| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the patience of the just O-Tar. Hereafter guard thy speech as
well as thy towers."
"Think not to taunt me with my mother's state," said A-Kor. "'Tis
the blood of the slave woman that fills my veins with pride, and
my only shame is that I am also the son of thy jeddak."
"And O-Tar heard this?" queried U-Dor.
"O-Tar has already heard it from my own lips," replied A-Kor;
"this, and more."
He turned upon his heel, a supporting arm still around the waist
of Tara of Helium and thus he half led, half carried her into The
Towers of Jetan, while U-Dor wheeled his thoat and galloped back
The Chessmen of Mars |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: be observed. Capt. Sulivan remarks, that the difference i
the prevailing colours was so obvious, that in looking fo
the herds near Port Pleasant, they appeared from a lon
distance like black spots, whilst south of Choiseul Soun
they appeared like white spots on the hill-sides. Capt. Sulivan
thinks that the herds do not mingle; and it is a singula
fact, that the mouse-coloured cattle, though living on th
high land, calve about a month earlier in the season tha
the other coloured beasts on the lower land. It is interesting
thus to find the once domesticated cattle breakin
into three colours, of which some one colour would in al
The Voyage of the Beagle |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Blix by Frank Norris: cargoes, as it were their entrails, spewed out in a wild disarray
of crate and bale and box. Sailors and stevedores swarmed them
like vermin. Trucks rolled along the wharves like peals of
ordnance, the horse-hoofs beating the boards like heavy drum-taps.
Chains clanked, a ship's dog barked incessantly from a
companionway, ropes creaked in complaining pulleys, blocks
rattled, hoisting-engines coughed and strangled, while all the air
was redolent of oakum, of pitch, of paint, of spices, of ripe
fruit, of clean cool lumber, of coffee, of tar, of bilge, and the
brisk, nimble odor of the sea.
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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 Witch, et. al by Anton Chekhov: every fish: you catch one with a live bait, you catch another
with a grub, the third with a frog or a grasshopper. One has to
understand all that, of course! For example, take the eel-pout.
It is not a delicate fish -- it will take a perch; and a pike
loves a gudgeon, the _shilishper_ likes a butterfly. If you fish
for a roach in a rapid stream there is no greater pleasure. You
throw the line of seventy feet without lead, with a butterfly or
a beetle, so that the bait floats on the surface; you stand in
the water without your trousers and let it go with the current,
and tug! the roach pulls at it! Only you have got to be artful
that he doesn't carry off the b ait, the damned rascal. As soon
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