| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Herbert West: Reanimator by H. P. Lovecraft: incoherently whispered entreaties to attend to a very secret and
desperate case. We followed them to an abandoned barn, where the
remnants of a crowd of frightened foreigners were watching a silent
black form on the floor.
The match had been between Kid O’Brien
-- a lubberly and now quaking youth with a most un-Hibernian hooked
nose -- and Buck Robinson, "The Harlem Smoke." The negro had been
knocked out, and a moment’s examination shewed us that he would
permanently remain so. He was a loathsome, gorilla-like thing,
with abnormally long arms which I could not help calling fore
legs, and a face that conjured up thoughts of unspeakable Congo
Herbert West: Reanimator |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: way she says. I have no fever now, my pulse is calm and regular.
I can remember everything, until I took that drink of tea in the
railway station. What could there have been in that tea? I suppose
I should have noticed how anxious my travelling companion was to have
me drink it.
"Who could the man have been? He was so polite, so fatherly in his
anxiety about me. I have not seen him since then. And yet I feel
that it is he who has brought me into this trap, a trap from which
I may never escape alive. I will describe him. He is very tall,
stout and blond, and wears a long heavy beard, which is slightly
mixed with grey. On his right cheek his beard only partly hides a
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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 The Koran: turned frequently to us. When there were set before him in the evening
the steeds that paw the ground, and he said, 'Verily, I have loved the
love of good things better than the remembrance of my Lord, until (the
sun) was hidden behind the veil; bring them back to me;' and he
began to sever their legs and necks.
And we did try Solomon, and we threw upon his throne a form; then he
turned repentant. Said he, 'My Lord, pardon me and grant me a
kingdom that is not seemly for any one after me; verily, thou art He
who grants!'
And we subjected to him the wind to run on at his bidding gently
wherever he directed it; and the devils-every builder and diver, and
The Koran |
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 Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: what it owes its English name I do not know; but its French name
means simply a thick, nauseating, intolerable smoke.
The smudge is called into being for the express purpose of creating
a smoke of this kind, which is as disagreeable to the mosquito, the
black-fly, and the midge as it is to the man whom they are
devouring. But the man survives the smoke, while the insects
succumb to it, being destroyed or driven away. Therefore the
smudge, dark and bitter in itself, frequently becomes, like
adversity, sweet in its uses. It must be regarded as a form of fire
with which man has made friends under the pressure of a cruel
necessity.
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