "are less wretched in their silent
convent than the Abyssinian princes in their prison of pleasure.
Whatever is done by the monks is incited by an adequate and
reasonable motive. Their labour supplies them with necessaries; it
therefore cannot be omitted, and is certainly rewarded. Their
devotion prepares them for another state, and reminds them of its
approach while it fits them for it. Their time is regularly
distributed; one duty succeeds another, so that they are not left
open to the distraction of unguided choice, nor lost in the shades
of listless inactivity. There is a certain task to be performed at
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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 Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: the white dress and blue sash, the early mass. "Why, I loved her,
really loved her with a good, pure love, that night; I loved her
even before: yes, I loved her when I lived with my aunts the
first time and was writing my composition." And he remembered
himself as he had been then. A breath of that freshness, youth
and fulness of life seemed to touch him, and he grew painfully
sad. The difference between what he had been then and what he was
now, was enormous--just as great, if not greater than the
difference between Katusha in church that night, and the
prostitute who had been carousing with the merchant and whom they
judged this morning. Then he was free and fearless, and
Resurrection |
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 The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: And there he stopped. He got a little frightened. "This must be
the sea," he thought. "What a wide place it is! If I go on into
it I shall surely lose my way, or some strange thing will bite me.
I will stop here and look out for the otter, or the eels, or some
one to tell me where I shall go."
So he went back a little way, and crept into a crack of the rock,
just where the river opened out into the wide shallows, and watched
for some one to tell him his way: but the otter and the eels were
gone on miles and miles down the stream.
There he waited, and slept too, for he was quite tired with his
night's journey; and, when he woke, the stream was clearing to a
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