| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer: "Like this?" inquired Smith, and he uttered a low, wailing cry,
impossible to describe. Wills perceptibly shuddered; and, indeed,
it was an eerie sound.
"The same, sir, I think," he said, "but much louder."
"That will do," said Smith, and I thought I detected a note of triumph
in his voice. "But stay! Take us through to the back of the house."
The man bowed and led the way, so that shortly we found ourselves
in a small, paved courtyard. It was a perfect summer's night,
and the deep blue vault above was jeweled with myriads of starry points.
How impossible it seemed to reconcile that vast, eternal calm
with the hideous passions and fiendish agencies which that night
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: Christians, or is a follower of Mahomet, he is the minister of
the same cruelty, and the author of the same misery. _Slavery_
is always _slavery;_ always the same foul, haggard, and damning
scourge, whether found in the eastern or in the western
hemisphere.
There is a still deeper shade to be given to this picture. The
physical cruelties are indeed sufficiently harassing and
revolting; but they are as a few grains of sand on the sea shore,
or a few drops of water in the great ocean, compared with the
stupendous wrongs which it inflicts upon the mental, moral, and
religious nature of its hapless victims. It is only when we
My Bondage and My Freedom |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: But now it is time to proceed to my predictions, which I have
begun to calculate from the time that the Sun enters into Aries.
And this I take to be properly the beginning of the natural year.
I pursue them to the time that he enters Libra, or somewhat more,
which is the busy period of the year. The remainder I have not
yet adjusted, upon account of several impediments needless here
to mention: Besides, I must remind the reader again, that this is
but a specimen of what I design in succeeding years to treat more
at large, if I may have liberty and encouragement.
My first prediction is but a trifle, yet I will mention it, to
show how ignorant those sottish pretenders to astrology are in
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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 Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft: the shelf be reachable by a human body? Could my human hand master
all the aeon-remembered motions of the lock? Would the lock be
undamaged and workable? And what would I do - what dare I do with
what - as I now commenced to realise - I both hoped and feared
to find? Would it prove the awesome, brain-shattering truth of
something past normal conception, or shew only that I was dreaming?
The next I knew I had ceased my tiptoed racing and was standing
still, staring at a row of maddeningly familiar hieroglyphed shelves.
They were in a state of almost perfect preservation, and only
three of the doors in this vicinity had sprung open.
My feelings
Shadow out of Time |
