| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: THEAETETUS: Far from it.
SOCRATES: Or that anything appears the same to you as to another man? Are
you so profoundly convinced of this? Rather would it not be true that it
never appears exactly the same to you, because you are never exactly the
same?
THEAETETUS: The latter.
SOCRATES: And if that with which I compare myself in size, or which I
apprehend by touch, were great or white or hot, it could not become
different by mere contact with another unless it actually changed; nor
again, if the comparing or apprehending subject were great or white or hot,
could this, when unchanged from within, become changed by any approximation
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H. P. Lovecraft: of Leng's outskirts laid open to sight. Still higher flew the
black host, till even this table-land grew small beneath them;
and as they worked northward over the wind-swept plateau of horror
Carter saw once again with a shudder the circle of crude monoliths
and the squat windowless building which he knew held that frightful
silken-masked blasphemy from whose clutches he had so narrowly
escaped. This time no descent was made as the army swept batlike
over the sterile landscape, passing the feeble fires of the unwholesome
stone villages at a great altitude, and pausing not at all to
mark the morbid twistings of the hooved, horned almost-humans
that dance and pipe eternally therein. Once they saw a Shantak-bird
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: Where the old red hills are bird-enchanted,
And the low green meadows
Bright with sward;
And when even dies, the million-tinted,
And the night has come, and planets glinted,
Lo, the valley hollow
Lamp-bestarred!
O to dream, O to awake and wander
There, and with delight to take and render,
Through the trance of silence,
Quiet breath;
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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 Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: sworn to sit where he was until to-morrow at the same hour; others
again, that he should be gagged and taken off with them, under a
sufficient guard. All these propositions being overruled, it was
concluded, at last, to bind him in his chair, and the word was
passed for Dennis.
'Look'ee here, Jack!' said Hugh, striding up to him: 'We are going
to tie you, hand and foot, but otherwise you won't be hurt. D'ye
hear?'
John Willet looked at another man, as if he didn't know which was
the speaker, and muttered something about an ordinary every Sunday
at two o'clock.
Barnaby Rudge |
