| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Fantastic Fables by Ambrose Bierce: comply he fell over his own feet, breaking the Third Commandment.
An Officer and a Thug
A CHIEF of Police who had seen an Officer beating a Thug was very
indignant, and said he must not do so any more on pain of
dismissal.
"Don't be too hard on me," said the Officer, smiling; "I was
beating him with a stuffed club."
"Nevertheless," persisted the Chief of Police, "it was a liberty
that must have been very disagreeable, though it may not have hurt.
Please do not repeat it."
"But," said the Officer, still smiling, "it was a stuffed Thug."
Fantastic Fables |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: trust, nothing prudent or proper had been done with it. She could
spend her capital, and at the rate she was going, expensive,
extravagant and with a swarm of parasites to help, it certainly
wouldn't last very long.
"Couldn't YOU perhaps take her, independent, unencumbered as you
are?" I asked of Mrs. Meldrum. "You're probably, with one
exception, the sanest person she knows, and you at least wouldn't
scandalously fleece her."
"How do you know what I wouldn't do?" my humorous friend demanded.
"Of course I've thought how I can help her--it has kept me awake at
night. But doing it's impossible; she'll take nothing from me.
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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 The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: his "natural superiors," and has left remaining no other nexus
between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash
payment." It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of
religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine
sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It
has resolved personal worth into exchange value. And in place of
the numberless and feasible chartered freedoms, has set up that
single, unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade. In one word, for
exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, naked,
shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation
The Communist Manifesto |
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 A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: ELECTION OF A KING ACCORDING TO THE LAWS AND CUSTOMS OF SAMOA?
What are the electoral measures, what is the method of canvassing,
likely to be employed by two, three, four, or five, more or less
absolute princelings, eager to evince each other? And who is to
distinguish such a process from the state of war? In such
international - or, I should say, interparochial - differences, the
nearest we can come towards understanding is to appreciate the
cloud of ambiguity in which all parties grope -
"Treading the crude consistence, half on foot,
Half flying."
Now, in one part of Mataafa's behaviour his purpose is beyond
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