| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: together, as if to find some ground for this comforting theory, and
felt inclined to credit him with good intentions rather than bad.
Forgetting the fright that he had given the pastry-cook, she walked on
with a firmer step through the upper end of the Faubourg Saint Martin;
and another half-hour's walk brought her to a house at the corner
where the road to the Barriere de Pantin turns off from the main
thoroughfare. Even at this day, the place is one of the least
frequented parts of Paris. The north wind sweeps over the Buttes-
Chaumont and Belleville, and whistles through the houses (the hovels
rather), scattered over an almost uninhabited low-lying waste, where
the fences are heaps of earth and bones. It was a desolate-looking
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: prospects before him when his father went down off the North Cape
in the long Arctic night, and his mother, seized by a violent
horror of seafaring life, had followed her brother to America.
Eric was eighteen then, handsome as young Siegfried, a giant in
stature, with a skin singularly pure and delicate, like a Swede's;
hair as yellow as the locks of Tennyson's amorous Prince, and eyes
of a fierce, burning blue, whose flash was most dangerous to women.
He had in those days a certain pride of bearing, a certain
confidence of approach, that usually accompanies physical
perfection. It was even said of him then that he was in love with
life, and inclined to levity, a vice most unusual on the Divide.
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from In Darkest England and The Way Out by General William Booth: An illustration or two will explain what I mean. Here is a carpenter
who comes to our Labour shed; he is an honest, decent man, who has by
sickness or some other calamity been reduced to destitution. He has by
degrees pawned one article after another to keep body and soul
together, until at last he has been compelled to pawn his tools.
We register him, and an employer comes along who wants a carpenter whom
we can recommend. We at once suggest this man, but then arises this
difficulty. He has no tools; what are we to do? As things are at
present, the man loses the job and continues on our hands. Obviously
it is most desirable in the interest of the community that the man
should get his tools out of pawn; but who is to take the responsibility
In Darkest England and The Way Out |
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 Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare: Save the eagle, feather'd king:
Keep the obsequy so strict.
Let the priest in surplice white,
That defunctive music can,
Be the death-defying swan,
Lest the requiem lack his right.
And thou, treble-dated crow,
That thy sable gender mak'st
With the breath thou giv'st and tak'st,
'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.
Here the anthem doth commence:
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