| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: very green; but she liked it. When good food is thrown at you by other
people, strange to say, it is very bitter; but whatever you find yourself
is sweet!
When she had finished she dug out another piece, and went to look for a
pantry to put it in. At the top of a heap of rocks up which she clambered
she found that some large stones stood apart but met at the top, making a
room.
"Oh, this is my little home!" she said.
At the top and all round it was closed, only in the front it was open.
There was a beautiful shelf in the wall for the kippersol, and she
scrambled down again. She brought a great bunch of prickly pear, and stuck
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Burning Daylight by Jack London: tremens, only worse. And if he, Daylight, caught it, he might
have it as badly as any of them. It was lunacy, stark lunacy,
and contagious on top of it all. A half dozen young fellows were
crazy over Freda. They all wanted to marry her. Yet she, in
turn, was crazy over that some other fellow on the other side of
the world, and would have nothing to do with them.
But it was left to the Virgin to give him his final fright. She
was found one morning dead in her cabin. A shot through the head
had done it, and she had left no message, no explanation. Then
came the talk. Some wit, voicing public opinion, called it a
case of too much Daylight. She had killed herself because of
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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 Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: guarantee of slavery is, reverence for religions which are not free,
and which teach men to be slaves.
But what M. de Tocqueville did not see, there are others who will
see; who will say: "If religion be the pillar of political and
social order, there is an order which is best supported by a
religion which is adverse to free thought, free speech, free
conscience, free communion between man and God. The more enervating
the superstition, the more exacting and tyrannous its priesthood,
the more it will do our work, if we help it to do its own. If it
permit us to enslave the body, we will permit it to enslave the
soul."
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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: into its origin and connexions. I visited New Orleans, talked
with Legrasse and others of that old-time raiding-party, saw the
frightful image, and even questioned such of the mongrel prisoners
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
Call of Cthulhu |
