| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Herbert West: Reanimator by H. P. Lovecraft: 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
normal scientific zeal for prolonging life had subtly degenerated
into a mere morbid and ghoulish curiosity and secret sense of
charnel picturesqueness. His interest became a hellish and perverse
addiction to the repellently and fiendishly abnormal; he gloated
calmly over artificial monstrosities which would make most healthy
Herbert West: Reanimator |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: STRANGER: Again, motion is other than the same?
THEAETETUS: Just so.
STRANGER: And is therefore not the same.
THEAETETUS: It is not.
STRANGER: Yet, surely, motion is the same, because all things partake of
the same.
THEAETETUS: Very true.
STRANGER: Then we must admit, and not object to say, that motion is the
same and is not the same, for we do not apply the terms 'same' and 'not the
same,' in the same sense; but we call it the 'same,' in relation to itself,
because partaking of the same; and not the same, because having communion
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: heritage!"
Silence fell among them after these words, which sounded in the souls
of the man and of the woman like the first notes of some celestial
harmony.
"If you would teach your feet to tread the Path to heaven, know that
the way is hard at first," said the weary sufferer; "God wills that
you shall seek Him for Himself. In that sense, He is jealous; He
demands your whole self. But when you have given Him yourself, never,
never will He abandon you. I leave with you the keys of the kingdom of
His Light, where evermore you shall dwell in the bosom of the Father,
in the heart of the Bridegroom. No sentinels guard the approaches, you
Seraphita |
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 Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: coming from within, had admitted him through the side of the double-
door in which was a small grated loop-hole, that half of the door
escaped from her hand and swung back by its own weight with a solemn,
ponderous sound that echoed along the roof of a wide paved archway and
through the depths of the house, as though the door had been of iron.
This archway, painted to resemble marble, always clean and daily
sprinkled with fresh sand, led into a large court-yard paved with
smooth square stones of a greenish color. On the left were the linen-
rooms, kitchens, and servants' hall; to the right, the wood-house,
coal-house, and offices, whose doors, walls, and windows were
decorated with designs kept exquisitely clean. The daylight, threading
|
