| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: inches high at the shoulder; broad-chested, with straight, sinewy
legs; and covered with thick, wavy, cream-coloured hair from the
tips of his short ears to the end of his bushy tail--all except the
left side of his face. That was black from ear to nose--coal-black;
and in the centre of this storm-cloud his eye gleamed like fire.
What did Pichou know about that ominous sign? No one had ever told
him. He had no looking-glass. He ran up to the porch where the men
were sitting, as innocent as a Sunday-school scholar coming to the
superintendent's desk to receive a prize. But when old Grant, who
had grown pursy and nervous from long living on the fat of the land
at Ottawa, saw the black patch and the gleaming eye, he anticipated
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: through which they looked forth into the dark corridor. A person
standing without could easily take a purse from under the pillow, or
even strangle a sleeper as he lay abed. M'Naughten and his comrade
stared at each other like Vasco's seamen, 'with a wild surmise'; and
then the latter, catching up the lamp, ran to the other frame and
roughly raised the curtain. There he stood, petrified; and
M'Naughten, who had followed, grasped him by the wrist in terror.
They could see into another room, larger in size than that which they
occupied, where three men sat crouching and silent in the dark. For
a second or so these five persons looked each other in the eyes, then
the curtain was dropped, and M'Naughten and his friend made but one
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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 Dracula by Bram Stoker: which however, may in God's will be means to a good end.
I write all these things in the diary since my darling must not
hear them now. But if it may be that she can see them again,
they shall be ready. She is calling to me.
CHAPTER 25
DR SEWARD'S DIARY
11 October, Evening.--Jonathan Harker has asked me to note this,
as he says he is hardly equal to the task, and he wants
an exact record kept.
I think that none of us were surprised when we were asked
to see Mrs. Harker a little before the time of sunset.
Dracula |
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 Gorgias by Plato: philosophers tell us, Callicles, that communion and friendship and
orderliness and temperance and justice bind together heaven and earth and
gods and men, and that this universe is therefore called Cosmos or order,
not disorder or misrule, my friend. But although you are a philosopher you
seem to me never to have observed that geometrical equality is mighty, both
among gods and men; you think that you ought to cultivate inequality or
excess, and do not care about geometry.--Well, then, either the principle
that the happy are made happy by the possession of justice and temperance,
and the miserable miserable by the possession of vice, must be refuted, or,
if it is granted, what will be the consequences? All the consequences
which I drew before, Callicles, and about which you asked me whether I was
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