| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde: What, is it so with you?
I thought the friendship of the antique world
Was not yet dead, but that the Roman type
Might even in this poor and common age
Find counterparts of love; then by this love
Which beats between us like a summer sea,
Whatever lot has fallen to your hand
May I not share it?
GUIDO
Share it?
ASCANIO
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: March 1st -
or February 28th according to the International Date Line - the
earthquake and storm had come. From Dunedin the Alert and her
noisome crew had darted eagerly forth as if imperiously summoned,
and on the other side of the earth poets and artists had begun
to dream of a strange, dank Cyclopean city whilst a young sculptor
had moulded in his sleep the form of the dreaded Cthulhu. March
23rd the crew of the Emma landed on an unknown island and left
six men dead; and on that date the dreams of sensitive men assumed
a heightened vividness and darkened with dread of a giant monster's
malign pursuit, whilst an architect had gone mad and a sculptor
Call of Cthulhu |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake: 'For, when our souls have learned the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,
Saying, "Come out from the grove, my love and care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice."'
Thus did my mother say, and kissed me,
And thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black, and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,
I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear
To lean in joy upon our Father's knee;
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
Songs of Innocence and Experience |
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 Phaedo by Plato: they leave those regions and rush back hither, they again fill the hollows
here, and when these are filled, flow through subterranean channels and
find their way to their several places, forming seas, and lakes, and
rivers, and springs. Thence they again enter the earth, some of them
making a long circuit into many lands, others going to a few places and not
so distant; and again fall into Tartarus, some at a point a good deal lower
than that at which they rose, and others not much lower, but all in some
degree lower than the point from which they came. And some burst forth
again on the opposite side, and some on the same side, and some wind round
the earth with one or many folds like the coils of a serpent, and descend
as far as they can, but always return and fall into the chasm. The rivers
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