| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: father less and the widow in their affliction. I love that
religion that is based upon the glorious principle, of love to
God and love to man; which makes its followers do unto others as
they themselves would be done by. If you demand liberty to
yourself, it says, grant it to your neighbors. If you claim a
right to think for yourself, it says, allow your neighbors the
same right. If you claim to act for yourself, it says, allow
your neighbors the same right. It is because I love this
religion that I hate the slaveholding, the woman-whipping, the
mind-darkening, the soul-destroying religion that exists in the
southern states of America. It is because I regard the one as
My Bondage and My Freedom |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Summer by Edith Wharton: stores gushing from every soda-water tap, on fruit and
confectionery shops stacked with strawberry-cake,
cocoanut drops, trays of glistening molasses candy,
boxes of caramels and chewing-gum, baskets of sodden
strawberries, and dangling branches of bananas. Outside
of some of the doors were trestles with banked-up
oranges and apples, spotted pears and dusty
raspberries; and the air reeked with the smell of fruit
and stale coffee, beer and sarsaparilla and fried
potatoes.
Even the shops that were closed offered, through wide
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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 Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: gradations, those intimate, misty joinings-on and spreadings-out into
the distance, nothing of that art of air and light by which the face
of nature explains and veils itself in climes which we may be allowed
to think more lovely. A glaring piece of crudity, where everything
that is not white is a solecism and defies the judgment of the
eyesight; a scene of blinding definition; a parade of daylight,
almost scenically vulgar, more than scenically trying, and yet hearty
and healthy, making the nerves to tighten and the mouth to smile:
such is the winter daytime in the Alps.
With the approach of evening all is changed. A mountain will
suddenly intercept the sun; a shadow fall upon the valley; in ten
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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 A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: away two years.
The prospect of his departure filled Felicite with despair, and in
order to bid him farewell, on Wednesday night, after Madame's dinner,
she put on her pattens and trudged the four miles that separated Pont-
l'Eveque from Honfleur.
When she reached the Calvary, instead of turning to the right, she
turned to the left and lost herself in coal-yards; she had to retrace
her steps; some people she spoke to advised her to hasten. She walked
helplessly around the harbour filled with vessels, and knocked against
hawsers. Presently the ground sloped abruptly, lights flitted to and
fro, and she thought all at once that she had gone mad when she saw
A Simple Soul |
