| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: *"Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood."
"Oh, undoubtedly!" said Prince Andrew, and with sudden and unnatural
liveliness he began chaffing Pierre about the need to be very
careful with his fifty-year-old Moscow cousins, and in the midst of
these jesting remarks he rose, taking Pierre by the arm, and drew
him aside.
"Well?" asked Pierre, seeing his friend's strange animation with
surprise, and noticing the glance he turned on Natasha as he rose.
"I must... I must have a talk with you," said Prince Andrew. "You
know that pair of women's gloves?" (He referred to the Masonic
gloves given to a newly initiated Brother to present to the woman he
War and Peace |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Russia in 1919 by Arthur Ransome: "They have no constructive programme; they would
like a bourgeois government back again, in order
that they might be in opposition to it, on the left"
On March 2nd, I went to an election meeting of workers
and officials of the Moscow Co-operatives. It was
beastly cold in the hall of the University where the
meeting was held, and my nose froze as well as my feet.
Speakers were announced from the Communists,
Internationalists, Mensheviks, and Right
Social Revolutionaries. The last-named did not arrive.
The Presidium was for the most part non-Communist,
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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 Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: make my bed, clean my shoes, brush my clothes, sweep the room, and
make ready my breakfast, before going to her day's work of turning the
handle of a machine, at which hard drudgery she earned five-pence. Her
husband, a cabinetmaker, made four francs a day at his trade; but as
they had three children, it was all that they could do to gain an
honest living. Yet I have never met with more sterling honesty than in
this man and wife. For five years after I left the quarter, Mere
Vaillant used to come on my birthday with a bunch of flowers and some
oranges for me--she that had never a sixpence to put by! Want had
drawn us together. I never could give her more than a ten-franc piece,
and often I had to borrow the money for the occasion. This will
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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 Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: hang him tonight, only the big troop might catch us up this evening, so
he'd wait to hear what the Colonel said; but if they didn't come he'd hang
him first thing tomorrow morning, or have him shot, as sure as the sun
rose. He made the fellows tie him up to that little tree before his tent,
with riems round his legs, and riems round his waist, and a riem round his
neck."
"What did the native say?" asked the Englishman.
"Oh, he didn't say anything. There wasn't a soul in the camp could have
understood him if he had. The coloured boys don't know his language. I
expect he's one of those bloody fellows we hit the day we cleared the bush
out yonder; but how he got down that bank with his leg in the state it must
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