| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: SCENE IV. Other plains in Gascony.
[Enter Somerset, with his army; a Captain of
Talbot's with him.]
SOMERSET.
It is too late; I cannot send them now:
This expedition was by York and Talbot
Too rashly plotted: all our general force
Might with a sally of the very town
Be buckled with: the over-daring Talbot
Hath sullied all his gloss of former honor
By this unheedful, desperate, wild adventure:
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: out their vision with obscure special senses operating through
the prismatic cilia on their heads - senses which rendered all
the Old Ones partly independent of light in emergencies. Their
forms of sculpture and writing had changed curiously during the
descent, embodying certain apparently chemical coating processes
- probably to secure phosphorescence - which the basreliefs could
not make clear to us. The beings moved in the sea partly by swimming
- using the lateral crinoid arms - and partly by wriggling with
the lower tier of tentacles containing the pseudofeet. Occasionally
they accomplished long swoops with the auxiliary use of two or
more sets of their fanlike folding wings. On land they locally
At the Mountains of Madness |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Sir John Mandeville: ordained in certain places, where they shall be lodged at night,
and there they shall have all that them needeth. And if it befall
that any of the host die, anon they put another in his place, so
that the number shall evermore be whole.
And ye shall understand, that the emperor, in his proper person,
rideth not as other great lords do beyond, but if he list to go
privily with few men, for to be unknown. And else, he rides in a
chariot with four wheels, upon the which is made a fair chamber,
and it is made of a certain wood, that cometh out of Paradise
terrestrial, that men clepe lignum aloes, that the floods of
Paradise bring out at divers seasons, as I have told you here
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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 Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: His magnet turned the plane of polarization of the beam through a
certain angle, and thus enabled it to get through the analyzer;
so that 'the magnetization of light and the illumination of the
magnetic lines of force' becomes, when expressed in the language of
modern theory, the rotation of the plane of polarization.
To him, as to all true philosophers, the main value of a fact was
its position and suggestiveness in the general sequence of
scientific truth. Hence, having established the existence of a
phenomenon, his habit was to look at it from all possible points of
view, and to develop its relationship to other phenomena. He proved
that the direction of the rotation depends upon the polarity of his
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