| 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: A moment later I perceived that this was because my head lay at
the end of a flexible neck of enormous length. Retracting this
neck and gazing down very sharply, I saw the scaly, rugose, iridescent
bulk of a vast cone ten feet tall and ten feet wide at the base.
That was when I waked half of Arkham with my screaming as I plunged
madly up from the abyss of sleep.
Only after weeks of hideous
repetition did I grow half-reconciled to these visions of myself
in monstrous form. In the dreams I now moved bodily among the
other unknown entities, reading terrible books from the endless
shelves and writing for hours at the great tables with a stylus
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 Turn of the Screw by Henry James: required for a proper intelligence a few words of prologue.
Let me say here distinctly, to have done with it,
that this narrative, from an exact transcript of my own made
much later, is what I shall presently give. Poor Douglas,
before his death--when it was in sight--committed to me
the manuscript that reached him on the third of these days
and that, on the same spot, with immense effect, he began
to read to our hushed little circle on the night of the fourth.
The departing ladies who had said they would stay didn't,
of course, thank heaven, stay: they departed, in consequence
of arrangements made, in a rage of curiosity, as they professed,
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