| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dreams by Olive Schreiner: man. I asked God whether it was man or woman.
God said, "In the least Heaven sex reigns supreme; in the higher it is not
noticed; but in the highest it does not exist."
And I saw the figure bend over its work, and labour mightily, but what it
laboured at I could not see.
I said to God, "How came it here?"
God said, "By a bloody stair. Step by step it mounted from the lowest
Hell, and day by day as Hell grew farther and Heaven no nearer, it hung
alone between two worlds. Hour by hour in that bitter struggle its limbs
grew larger, till there fell from it rag by rag the garments which it
started with. Drops fell from its eyes as it strained them; each step it
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs: aperture to seize me, and I saw the snarling face of a lion
within the embrasure.
Releasing my hold upon the ivy, I dropped the re-maining
distance to the ground, saved from laceration only because
the lion's paw struck the thick stem of ivy.
The creature was making a frightful racket now, leaping back
and forth from the floor at the broad window ledge, tearing
at the masonry with his claws in vain attempts to reach me.
But the opening was too narrow, and the masonry too solid.
Victory had commenced the descent, but I called to her to
stop just above the window, and, as the lion reappeared,
Lost Continent |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Copy-Cat & Other Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: As for her unmarried sister Janet, who was older
and had graduated from a young ladies' seminary
instead of a college, whose early fancy had been
guided into the lady-like ways of antimacassars and
pincushions and wax flowers under glass shades,
she was a straighter proposition. No astral pre-
tensions had Janet. She stayed, body and soul to-
gether, in the old ways, and did not even project
her shadow out of them. There is seldom room
enough for one's shadow in one's earliest way of
life, but there was plenty for Janet's. There had
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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 Falk by Joseph Conrad: the table. Falk stopped short in the doorway.
Without a word, without a sign, without the slight-
est inclination of his bony head, by the silent in-
tensity of his look alone, he seemed to lay his her-
culean frame at her feet. Her hands sank slowly
on her lap, and raising her clear eyes, she let her
soft, beaming glance enfold him from head to foot
like a slow and pale caress. He was very hot when
he sat down; she, with bowed head, went on with
her sewing; her neck was very white under the light
of the lamp; but Falk, hiding his face in the palms
Falk |
