| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare: VIII.
If music and sweet poetry agree,
As they must needs, the sister and the brother,
Then must the love be great 'twixt thee and me,
Because thou lovest the one, and I the other.
Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch
Upon the lute doth ravish human sense;
Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such
As, passing all conceit, needs no defence.
Thou lovest to bear the sweet melodious sound
That Phoebus' lute, the queen of music, makes;
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H. P. Lovecraft: such voyages, incalculable local dangers; as well as that shocking
final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe,
where no dreams reach; that last amorphous blight of nethermost
confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity
- the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare
speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted
chambers beyond time amidst the muffled, maddening beating of
vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes;
to which detestable pounding and piping dance slowly, awkwardly,
and absurdly the gigantic Ultimate gods, the blind, voiceless,
tenebrous, mindless Other gods whose soul and messenger is the
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: all words.
STRANGER: And is our enquiry about the Statesman intended only to improve
our knowledge of politics, or our power of reasoning generally?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Clearly, as in the former example, the purpose is general.
STRANGER: Still less would any rational man seek to analyse the notion of
weaving for its own sake. But people seem to forget that some things have
sensible images, which are readily known, and can be easily pointed out
when any one desires to answer an enquirer without any trouble or argument;
whereas the greatest and highest truths have no outward image of themselves
visible to man, which he who wishes to satisfy the soul of the enquirer can
adapt to the eye of sense (compare Phaedr.), and therefore we ought to
Statesman |
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 Reef by Edith Wharton: "That other woman has sat and watched him as I am doing.
She has known him as I have never known him...Perhaps he is
thinking of that now. Or perhaps he has forgotten it all as
completely as I have forgotten everything that happened to
me before he came..."
He looked young, active, stored with strength and energy;
not the man for vain repinings or long memories. She
wondered what she had to hold or satisfy him. He loved her
now; she had no doubt of that; but how could she hope to
keep him? They were so nearly of an age that already she
felt herself his senior. As yet the difference was not
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