| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: filled us an with a hitherto unfelt admiration for him and all his kind.
Chapter 5
The steaks we had that night, and they were fine; and the
following morning we tasted the broth. It seemed odd to be
eating a creature that should, by all the laws of paleontology,
have been extinct for several million years. It gave one a
feeling of newness that was almost embarrassing, although it
didn't seem to embarrass our appetites. Olson ate until I
thought he would burst.
The girl ate with us that night at the little officers' mess just
back of the torpedo compartment. The narrow table was unfolded;
The Land that Time Forgot |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: power is harmoniously balanced, he sounded the gulf that divided this
couple, brought together by fate. Well content with the promise he
inferred from this dissimilarity between the husband and wife, he made
no attempt to control a liking which ought to have raised a barrier
between the fair Marianna and himself. He was already conscious of
feeling a sort of respectful pity for this man, whose only joy she
was, as he understood the dignified and serene acceptance of ill
fortune that was expressed in Gambara's mild and melancholy gaze.
After expecting to see one of the grotesque figures so often set
before us by German novelists and writers of /libretti/, he beheld a
simple, unpretentious man, whose manners and demeanor were in nothing
Gambara |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: prodigious size, in shape resembling a weaver's shuttle. It is
in length six yards, and in the thickest part at least three
yards over. This magnet is sustained by a very strong axle of
adamant passing through its middle, upon which it plays, and is
poised so exactly that the weakest hand can turn it. It is
hooped round with a hollow cylinder of adamant, four feet yards
in diameter, placed horizontally, and supported by eight
adamantine feet, each six yards high. In the middle of the
concave side, there is a groove twelve inches deep, in which the
extremities of the axle are lodged, and turned round as there is
occasion.
Gulliver's Travels |
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 Emerald City of Oz by L. Frank Baum: to him he addressed his speech. First he told of his plan to conquer
the Land of Oz and plunder the country of its riches and enslave its
people, who, being fairies, could not be killed. After relating all
this, and telling of the tunnel the Nome King was building, he said he
had come to ask the First and Foremost to join the Nomes, with his band
of terrible warriors, and help them to defeat the Oz people.
The General spoke very earnestly and impressively, but when he had
finished the bear-man began to laugh as if much amused, and his laughter
seemed to be echoed by a chorus of merriment from an unseen multitude.
Then, for the first time, Guph began to feel a trifle worried.
"Who else has promised to help you?" finally asked the First and Foremost.
The Emerald City of Oz |
