| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Red Seal by Natalie Sumner Lincoln: Kent got his second wind, confidence in his strength returned and he
redoubled his efforts; suddenly his hands shifted their grip and he
swung his adversary backward, pinning him against the wall.
A faint, sobbing breath escaped the man, and Kent felt the whole
figure against which he pressed, quiver and relax; the taut muscles
of chest and arms grew slack, collapsed.
Kent stood in wonderment, peering ahead, his hands empty - the man
had vanished!
Drawing a long, long breath Kent felt his way back to the electric
switch and pressed the button, lighting both the wall brackets and
the table lamps. With both hands on his throbbing temples he gazed
The Red Seal |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young: And the other grown-up person said: ``And how comes that to be all
that you know?''
Sister Angela said: ``Because of the fever.''
And the pretty one said: ``The dreadful fever!''
Sister Angela said: ``Yes. The dreadful fever. It often leaves
none in a house, and even sometimes none in a whole neighborhood to
tell the story.''
If, as Sister Angela and the pretty grown person talked, there came
to Bessie Bell any thought of a great silent house, and a big white
cat, with just one bit of black spot on its tail, why if such a
thought came to Bessie Bell it came only to float away, away like
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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 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: to paddle a canoe, he knew nothing of what belonged to a sail and a
rudder; and was the most amazed when he saw me work the boat to and
again in the sea by the rudder, and how the sail jibed, and filled
this way or that way as the course we sailed changed; I say when he
saw this he stood like one astonished and amazed. However, with a
little use, I made all these things familiar to him, and he became
an expert sailor, except that of the compass I could make him
understand very little. On the other hand, as there was very
little cloudy weather, and seldom or never any fogs in those parts,
there was the less occasion for a compass, seeing the stars were
always to be seen by night, and the shore by day, except in the
Robinson Crusoe |
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 Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: in the centre of which, revealed by occasional rifts in the curtain
of flame, stood a great granite monolith some eight feet in height;
on top of which, incongruous in its diminutiveness, rested the
noxious carven statuette. From a wide circle of ten scaffolds
set up at regular intervals with the flame-girt monolith as a
centre hung, head downward, the oddly marred bodies of the helpless
squatters who had disappeared. It was inside this circle that
the ring of worshippers jumped and roared, the general direction
of the mass motion being from left to right in endless Bacchanal
between the ring of bodies and the ring of fire.
It may have
Call of Cthulhu |
