| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bab:A Sub-Deb, Mary Roberts Rinehart by Mary Roberts Rinehart: I dropped the hot water bottle, because there is no use pretending
one is not scared at such a time. One is. But of course I would not
tell them the Password, and the cook said:
"Be careful, Miss Bab. We are not playing. We are in terrable ernest."
She did not sound like a cook at all, and she looked diferent,
being very white and with to red spots on her cheeks.
"So am I," I responded, although with shaking teeth. "And just wait
until the Police hear of this and see what happens. You will all be
arested. If I scream----"
"If you scream," said Henry's friend in an awful voice, "you will
never scream again."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Damaged Goods by Upton Sinclair: accepts, the doctor will have nothing more to say. Isn't that
so?"
"Obviously," replied the son.
"I am going to promise that we will give her two thousand francs
when she goes away, if she will consent to continue nursing the
child."
"Two thousand francs?" said the other. "Is that enough?"
"I will see," was the reply. "If she hesitates, I will go
further. Let me attend to it."
George nodded his assent, and Madame Dupont returned to the
nurse. "You know," she said, "that our child is a little sick?"
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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 The Iliad by Homer: Hiketaon, who erewhile used to pasture his herds of cattle in
Percote before the war broke out; but when the ships of the
Danaans came, he went back to Ilius, where he was eminent among
the Trojans, and lived near Priam who treated him as one of his
own sons. Hector now rebuked him and said, "Why, Melanippus, are
we thus remiss? do you take no note of the death of your kinsman,
and do you not see how they are trying to take Dolops's armour?
Follow me; there must be no fighting the Argives from a distance
now, but we must do so in close combat till either we kill them
or they take the high wall of Ilius and slay her people."
He led on as he spoke, and the hero Melanippus followed after.
The Iliad |
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 At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: of attention. They had been suffered to develop unchecked because
they had not come in conflict with the dominant beings. Bothersome
forms, of course, were mechanically exterminated. It interested
us to see in some of the very last and most decadent sculptures
a shambling, primitive mammal, used sometimes for food and sometimes
as an amusing buffoon by the land dwellers, whose vaguely simian
and human foreshadowings were unmistakable. In the building of
land cities the huge stone blocks of the high towers were generally
lifted by vast-winged pterodactyls of a species heretofore unknown
to paleontology.
The persistence with which the Old Ones survived
At the Mountains of Madness |
