| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: dirty blouse on, carrying two pails full of water, that hung on a
yoke across her bent back. The old woman carefully put down the
pails and bowed, with the same backward jerk of her head.
After passing the well Nekhludoff entered the village. It was a
bright, hot day, and oppressive, though only ten o'clock. At
intervals the sun was hidden by the gathering clouds. An
unpleasant, sharp smell of manure filled the air in the street.
It came from carts going up the hillside, but chiefly from the
disturbed manure heaps in the yards of the huts, by the open
gates of which Nekhludoff had to pass. The peasants, barefooted,
their shirts and trousers soiled with manure, turned to look at
Resurrection |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: lights. He smote her in the face, and she fled.
When I came to myself at Lanyon's, the horror of my old friend
perhaps affected me somewhat: I do not know; it was at least but a
drop in the sea to the abhorrence with which I looked back upon
these hours. A change had come over me. It was no longer the
fear of the gallows, it was the horror of being Hyde that racked
me. I received Lanyon's condemnation partly in a dream; it was
partly in a dream that I came home to my own house and got into
bed. I slept after the prostration of the day, with a stringent
and profound slumber which not even the nightmares that wrung me
could avail to break. I awoke in the morning shaken, weakened,
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Koran: forgiveness and a mighty hire.
Verily, those who cry out to thee from behind the inner chambers,
most of them have no sense; but did they wait until thou come out to
them, it were better for them;-but God is forgiving, merciful.
O ye who believe! if there come to you a sinner with an information,
then discriminate, lest ye fall upon a people in ignorance and on
the morrow repent of what ye have done.
And know that among you is the Apostle of God; if he should obey you
in many a matter ye would commit a sin; God has made faith beloved
by you, and has made it seemly in your hearts, and has made
misbelief and iniquity and rebellion hateful to you.-These are the
The Koran |
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 Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: mistress and maid--had the fortune of war allotted the same mischance to
me, Mrs. Wadman would have enquired into every circumstance relating to it
a hundred times--She would have enquired, an' please your honour, ten times
as often about your honour's groin--The pain, Trim, is equally
excruciating,--and Compassion has as much to do with the one as the other--
--God bless your honour! cried the corporal--what has a woman's compassion
to do with a wound upon the cap of a man's knee? had your honour's been
shot into ten thousand splinters at the affair of Landen, Mrs. Wadman would
have troubled her head as little about it as Bridget; because, added the
corporal, lowering his voice, and speaking very distinctly, as he assigned
his reason--
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