| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: deeply with such men and women, and respect them deeply likewise--
but are not people discontented already, from the lowest to the
highest? And ought a man, in such a piecemeal, foolish, greedy,
sinful world as this is, and always has been, to be anything but
discontented? If he thinks that things are going all right, must
he not have a most beggarly conception of what going right means?
And if things are not going right, can it be anything but good for
him to see that they are not going right? Can truth and fact harm
any human being? I shall not believe so, as long as I have a
Bible wherein to believe. For my part, I should like to make
every man, woman, and child whom I meet discontented with
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: it was only half-heartedly that they searched - vainly, as it
proved - for some portable souvenir to bear away.
It was Rodriguez
the Portuguese who climbed up the foot of the monolith and shouted
of what he had found. The rest followed him, and looked curiously
at the immense carved door with the now familiar squid-dragon
bas-relief. It was, Johansen said, like a great barn-door; and
they all felt that it was a door because of the ornate lintel,
threshold, and jambs around it, though they could not decide whether
it lay flat like a trap-door or slantwise like an outside cellar-door.
As Wilcox would have said, the geometry of the place was all wrong.
Call of Cthulhu |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: towards life. Everything in me awoke and received a meaning. .
. .Why do I look farther? a voice within me asked. He is there:
he, without whom one cannot live. To acknowledge God and to live
are one and the same thing. God is what life is. Well, then!
live, seek God, and there will be no life without him. . . .
"After this, things cleared up within me and about me better than
ever, and the light has never wholly died away. I was saved from
suicide. Just how or when the change took place I cannot tell.
But as insensibly and gradually as the force of life had been
annulled within me, and I had reached my moral death-bed, just as
gradually and imperceptibly did the energy of life come back.
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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 When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells: be a disorganised upheaval. To be frank--that may
happen. But it won't interrupt your aeronautics.
The days when the People could make revolutions are
past."
"I suppose they are," said Graham. "I suppose
they are." He mused. "This world of yours has
been full of surprises to me. In the old days we
dreamt of a wonderful democratic life, of a time when
all men would be equal and happy."
Ostrog looked at him steadfastly. "The day of
democracy is past," he said. "Past for ever. That
When the Sleeper Wakes |
