| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: period of young Wilcox's delirium. Scientific men were little
more affected, though four cases of vague description suggest
fugitive glimpses of strange landscapes, and in one case there
is mentioned a dread of something abnormal.
It was from the
artists and poets that the pertinent answers came, and I know
that panic would have broken loose had they been able to compare
notes. As it was, lacking their original letters, I half suspected
the compiler of having asked leading questions, or of having edited
the correspondence in corroboration of what he had latently resolved
to see. That is why I continued to feel that Wilcox, somehow cognizant
Call of Cthulhu |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: remember, produces heat. When you strike flint and steel
together, the pressure of the blow not only makes bits of steel
fly off, but makes them fly off in red-hot sparks. When you
hammer a piece of iron with a hammer, you will soon find it get
quite warm. When you squeeze the air together in your pop-gun,
you actually make the air inside warmer, till the pellet flies
out, and the air expands and cools again. Nay, I believe you
cannot hold up a stone on the palm of your hand without that stone
after a while warming your hand, because it presses against you in
trying to fall, and you press against it in trying to hold it up.
And recollect above all the great and beautiful example of that
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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 Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: flashings,--knows when the time comes to keep flat and take a
long, long breath. One heavy volleying of foam,--darkness and
hissing as of a steam-burst; a vibrant lifting up; a rush into
light,--and again the volleying and the seething darkness. Once
more,--and the fight is won! He feels the upcoming chill of
deeper water,--sees before him the green quaking of unbroken
swells,--and far beyond him Mateo leaping on the bar,--and beside
him, almost within arm's reach, a great billiard-table swaying,
and a dead woman clinging there, and ... the child.
A moment more, and Feliu has lifted himself beside the waifs ...
How fast the dead woman clings, as if with the one power which is
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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 Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: people who had been hanged buried in consecrated ground like godly
ones, some people thinking they had been sufficiently punished by
having their breath stopped. He only persecuted the Jews now and then,
and when they were glutted with usury and wealth. He let them gather
their spoil as the bees do honey, saying that they were the best of
tax-gatherers. And never did he despoil them save for the profit and
use of the churchmen, the king, the province, or himself.
This jovial way gained for him the affection and esteem of every one,
great and small. If he came back smiling from his judicial throne, the
Abbot of Marmoustiers, an old man like himself, would say, "Ho, ha!
messire, there is some hanging on since you laugh thus!" And when
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
