| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: and when they talked they would shoot over your head. By and by
you would say, 'Good morning, your Eminence, I will call again' -
but you wouldn't. Did you ever ask the slush-boy to come up in the
cabin and take dinner with you?"
"I get your drift again, Sandy. I wouldn't be used to such grand
people as the patriarchs and prophets, and I would be sheepish and
tongue-tied in their company, and mighty glad to get out of it.
Sandy, which is the highest rank, patriarch or prophet?"
"Oh, the prophets hold over the patriarchs. The newest prophet,
even, is of a sight more consequence than the oldest patriarch.
Yes, sir, Adam himself has to walk behind Shakespeare."
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Vailima Prayers & Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson: patriarchal custom. Not only were the religious scruples of the
natives satisfied, but, what we did not foresee, our own
respectability - and incidentally that of our retainers - became
assured, and the influence of Tusitala increased tenfold.
After all work and meals were finished, the 'pu,' or war conch, was
sounded from the back veranda and the front, so that it might be
heard by all. I don't think it ever occurred to us that there was
any incongruity in the use of the war conch for the peaceful
invitation to prayer. In response to its summons the white members
of the family took their usual places in one end of the large hall,
while the Samoans - men, women, and children - trooped in through
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: is necessary, such as the liberal professions and arts, that, although
woman has practically been excluded from the requisite training, and the
freedom to place herself in the positions in which they can be pursued,
that yet, by force of innate genius and gifts in such directions, she has
continually broken through the seemingly insuperable obstacles, and again
and again taken her place beside man in those fields of labour; showing
thereby not merely aptitude but passionate and determined inclination in
those directions. With equal truth, it is often remarked that, when as an
independent hereditary sovereign, woman has been placed in the only
position in which she has ever been able freely and fully to express her
own individuality, and though selected at random by fate from the mass of
|
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 Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H. P. Lovecraft: last copy of those inconceivably old Pnakotic Manuscripts made
by waking men in forgotten boreal kingdoms and borne into the
land of dreams when the hairy cannibal Gnophkehs overcame many-templed
Olathoe and slew all the heroes of the land of Lomar. Those manuscripts
he said, told much of the gods, and besides, in Ulthar there were
men who had seen the signs of the gods, and even one old priest
who had scaled a great mountain to behold them dancing by moonlight.
He had failed, though his companion had succeeded and perished
namelessly.
So Randolph Carter thanked the Zoogs, who fluttered
amicably and gave him another gourd of moon-tree wine to take
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath |
