| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: in the mighty city of R'lyeh under the waters, should rise and
bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call,
when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be
waiting to liberate him.
Meanwhile no more must be told. There
was a secret which even torture could not extract. Mankind was
not absolutely alone among the conscious things of earth, for
shapes came out of the dark to visit the faithful few. But these
were not the Great Old Ones. No man had ever seen the Old Ones.
The carven idol was great Cthulhu, but none might say whether
or not the others were precisely like him. No one could read the
Call of Cthulhu |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: power which rules all men,--even when its strength is mere appearance.
To vulgar minds real depth is incomprehensible; it is perhaps for that
reason that the populace is so prone to admire what it cannot
understand. Monsieur and Madame d'Hauteserre, impressed by the
habitual silence and erratic habits of the young girl, were constantly
expecting some extraordinary thing of her.
Laurence, who did good intelligently and never allowed herself to be
deceived, was held in the utmost respect by the peasantry although she
was an aristocrat. Her sex, name, and great misfortunes, also the
originality of her present life, contributed to give her authority
over the inhabitants of the valley of Cinq-Cygne. She was sometimes
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: on, until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon
the clock. And then the music ceased, as I have told; and the
evolutions of the waltzers were quieted; and there was an uneasy
cessation of all things as before. But now there were twelve
strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock; and thus it
happened, perhaps, that more of thought crept, with more of time,
into the meditations of the thoughtful among those who revelled.
And thus too, it happened, perhaps, that before the last echoes of
the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were many
individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of
the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the
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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 House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: power. Among other good-for-nothing properties and privileges,
one was especially assigned them,--that of exercising an influence
over people's dreams. The Pyncheons, if all stories were true,
haughtily as they bore themselves in the noonday streets of their
native town, were no better than bond-servants to these plebeian
Maules, on entering the topsy-turvy commonwealth of sleep.
Modern psychology, it may be, will endeavor to reduce these
alleged necromancies within a system, instead of rejecting
them as altogether fabulous.
A descriptive paragraph or two, treating of the seven-gabled
mansion in its more recent aspect, will bring this preliminary
House of Seven Gables |
