| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: they were when bought in, yet the farmer or butcher finds very good
advantage in it, by the difference of the price of mutton between
Michaelmas, when it is cheapest, and Candlemas, when it is dearest;
this is what the butchers value themselves upon, when they tell us
at the market that it is right marsh-mutton.
3. In the bottom of these Marshes, and close to the edge of the
river, stands the strong fortress of Tilbury, called Tilbury Fort,
which may justly be looked upon as the key of the River Thames, and
consequently the key of the City of London. It is a regular
fortification. The design of it was a pentagon, but the water
bastion, as it would have been called, was never built. The plan
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: only fools who know nothing of dangers can afford to laugh at praying.
"But these niggers weren't going to let me walk through and away
like that. They started a kind of bowing dance about me, and sort of
pressed me to take a pathway that lay through the trees. It was
clear to me they didn't take me for a British citizen, whatever
else they thought of me, and for my own part I was never less anxious
to own up to the old country.
"You'd hardly believe it, perhaps, unless you're familiar with
savages, but these poor misguided, ignorant creatures took me
straight to their kind of joss place to present me to the blessed
old black stone there. By this time I was beginning to sort of realise
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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 Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence: 'Morning!'
After a time he came upstairs again, looking a little angry.
'Postman,' he said.
'Very early!' she replied.
'Rural round; he's mostly here by seven, when he does come.
'Did your mate send you a fortune?'
'No! Only some photographs and papers about a place out there in
British Columbia.'
'Would you go there?'
'I thought perhaps we might.'
'Oh yes! I believe it's lovely!' But he was put out by the postman's
Lady Chatterley's Lover |
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 Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: Kotick, Matkah's baby, was born in the middle of that
confusion, and he was all head and shoulders, with pale, watery
blue eyes, as tiny seals must be, but there was something about
his coat that made his mother look at him very closely.
"Sea Catch," she said, at last, "our baby's going to be
white!"
"Empty clam-shells and dry seaweed!" snorted Sea Catch.
"There never has been such a thing in the world as a white seal."
"I can't help that," said Matkah; "there's going to be now."
And she sang the low, crooning seal song that all the mother seals
sing to their babies:
The Jungle Book |
