| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: from Laura Place, with a sudden invitation from Lady Dalrymple
for the same evening, and Anne was already engaged, to spend that evening
in Westgate Buildings. She was not sorry for the excuse.
They were only asked, she was sure, because Lady Dalrymple being
kept at home by a bad cold, was glad to make use of the relationship
which had been so pressed on her; and she declined on her own account
with great alacrity--"She was engaged to spend the evening
with an old schoolfellow." They were not much interested in anything
relative to Anne; but still there were questions enough asked,
to make it understood what this old schoolfellow was; and Elizabeth
was disdainful, and Sir Walter severe.
Persuasion |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: the New World, and so he comes back again, and that costs twelve
thousand more. Under pretence of having carried two words of Napoleon
to a general, he thinks himself a great soldier and makes faces at the
Bourbons; meantime, what does he do? amuse himself, travel about, see
foreign countries! As for me, I'm not duped by his misfortunes; he
doesn't look like a man who fails to get the best of things! Somebody
finds him a good place, and there he is, leading the life of a
Sardanapalus with a ballet-girl, and guzzling the funds of his
journal; that costs the mother another twelve thousand francs! I don't
care two straws for myself, but Philippe will bring that poor woman to
beggary. He thinks I'm of no account because I was never in the
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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 Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: to the wind and rubbing his head on Nikita's sleeve. Then, as
if not to pain Nikita by refusing his offer of the straw he put
before him, he hurriedly snatched a wisp out of the sledge, but
immediately decided that it was now no time to think of straw
and threw it down, and the wind instantly scattered it, carried
it away, and covered it with snow.
'Now we will set up a signal,' said Nikita, and turning the
front of the sledge to the wind he tied the shafts together
with a strap and set them up on end in front of the sledge.
'There now, when the snow covers us up, good folk will see the
shafts and dig us out,' he said, slapping his mittens together
Master and Man |
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 Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: and justify all thy errors? Then came the days of thy later passions,
terrible like the love of a woman of forty years, with a fierce cry
thou hast sought to clasp the whole universe in one last embrace--and
thy universe recoiled from thee!
"Then old men succeeded to thy young lovers; decrepitude came to thy
feet and made thee hideous. Yet, even then, men with the eagle power
of vision said to thee in a glance, 'Thou shalt perish ingloriously,
because thou hast fallen away, because thou hast broken the vows of
thy maidenhood. The angel with peace written on her forehead, who
should have shed light and joy along her path, has been a Messalina,
delighting in the circus, in debauchery, and abuse of power. The days
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