| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Out of Time's Abyss by Edgar Rice Burroughs: roof of a square, blue building surmounted by seven poles bearing
seven skulls. This then, thought Bradley, is the Blue Place of
Seven Skulls.
Over the opening in the roof was a grated covering, and this the
Wieroo removed. The thing then tied a piece of fiber rope to one
of Bradley's ankles and rolled him over the edge of the opening.
All was dark below and for an instant the Englishman came as near
to experiencing real terror as he had ever come in his life before.
As he rolled off into the black abyss he felt the rope tighten
about his ankle and an instant later he was stopped with a sudden
jerk to swing pendulumlike, head downward. Then the creature
Out of Time's Abyss |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Adieu by Honore de Balzac: was with a sudden toss of her head which only for a moment cleared her
forehead and eyes from the thick veil. Her gesture, like that of an
animal, had a remarkable mechanical precision, the quickness of which
seemed wonderful in a woman. The huntsmen were amazed to see her
suddenly leap up on the branch of an apple-tree, and sit there with
the ease of a bird. She gathered an apple and ate it; then she dropped
to the ground with the graceful ease we admire in a squirrel. Her
limbs possessed an elasticity which took from every movement the
slightest appearance of effort or constraint. She played upon the
turf, rolling herself about like a child; then, suddenly, she flung
her feet and hands forward, and lay at full length on the grass, with
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: penance, but of her many good deeds since. "Do you see that
woman with the embroidered badge?" they would say to strangers.
"It is our Hester -- the town's own Hester -- who is so kind to
the poor, so helpful to the sick, so comfortable to the
afflicted!" Then, it is true, the propensity of human nature to
tell the very worst of itself, when embodied in the person of
another, would constrain them to whisper the black scandal of
bygone years. It was none the less a fact, however, that in the
eyes of the very men who spoke thus, the scarlet letter had the
effect of the cross on a nun's bosom It imparted to the wearer a
kind of sacredness, which enabled her to walk securely amid all
The Scarlet Letter |
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 Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: 'Yes, I know,' returned Michael, 'but that's not including
clothes, washing, or boots. The whole thing, with cigars and
occasional sprees, costs me over seven hundred a year.'
But this was Michael's last interruption. He listened in
good-humoured silence to the remainder of his uncle's lecture,
which speedily branched to political reform, thence to the theory
of the weather-glass, with an illustrative account of a bora in
the Adriatic; thence again to the best manner of teaching
arithmetic to the deaf-and-dumb; and with that, the sandwich
being then no more, explicuit valde feliciter. A moment later the
pair issued forth on the King's Road.
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