| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Herbert West: Reanimator by H. P. Lovecraft: he looked at healthy living bodies; and then there came a nightmarish
session in the cellar laboratory when I learned that a certain
specimen had been a living body when he secured it. That was the
first time he had ever been able to revive the quality of rational
thought in a corpse; and his success, obtained at such a loathsome
cost, had completely hardened him.
Of his methods in the intervening
five years I dare not speak. I was held to him by sheer force
of fear, and witnessed sights that no human tongue could repeat.
Gradually I came to find Herbert West himself more horrible than
anything he did -- that was when it dawned on me that his once
Herbert West: Reanimator |
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 Road to Oz by L. Frank Baum: before. He had refused to give up his shaggy clothes for new ones,
because if he did that he would no longer be the shaggy man, he said,
and he might have to get acquainted with himself all over again.
He told Dorothy he had brushed his shaggy hair and whiskers; but she
thought he must have brushed them the wrong way, for they were quite
as shaggy as before.
As for the company of foxes assembled to dine with the strangers, they
were most beautifully costumed, and their rich dresses made Dorothy's
simple gown and Button-Bright's sailor suit and the shaggy man's
shaggy clothes look commonplace. But they treated their guests with
great respect and the King's dinner was a very good dinner indeed.
The Road to Oz |
