| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Herbert West: Reanimator by H. P. Lovecraft: dead. This work was not known to the fashionable clientele who
had so swiftly built up his fame after his arrival in Boston;
but was only too well known to me, who had been his closest friend
and sole assistant since the old days in Miskatonic University
Medical School at Arkham. It was in those college days that he
had begun his terrible experiments, first on small animals and
then on human bodies shockingly obtained. There was a solution
which he injected into the veins of dead things, and if they were
fresh enough they responded in strange ways. He had had much trouble
in discovering the proper formula, for each type of organism was
found to need a stimulus especially adapted to it. Terror stalked
Herbert West: Reanimator |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: fan-shaped smear, with a few trees flung head-down on the scarp.
That red ran high up the hill of their refuge, damming back the
little river, which had begun to spread into a brick-coloured
lake. Of the village, of the road to the shrine, of the shrine
itself, and the forest behind, there was no trace. For one mile
in width and two thousand feet in sheer depth the mountain-side
had come away bodily, planed clean from head to heel.
And the villagers, one by one, crept through the wood to pray
before their Bhagat. They saw the barasingh standing over him,
who fled when they came near, and they heard the langurs wailing
in the branches, and Sona moaning up the hill; but their Bhagat
The Second Jungle Book |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Damaged Goods by Upton Sinclair: He noted upon his body one day a tiny ulcer. At first he treated
it with salve purchased from an apothecary. Then after a week or
two, when this had no effect, he began to feel uncomfortable. He
remembered suddenly he had heard about the symptoms of an
unmentionable, dreadful disease, and a vague terror took
possession of him.
For days he tried to put it to one side. The idea was nonsense,
it was absurd in connection with a woman so respectable! But the
thought would not be put away, and finally he went to a school
friend, who was a man of the world, and got him to talk on the
subject. Of course, George had to be careful, so that his friend
|
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 Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: continued. "But I should never have the courage; I would rather kill
myself, leaving you to your--happiness, and with--whom!--"
He did not end his sentence.
"Kill yourself!" she cried, flinging herself at his feet and clasping
them.
But he, wishing to escape the embrace, tried to shake her off,
dragging her in so doing toward the bed.
"Let me alone," he said.
"No, no, Jules!" she cried. "If you love me no longer I shall die. Do
you wish to know all?"
"Yes."
Ferragus |
