| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War by Frederick A. Talbot: be extremely favourable. If the elements are unpropitious the
airship must venture nearer to its objective. These data were
not difficult to collect, inasmuch as they were more or less
available from the results of military observations with captive
balloons, the conditions being somewhat similar. With the
ordinary captive balloon it has been found that, in clear
weather, a radius of about 3 3/4 miles at the maximum elevation
constitutes its range of reliable utility.
With the aeroplane, however, the conditions are very dissimilar.
In the first place the machine owing to its diminutive size as
compared with the airship, offers a small and inconspicuous
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: at the appalling magnitude of the disaster. The whole world of
Costaguana (the country, you may remember, of my seaboard tale),
men, women, headlands, houses, mountains, town, campo (there was
not a single brick, stone, or grain of sand of its soil I had not
placed in position with my own hands); all the history,
geography, politics, finance; the wealth of Charles Gould's
silver-mine, and the splendour of the magnificent Capataz de
Cargadores, whose name, cried out in the night (Dr. Monygham
heard it pass over his head--in Linda Viola's voice), dominated
even after death the dark gulf containing his conquests of
treasure and love--all that had come down crashing about my ears.
Some Reminiscences |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton: Her glance, making a swift circuit of the room, dwelt for an
appreciable instant on the intimate propinquity of arm-chair
and sofa-corner; then she turned back to the door.
BOOK III
XVII
At dinner that evening Madame de Chantelle's slender
monologue was thrown out over gulfs of silence. Owen was
still in the same state of moody abstraction as when Darrow
had left him at the piano; and even Anna's face, to her
friend's vigilant eye, revealed not, perhaps, a personal
preoccupation, but a vague sense of impending disturbance.
|
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 Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche: men.
For THIS am I from the heart and from the beginning--drawing, hither-
drawing, upward-drawing, upbringing; a drawer, a trainer, a training-
master, who not in vain counselled himself once on a time: "Become what
thou art!"
Thus may men now come UP to me; for as yet do I await the signs that it is
time for my down-going; as yet do I not myself go down, as I must do,
amongst men.
Therefore do I here wait, crafty and scornful upon high mountains, no
impatient one, no patient one; rather one who hath even unlearnt patience,
--because he no longer "suffereth."
Thus Spake Zarathustra |
