| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: "Make yourself comfortable. Your coming to see me, I take it,
is an act of friendship. You were not obliged to.
Therefore, if anything around here amuses you, it will be all
in a pleasant way. Laugh as loud as you please; I like to see
my visitors cheerful. Only, I must make this request:
that you explain the joke to me as soon as you can speak.
I don't want to lose anything, myself."
M. de Bellegarde stared, with a look of unresentful perplexity.
He laid his hand on Newman's sleeve and seemed on the point
of saying something, but he suddenly checked himself,
leaned back in his chair, and puffed at his cigar.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Once more in his home-country stood,
Strange that the sordid clowns should show
A dull desire to have him go.
His clinging breeks, his tarry hat,
The way he swore, the way he spat,
A certain quality of manner,
Alarming like the pirate's banner -
Something that did not seem to suit all -
Something, O call it bluff, not brutal -
Something at least, howe'er it's called,
Made Robin generally black-balled.
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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 Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions
apart from ours. Now an unlettered seaman felt the same thing
whilst gazing at the terrible reality.
Johansen and his men
landed at a sloping mud-bank on this monstrous Acropolis, and
clambered slipperily up over titan oozy blocks which could have
been no mortal staircase. The very sun of heaven seemed distorted
when viewed through the polarising miasma welling out from this
sea-soaked perversion, and twisted menace and suspense lurked
leeringly in those crazily elusive angles of carven rock where
a second glance shewed concavity after the first shewed convexity.
Call of Cthulhu |
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 Republic by Plato: anybody; the tyrant never tastes of true freedom or friendship.
Certainly not.
And may we not rightly call such men treacherous?
No question.
Also they are utterly unjust, if we were right in our notion of justice?
Yes, he said, and we were perfectly right.
Let us then sum up in a word, I said, the character of the worst man: he
is the waking reality of what we dreamed.
Most true.
And this is he who being by nature most of a tyrant bears rule, and the
longer he lives the more of a tyrant he becomes.
The Republic |
