| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Common Sense by Thomas Paine: for dependance. The instance is without a precedent; the case never
existed before; and who can tell what may be the event? The property
of no man is secure in the present unbraced system of things. The mind
of the multitude is left at random, and seeing no fixed object before
them, they pursue such as fancy or opinion starts. Nothing is criminal;
there is no such thing as treason; wherefore, every one thinks himself
at liberty to act as he pleases. The Tories dared not have assembled
offensively, had they known that their lives, by that act, were forfeited
to the laws of the state. A line of distinction should be drawn, between,
English soldiers taken in battle, and inhabitants of America taken in arms.
The first are prisoners, but the latter traitors.
Common Sense |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dust by Mr. And Mrs. Haldeman-Julius: from her breast with one tenth of this appreciation, was left, as
she always had been left, without the love her being craved, the
love of a mate, rising full and strong to meet her own. It was a
yearning that the most cherished of children could never satisfy
and as she watched Martin and Rose her position seemed to her to
be that of a hungry pauper, brought to the table of a rich
gourmand, there to look on helplessly while the other toyed
carelessly with the precious morsels of which she was in such
extreme need. And what rankled was that these thoughts were
futile, that too much water had run under the bridge, that it was
her lot in Martin's life merely to accept what was offered her.
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: capable of participating in anything else in any respect; in that case rest
and motion cannot participate in being at all.
THEAETETUS: They cannot.
STRANGER: But would either of them be if not participating in being?
THEAETETUS: No.
STRANGER: Then by this admission everything is instantly overturned, as
well the doctrine of universal motion as of universal rest, and also the
doctrine of those who distribute being into immutable and everlasting
kinds; for all these add on a notion of being, some affirming that things
'are' truly in motion, and others that they 'are' truly at rest.
THEAETETUS: Just so.
|
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 Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft: volume. This much he could not civilly refrain from telling the
librarian - the same erudite Henry Armitage (A.M. Miskatonic,
Ph.D. Princeton, Litt.D. Johns Hopkins) who had once called at
the farm, and who now politely plied him with questions. He was
looking, he had to admit, for a kind of formula or incantation
containing the frightful name Yog-Sothoth, and it puzzled him
to find discrepancies, duplications, and ambiguities which made
the matter of determination far from easy. As he copied the formula
he finally chose, Dr Armitage looked involuntarily over his shoulder
at the open pages; the left-hand one of which, in the Latin version,
contained such monstrous threats to the peace and sanity of the
The Dunwich Horror |
