| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: him; nor the incident in the last century, proved in the face of the
most incredulous mockery ever known--an incident most surprising to
men who were accustomed to regard doubt as a weapon against the fact
alone, but simple enough to believers--the fact that Alphonzo-Maria di
Liguori, Bishop of Saint-Agatha, administered consolations to Pope
Ganganelli, who saw him, heard him, and answered him, while the Bishop
himself, at a great distance from Rome, was in a trance at home, in
the chair where he commonly sat on his return from Mass. On recovering
consciousness, he saw all his attendants kneeling beside him,
believing him to be dead: "My friends," said he, "the Holy Father is
just dead." Two days later a letter confirmed the news. The hour of
Louis Lambert |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Cromwell by William Shakespeare: No hammers walking and my work to do!
What, not a heat among your work to day?
HODGE.
Marry, sir, your son Thomas will not let us work at all.
OLD CROMWELL.
Why, knave, I say, have I thus carked & car'd
And all to keep thee like a gentleman;
And dost thou let my servants at their work,
That sweat for thee, knave, labour thus for thee?
CROMWELL.
Father, their hammers do offend my study.
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: drinking, and laughing together, playing at cards,
or consequences, or any other game that was sufficiently noisy.
One or two meetings of this kind had taken place,
without affording Elinor any chance of engaging Lucy
in private, when Sir John called at the cottage one morning,
to beg, in the name of charity, that they would all
dine with Lady Middleton that day, as he was obliged
to attend the club at Exeter, and she would otherwise be
quite alone, except her mother and the two Miss Steeles.
Elinor, who foresaw a fairer opening for the point she
had in view, in such a party as this was likely to be,
Sense and Sensibility |
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: the compiler of having asked leading questions, or of having edited
the correspondence in corroboration of what he had latently resolved
to see. That is why I continued to feel that Wilcox, somehow cognizant
of the old data which my uncle had possessed, had been imposing
on the veteran scientist. These responses from esthetes told disturbing
tale. From February 28 to April 2 a large proportion of them had
dreamed very bizarre things, the intensity of the dreams being
immeasurably the stronger during the period of the sculptor's
delirium. Over a fourth of those who reported anything, reported
scenes and half-sounds not unlike those which Wilcox had described;
and some of the dreamers confessed acute fear of the gigantic
Call of Cthulhu |
