| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: its symmetrical contour and certain other attributes clearly indicated;
yet one could not be exact as to the limit of its later adaptations.
The wings, after all, held a persistent suggestion of the aerial.
How it could have undergone its tremendously complex evolution
on a new-born earth in time to leave prints in Archaean rocks
was so far beyond conception as to make Lake whimsically recall
the primal myths about Great Old Ones who filtered down from the
stars and concocted earth life as a joke or mistake; and the wild
tales of cosmic hill things from outside told by a folklorist
colleague in Miskatonic�s English department.
Naturally, he
At the Mountains of Madness |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain: 'a' raised a couple of thousand knights and put them
in steel armor from head to heel, and made me a lieu-
tenant and Jim a sutler, and took the command himself
and brushed the whole paynim outfit into the sea like
flies and come back across the world in a glory like
sunset. But he said we didn't know enough to take
the chance when we had it, and he wouldn't ever offer
it again. And he didn't. When he once got set, you
couldn't budge him.
But I didn't care much. I am peaceable, and don't
get up rows with people that ain't doing nothing to
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: and also a facetious explanation of both these names; the serious
explanation is not to be had from me, but there is no objection to your
hearing the facetious one; for the Gods too love a joke. Dionusos is
simply didous oinon (giver of wine), Didoinusos, as he might be called in
fun,--and oinos is properly oionous, because wine makes those who drink,
think (oiesthai) that they have a mind (noun) when they have none. The
derivation of Aphrodite, born of the foam (aphros), may be fairly accepted
on the authority of Hesiod.
HERMOGENES: Still there remains Athene, whom you, Socrates, as an
Athenian, will surely not forget; there are also Hephaestus and Ares.
SOCRATES: I am not likely to forget them.
|
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 Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: the ends of the torn trousers as they fluttered in the wind.
Chapter 1.III. I Was A Stranger, and Ye Took Me In.
As the two girls rounded the side of the kopje, an unusual scene presented
itself. A large group was gathered at the back door of the homestead.
On the doorstep stood the Boer-woman, a hand on each hip, her face red and
fiery, her head nodding fiercely. At her feet sat the yellow Hottentot
maid, her satellite, and around stood the black Kaffer maids, with blankets
twisted round their half-naked figures. Two, who stamped mealies in a
wooden block, held the great stampers in their hands, and stared stupidly
at the object of attraction. It certainly was not to look at the old
German overseer, who stood in the centre of the group, that they had all
|
