| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: flowing vestment of an unchanging reality? When the soul breaks free from
the arms of a superstition, bits of the claws and talons break themselves
off in him. It is not the work of a day to squeeze them out.
And so, for us, the human-like driver and guide being gone, all existence,
as we look out at it with our chilled, wondering eyes, is an aimless rise
and swell of shifting waters. In all that weltering chaos we can see no
spot so large as a man's hand on which we may plant our foot.
Whether a man believes in a human-like God or no is a small thing. Whether
he looks into the mental and physical world and sees no relation between
cause and effect, no order, but a blind chance sporting, this is the
mightiest fact that can be recorded in any spiritual existence. It were
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Domestic Peace by Honore de Balzac: Vaudremont's speech, and did not perceive that she had come as far to
meet his friend as his friend towards her, though both were
unconscious of it.
At that moment when the lawyer went fluttering up to the candelabrum
by which Madame de Soulanges sat, pale, timid, and apparently alive
only in her eyes, her husband came to the door of the ballroom, his
eyes flashing with anger. The old Duchess, watchful of everything,
flew to her nephew, begged him to give her his arm and find her
carriage, affecting to be mortally bored, and hoping thus to prevent a
vexatious outbreak. Before going she fired a singular glance of
intelligence at her niece, indicating the enterprising knight who was
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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 Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: the game at which he played, but by simply buying and selling
what he was told to buy and sell, that plaything of fortune
was presently at the head of between eleven and twelve
thousand pounds, or, as he reckoned it, of upward of sixty
thousand dollars.
How he had come to deserve this wealth, any more than how he
had formerly earned disgrace at home, was a problem beyond
the reach of his philosophy. It was true that he had been
industrious at the bank, but no more so than the cashier, who
had seven small children and was visibly sinking in decline.
Nor was the step which had determined his advance - a visit
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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 Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: as still survived. Old Castro, unfortunately, had been dead for
some years. What I now heard so graphically at first-hand, though
it was really no more than a detailed confirmation of what my
uncle had written, excited me afresh; for I felt sure that I was
on the track of a very real, very secret, and very ancient religion
whose discovery would make me an anthropologist of note. My attitude
was still one of absolute materialism, as l wish it still were,
and I discounted with almost inexplicable perversity the coincidence
of the dream notes and odd cuttings collected by Professor Angell.
One thing I began to suspect, and which I now fear I know, is
that my uncle's death was far from natural. He fell on a narrow
Call of Cthulhu |
