| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft: while early explorers noted with horror a fresh set of the monstrous
tracks in the road skirting Sentinel Hill. As before, the sides
of the road showed a bruising indicative of the blasphemously
stupendous bulk of the horror; whilst the conformation of the
tracks seemed to argue a passage in two directions, as if the
moving mountain had come from Cold Spring Glen and returned to
it along the same path. At the base of the hill a thirty-foot
swath of crushed shrubbery saplings led steeply upwards, and the
seekers gasped when they saw that even the most perpendicular
places did not deflect the inexorable trail. Whatever the horror
was, it could scale a sheer stony cliff of almost complete verticality;
The Dunwich Horror |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: particular missive be spared.
"Much obliged, Dutch," he said to the disturbed carrier. "I guess
that's the letter we want. Got spondulicks in it, ain't it? Here she
is. Make a light, boys."
Hondo found and tore open the letter to Mrs. Hildesmuller. The others
stood about, lighting twisted up letters one from another. Hondo gazed
with mute disapproval at the single sheet of paper covered with the
angular German script.
"Whatever is this you've humbugged us with, Dutchy? You call this here
a valuable letter? That's a mighty low-down trick to play on your
friends what come along to help you distribute your mail."
Heart of the West |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: of the enemy, saying:
'Hold your hands from fierce fighting, ye men of Ithaca,
that so ye may be parted quickly, without bloodshed.'
So spake Athene, and pale fear gat hold of them all. The
arms flew from their hands in their terror and fell all
upon the ground, as the goddess uttered her voice. To the
city they turned their steps, as men fain of life, and the
steadfast goodly Odysseus with a terrible cry gathered
himself together and hurled in on them, like an eagle of
lofty flight. Then in that hour the son of Cronos cast
forth a flaming bolt, and it fell at the feet of the
The Odyssey |
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 Menexenus by Plato: Prior, however, to the enquiry about the writings of a particular author,
general considerations which equally affect all evidence to the genuineness
of ancient writings are the following: Shorter works are more likely to
have been forged, or to have received an erroneous designation, than longer
ones; and some kinds of composition, such as epistles or panegyrical
orations, are more liable to suspicion than others; those, again, which
have a taste of sophistry in them, or the ring of a later age, or the
slighter character of a rhetorical exercise, or in which a motive or some
affinity to spurious writings can be detected, or which seem to have
originated in a name or statement really occurring in some classical
author, are also of doubtful credit; while there is no instance of any
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