The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: The aperture was black with a
darkness almost material. That tenebrousness was indeed a positive
quality; for it obscured such parts of the inner walls as ought
to have been revealed, and actually burst forth like smoke from
its aeon-long imprisonment, visibly darkening the sun as it slunk
away into the shrunken and gibbous sky on flapping membraneous
wings. The odour rising from the newly opened depths was intolerable,
and at length the quick-eared Hawkins thought he heard a nasty,
slopping sound down there. Everyone listened, and everyone was
listening still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly
squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway
 Call of Cthulhu |
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 Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: that line which the frequent expression of excessive feeling scores so
deeply; her eyes filled with tears, but she wiped them quickly as she
looked at Balthazar.
It was impossible not to be deeply impressed by this head of the
family of Claes. When young, he must have resembled the noble family
martyr who had threatened to be another Artevelde to Charles V.; but
as he stood there at this moment, he seemed over sixty years of age,
though he was only fifty; and this premature old age had destroyed the
honorable likeness. His tall figure was slightly bent,--either because
his labors, whatever they were, obliged him to stoop, or that the
spinal column was curved by the weight of his head. He had a broad
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