| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H. P. Lovecraft: around and ascertain its form and dimensions. It was circular,
and about twenty feet across.
From then on time ceased to exist.
At intervals food was pushed in, but Carter would not touch it.
What his fate would be, he did not know; but he felt that he was
held for the coming of that frightful soul and messenger of infinity's
Other Gods, the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep. Finally, after an
unguessed span of hours or days, the great stone door swung wide
again, and Carter was shoved down the stairs and out into the
red-litten streets of that fearsome city. It was night on the
moon, and all through the town were stationed slaves bearing torches.
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Camille by Alexandre Dumas: even he was sent away when I was there, under the pretext that
she was asleep and had given orders that she was not to be
awakened.
The habit or the need of seeing me which Marguerite had now
contracted had this good result: that it forced me to leave the
gaming-table just at the moment when an adroit gambler would have
left it. Settling one thing against another, I found myself in
possession of some ten thousand francs, which seemed to me an
inexhaustible capital.
The time of the year when I was accustomed to join my father and
sister had now arrived, and I did not go; both of them wrote to
Camille |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Door in the Wall, et. al. by H. G. Wells: subsiding tide of darkness. Its phantasmal, mysterious beauty held
him for a space, and then he was seized with a paroxysm of sobbing
laughter . . . .
After a great interval of time he became aware that he was
near the lower edge of the snow. Below, down what was now a
moon-lit and practicable slope, he saw the dark and broken
appearance of rock-strewn turf He struggled to his feet, aching in
every joint and limb, got down painfully from the heaped loose snow
about him, went downward until he was on the turf, and there
dropped rather than lay beside a boulder, drank deep from the flask
in his inner pocket, and instantly fell asleep . . . .
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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 Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: heavy at times, and the sudden marvelous lucidity of other moments; as
when Art emerges from an orgy? Oh! poet, painter, and singer, lover of
splendid ceremonies and protector of the arts, was thy friendship for
art perchance a caprice, that so thou shouldst sleep beneath
magnificent canopies? Was there not a day when, in thy fantastic
pride, though chastity and humility were prescribed to thee, thou
hadst brought all things beneath thy feet, and set thy foot on the
necks of princes; when earthly dominion, and wealth, and the mind of
man bore thy yoke? Exulting in the abasement of humanity, joying to
witness the uttermost lengths to which man's folly would go, thou hast
bidden thy lovers walk on all fours, and required of them their lands
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