| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas: boats.
Buckingham heard the directions given with such an
exhibition of delight that a stranger would really imagine
the young man's reason was affected. As the Duke of Norfolk
gave his commands, a large boat or barge, decked with flags,
and capable of holding about twenty rowers and fifteen
passengers, was slowly lowered from the side of the
admiral's vessel. The barge was carpeted with velvet and
decorated with coverings embroidered with the arms of
England, and with garlands of flowers; for, at that time,
ornamentation was by no means forgotten in these political
Ten Years Later |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Paradise Lost by John Milton: Eternity so spent in worship paid
To whom we hate! Let us not then pursue,
By force impossible, by leave obtained
Unacceptable, though in Heaven, our state
Of splendid vassalage; but rather seek
Our own good from ourselves, and from our own
Live to ourselves, though in this vast recess,
Free and to none accountable, preferring
Hard liberty before the easy yoke
Of servile pomp. Our greatness will appear
Then most conspicuous when great things of small,
Paradise Lost |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tales of the Klondyke by Jack London: below, was struggling to tear itself from the grip of the shores.
Fissures reverberated into life before their eyes, and the air was
filled with multitudinous crackling, crisp and sharp, like the
sound that goes up on a clear day from the firing line.
From up the river two men were racing a dog team toward them on an
uncovered stretch of ice. But even as they looked, the pair
struck the water and began to flounder through. Behind, where
their feet had sped the moment before, the ice broke up and turned
turtle. Through this opening the river rushed out upon them to
their waists, burying the sled and swinging the dogs off at right
angles in a drowning tangle. But the men stopped their flight to
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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 The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: on whose immediate margin, high above our heads, the one tall
pine precariously nodded - these stood for its greatness;
while, the dog-hutch, boot-jacks, old boots, old tavern
bills, and the very beds that we inherited from bygone
miners, put in human touches and realized for us the story of
the past.
I have sat on an old sleeper, under the thick madronas near
the forge, with just a look over the dump on the green world
below, and seen the sun lying broad among the wreck, and
heard the silence broken only by the tinkling water in the
shaft, or a stir of the royal family about the battered
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