| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Pathology of Lying, Etc. by William and Mary Healy: had upon the girl's physical and mental development. She was
born, then, after a troubled pregnancy, a weak and sickly child,
``almost like a skeleton.''
Inez was rather slow at walking, but at one year spoke her first
words. We do not know with accuracy about the earliest factors
in the mental environment. (Inez has told various stories about
early family friction, and even about contracting an infection at
home, much of which seems highly conjectural.) Between the ages
of 7 and 10 several sicknesses, diphtheria, measles with some
cardiac complication, etc., kept her much out of school. Part of
the time she lived in New Orleans, and part of the time in a
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: blues and oranges, none the less harmonious for being somewhat faded.
The corner cupboard was agreeable in design; and there were just the
right things upon the shelves - decanters and tumblers, and blue
plates, and one red rose in a glass of water. The furniture was old-
fashioned and stiff. Everything was in keeping, down to the
ponderous leaden inkstand on the round table. And you may fancy how
pleasant it looked, all flushed and flickered over by the light of a
brisk companionable fire, and seen, in a strange, tilted sort of
perspective, in the three compartments of the old mirror above the
chimney. As I sat reading in the great armchair, I kept looking
round with the tail of my eye at the quaint, bright picture that was
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: his feet. He watched it steadily, as it crept up, inch by inch,
slowly. It seemed to him to carry with it a great silence. He
had been so hot and tired there always in the mills! The years
had been so fierce and cruel! There was coming now quiet and
coolness and sleep. His tense limbs relaxed, and settled in a
calm languor. The blood ran fainter and slow from his heart.
He did not think now with a savage anger of what might be and
was not; he was conscious only of deep stillness creeping over
him. At first he saw a sea of faces: the mill-men,--women he
had known, drunken and bloated,--Janey's timid and pitiful-poor
old Debs: then they floated together like a mist, and faded
Life in the Iron-Mills |
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: of those impassable mountains beyond which Leng was said to be.
Far above the clouds they flew, till at last there lay beneath
them those fabled summits which the folk of Inquanok have never
seen, and which lie always in high vortices of gleaming mist.
Carter beheld them very plainly as they passed below, and saw
upon their topmost peaks strange caves which made him think of
those on Ngranek; but he did not question his captor about these
things when he noticed that both the man and the horse-headed
Shantak appeared oddly fearful of them, hurrying past nervously
and shewing great tension until they were left far in the rear.
The Shantak now flew lower, revealing beneath the canopy of
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath |
