| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: were nearly all taken or killed, for the soldiers sabre every
man. The Indians are now so terrified that they offer no
resistance in a body, but each flies, neglecting even his wife
and children; but when overtaken, like wild animals, they
fight against any number to the last moment. One dying Indian
seized with his teeth the thumb of his adversary, and
allowed his own eye to be forced out sooner than relinquish
his hold. Another, who was wounded, feigned death, keeping
a knife ready to strike one more fatal blow. My informer
said, when he was pursuing an Indian, the man cried out
for mercy, at the same time that he was covertly loosing the
The Voyage of the Beagle |
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: at his captors, which were indeed shocking and uncouth black things
with smooth, oily, whale-like surfaces, unpleasant horns that
curved inward toward each other, bat wings whose beating made
no sound, ugly prehensile paws, and barbed tails that lashed needlessly
and disquietingly. And worst of all, they never spoke or laughed,
and never smiled because they had no faces at all to smile with,
but only a suggestive blankness where a face ought to be. All
they ever did was clutch and fly and tickle; that was the way
of night-gaunts.
As the band flew lower the Peaks of Throk rose
grey and towering on all sides, and one saw clearly that nothing
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 A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: of a little air, but that none in my house had so much as been touched
with it.
Well, sir,' says he, 'as your charity has been moved to pity me and
my poor family, sure you cannot have so little pity left as to put
yourself into my boat if you were not sound in health which would be
nothing less than killing me and ruining my whole family.' The poor
man troubled me so much when he spoke of his family with such a
sensible concern and in such an affectionate manner, that I could not
satisfy myself at first to go at all. I told him I would lay aside my
curiosity rather than make him uneasy, though I was sure, and very
thankful for it, that I had no more distemper upon me than the freshest
A Journal of the Plague Year |
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 King of the Golden River by John Ruskin: a corkscrew on each side of his mouth; and his hair, of a curious
mixed pepper-and-salt color, descended far over his shoulders. He
was about four feet six in height and wore a conical pointed cap of
nearly the same altitude, decorated with a black feather some three
feet long. His doublet was prolonged behind into something
resembling a violent exaggeration of what is now termed a
"swallowtail," but was much obscured by the swelling folds of an
enormous black, glossy-looking cloak, which must have been very much
too long in calm weather, as the wind, whistling round the old
house, carried it clear out from the wearer's shoulders to about
four times his own length.
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