| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: farthing. Pff! . . . heartburn!"
My uncle stopped to look dejectedly at the grey, overcast
prospect from the window, and began pacing to and fro again.
A silence followed. . . . Mother looked a long while at the ikon,
pondering something, then she began crying, and said:
"I'll give you the three thousand, brother. . . ."
Three days later the majestic boxes went off to the station, and
the privy councillor drove off after them. As he said good-bye to
mother he shed tears, and it was a long time before he took his
lips from her hands, but when he got into his carriage his face
beamed with childlike pleasure. . . . Radiant and happy, he
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: When you are possessed by a subject you are a slave, not a master; you
are like a king besieged by his people. Too keen a feeling, at the
moment when you want to represent that feeling, causes an insurrection
of the senses against the governing faculty."
"Might we not convince ourselves of this by some further experiment?"
said the doctor.
"Cataneo, you might bring your tenor and the prima donna together
again," said Capraja to his friend.
"Well, gentlemen," said the Duke, "come to sup with me. We ought to
reconcile the tenor and la Clarina; otherwise the season will be
ruined in Venice."
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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 Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft: recognized senses, was harder to glean than knowledge of the future.
In the latter case the course was easier and more material.
With suitable mechanical aid a mind would project itself forward
in time, feeling its dim, extra-sensory way till it approached
the desired period. Then, after preliminary trials, it would seize
on the best discoverable representative of the highest of that
period's life-forms. It would enter the organism's brain and set
up therein its own vibrations, while the displaced mind would
strike back to the period of the displacer, remaining in the latter's
body till a reverse process was set up.
The projected mind,
Shadow out of Time |
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 The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: were no sooner found out than they went off at score in the
contrary direction, and we were told that in no part of the
world did rattlesnakes attain to such a monstrous bigness as
among the warm, flower-dotted rocks of Silverado. This is a
contribution rather to the natural history of the Hansons,
than to that of snakes.
One person, however, better served by his instinct, had known
the rattle from the first; and that was Chuchu, the dog. No
rational creature has ever led an existence more poisoned by
terror than that dog's at Silverado. Every whiz of the
rattle made him bound. His eyes rolled; he trembled; he
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