| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Herbert West: Reanimator by H. P. Lovecraft: VI. The Tomb-Legions
Published July 1922 in Home Brew Vol.
1, No. 6, p. 57-62.
When Dr. Herbert West disappeared a year
ago, the Boston police questioned me closely. They suspected that
I was holding something back, and perhaps suspected graver things;
but I could not tell them the truth because they would not have
believed it. They knew, indeed, that West had been connected with
activities beyond the credence of ordinary men; for his hideous
experiments in the reanimation of dead bodies had long been too
extensive to admit of perfect secrecy; but the final soul-shattering
Herbert West: Reanimator |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: on the people, had to be transformed into a new and very definite
faith, springing from obvious practical interests.
This transformation was rapidly effected when the people heard
the men envisaged by it as the Government assuring it that it was
the equal of its former masters. It began to regard itself as a
victim, and proceeded to pillage, burn, and massacre, imagining
that in so doing it was exercising a right.
The great strength of the revolutionary principles was that they
gave a free course to the instincts of primitive barbarity which
had been restrained by the secular and inhibitory action of
environment, tradition, and law.
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