| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Miracle Mongers and Their Methods by Harry Houdini: learnt the rudiments of this art from
Bloise, an Italian, who not long before
was questioned by Cardinal Mazarin, who
threatened him with all the miseries that
a tedious imprisonment could bring upon
him, unless he would discover to him by
what art he did it. Bloise, startled at the
sentence, and fearing the event, made a
full confession on these terms, that the
Cardinal would communicate it to no one
else.
Miracle Mongers and Their Methods |
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: above the clouds on unknown Kadath, in the cold waste where no
man treads. But the gods made no answer and shewed no relenting,
nor did they give any favouring sign when he prayed to them in
dream, and invoked them sacrificially through the bearded priests
of Nasht and Kaman-Thah, whose cavern-temple with its pillar of
flame lies not far from the gates of the waking world. It seemed,
however, that his prayers must have been adversely heard, for
after even the first of them he ceased wholly to behold the marvellous
city; as if his three glimpses from afar had been mere accidents
or oversights, and against some hidden plan or wish of the gods.
At length, sick with longing for those glittering sunset streets
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 Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: without horror, and without pity. It is in the blunt hand and the
dead heart, in the diseased habit, in the hardened conscience, that
men become vulgar; they are for ever vulgar, precisely in proportion
as they are incapable of sympathy,--of quick understanding,--of all
that, in deep insistence on the common, but most accurate term, may
be called the "tact" or "touch-faculty," of body and soul: that
tact which the Mimosa has in trees, which the pure woman has above
all creatures;--fineness and fulness of sensation, beyond reason;--
the guide and sanctifier of reason itself. Reason can but determine
what is true:- it is the God-given passion of humanity which alone
can recognise what God has made good.
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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 Lin McLean by Owen Wister: things, or moralize visibly. Thus he came to hear how it had fared with
Lin his friend, and Lin forgot altogether about its being a parson he was
delivering the fulness of his heart to. "And come to think," he
concluded, "it weren't home I had went to back East, layin' round them
big cities, where a man can't help but feel strange all the week. No,
sir! Yu' can blow in a thousand dollars like I did in New York, and it'll
not give yu' any more home feelin' than what cattle has put in a
stock-yard. Nor it wouldn't have in Boston neither. Now this country
here" (he waved his hand towards the endless sage-brush), "seein' it
onced more, I know where my home is, and I wouldn't live nowheres else.
Only I ain't got no father watching for me to come up Wind River."
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