| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: glance of it in profile. The motion of his body, too, was at
variance with this idea--for he rocked from side to side with a
gentle yet constant and uniform sway. Having rapidly taken
notice of all this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot,
which thus proceeded:
"And now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible
fury of the dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and
of the breaking up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed
the carcass from out of the way before him, and approached
valorously over the silver pavement of the castle to where
the shield was upon the wall; which in sooth tarried not for his
The Fall of the House of Usher |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: sundry alterations. Keith was no longer governor, being superseded
by Major Gordon. I met him walking the streets as a common citizen.
He seem'd a little asham'd at seeing me, but pass'd without
saying anything. I should have been as much asham'd at seeing
Miss Read, had not her friends, despairing with reason of my return
after the receipt of my letter, persuaded her to marry another,
one Rogers, a potter, which was done in my absence. With him,
however, she was never happy, and soon parted from him, refusing to
cohabit with him or bear his name, it being now said that he bad
another wife. He was a worthless fellow, tho' an excellent workman,
which was the temptation to her friends. He got into debt,
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H. P. Lovecraft: it seemed that the speed of the party was somewhat abated. Vast
walls shot up, and there was a glimpse of a great gate through
which the voyagers were swept. All was night in the titan courtyard,
and then came the deeper blackness of inmost things as a huge
arched portal engulfed the column. Vortices of cold wind surged
dankly through sightless labyrinths of onyx, and Carter could
never tell what Cyclopean stairs and corridors lay silent along
the route of his endless aerial twisting. Always upward led the
terrible plunge in darkness, and never a sound, touch or glimpse
broke the dense pall of mystery. Large as the army of ghouls and
night-gaunts was, it was lost in the prodigious voids of that
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath |
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 Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: phantoms, ghosts of ideas, ghosts of traditions, neither things nor
persons, but thoughts, to give the philosopher each something or other,
according to the nature of each. Not that he very clearly defines what
each is to give him; but still he feels himself in want of all manner of
things, and it is as well to have as many friends at court as possible--
Noetic Gods, Noeric Gods, rulers, angels, daemons, heroes--to enable him
to do what? To understand Plato's most mystical and far-seeing
speculations. The Eternal Nous, the Intellectual Teacher has vanished
further and further off; further off still some dim vision of a supreme
Goodness. Infinite spaces above that looms through the mist of the
abyss a Primaeval One. But even that has a predicate, for it is one; it
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