| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: voluptuous wrapper, free to scatter her gaze of gold and flame, free
to show her arched foot, free of her luminous movements. This first
interview was what every /rendezvous/ must be between persons of
passionate disposition, who have stepped over a wide distance quickly,
who desire each other ardently, and who, nevertheless, do not know
each other. It is impossible that at first there should not occur
certain discordant notes in the situation, which is embarrassing until
the moment when two souls find themselves in unison.
If desire gives a man boldness and disposes him to lay restraint
aside, the mistress, under pain of ceasing to be woman, however great
may be her love, is afraid of arriving at the end so promptly, and
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: volume of a novel, and the words of his service not fit to be set
down. My conscience smote me when we joined hands; and when she
got her certificate I was tempted to throw up the bargain and
confess. Here is the document. It was Case that wrote it,
signatures and all, in a leaf out of the ledger:-
This is to certify that Uma, daughter of Fa'avao of Falesa, Island
of - , is illegally married to Mr. John Wiltshire for one week, and
Mr. John Wiltshire is at liberty to send her to hell when he
pleases.
JOHN BLACKAMOAR.
Chaplain to the hulks.
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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 Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift: the word Christianity may be put religion in general, which I
conceive will much better answer all the good ends proposed by the
projectors of it. For as long as we leave in being a God and His
Providence, with all the necessary consequences which curious and
inquisitive men will be apt to draw from such promises, we do not
strike at the root of the evil, though we should ever so
effectually annihilate the present scheme of the Gospel; for of
what use is freedom of thought if it will not produce freedom of
action, which is the sole end, how remote soever in appearance, of
all objections against Christianity? and therefore, the
Freethinkers consider it as a sort of edifice, wherein all the
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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 The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H. P. Lovecraft: Dying almost-humans screamed, and cats spit and yowled and roared,
but the toad-things made never a sound as their stinking green
ichor oozed fatally upon that porous earth with the obscene fungi.
It was a stupendous sight while the torches lasted, and Carter
had never before seen so many cats. Black, grey, and white; yellow,
tiger, and mixed; common, Persian, and Marix; Thibetan, Angora,
and Egyptian; all were there in the fury of battle, and there
hovered over them some trace of that profound and inviolate sanctity
which made their goddess great in the temples of Bubastis. They
would leap seven strong at the throat of an almost-human or the
pink tentacled snout of a toad-thing and drag it down savagely
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath |
