| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: and science alike were in vain. By the month of January, 1838, Marcas
himself felt that he had but a few days to live.
The man whose soul and brain he had been for six months never even
sent to inquire after him. Marcas expressed the greatest contempt for
the Government; he seemed to doubt what the fate of France might be,
and it was this doubt that had made him ill. He had, he thought,
detected treason in the heart of power, not tangible, seizable
treason, the result of facts, but the treason of a system, the
subordination of national interests to selfish ends. His belief in the
degradation of the country was enough to aggravate his complaint.
I myself was witness to the proposals made to him by one of the
|
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: of tom-toms was now faintly audible far, far ahead; and a curdling
shriek came at infrequent intervals when the wind shifted. A reddish
glare, too, seemed to filter through pale undergrowth beyond the
endless avenues of forest night. Reluctant even to be left alone
again, each one of the cowed squatters refused point-blank to
advance another inch toward the scene of unholy worship, so Inspector
Legrasse and his nineteen colleagues plunged on unguided into
black arcades of horror that none of them had ever trod before.
The region now entered by the police was one of traditionally
evil repute, substantially unknown and untraversed by white men.
There were legends of a hidden lake unglimpsed by mortal sight,
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 My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: on the Saturday night previous to the Easter holidays, launch out
into the Chesapeake bay, and paddle for its head--a distance of
seventy miles with all our might. Our course, on reaching this
point, was, to turn the canoe adrift, and bend our steps toward
the north star, till we reached a free state.
There were several objections to this plan. One was, the danger
from gales on the bay. In rough weather, the waters of the
Chesapeake are much agitated, and there is danger, in a canoe, of
being swamped by the waves. Another objection was, that the
canoe would soon be missed; the absent persons would, at once, be
suspected of having taken it; and we should be pursued by some of
My Bondage and My Freedom |
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 Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: to be explained in the other. As to what remains, I am now in a position
to discern, as I think, with sufficient clearness what course must be taken
to make the majority those experiments which may conduce to this end: but
I perceive likewise that they are such and so numerous, that neither my
hands nor my income, though it were a thousand times larger than it is,
would be sufficient for them all; so that according as henceforward I
shall have the means of making more or fewer experiments, I shall in the
same proportion make greater or less progress in the knowledge of nature.
This was what I had hoped to make known by the treatise I had written, and
so clearly to exhibit the advantage that would thence accrue to the public,
as to induce all who have the common good of man at heart, that is, all who
Reason Discourse |
