| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Moon-Face and Other Stories by Jack London: "No, no, I beg of you," Aunt Mildred interposed. "It is too uncanny. It surely
is wrong to tamper with the dead. Besides, I am nervous. Or, better, let me go
to bed, leaving you to go on with your experiments. That will be the best way,
and you can tell me in the morning." Mingled with the "Good-nights," were
half-hearted protests from Mrs. Grantly, as Aunt Mildred withdrew.
"Robert can return," she called back, "as soon as he has seen me to my tent."
"It would be a shame to give it up now," Mrs. Grantly said. "There is no
telling what we are on the verge of. Won't you try it, Miss Story?"
Lute obeyed, but when she placed her hand on the board she was conscious of a
vague and nameless fear at this toying with the supernatural. She was
twentieth-century, and the thing in essence, as her uncle had said, was
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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 Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: entirely rejected by him as being opposed to the ordinary
experience of life, and to those natural laws whose universal
influence the early Greek physical philosophers had already made
known to the world of thought. Other legends, such as the suckling
of Cyrus by a bitch, or the feather-rain of northern Europe, are
rationalised and explained into a woman's name and a fall of snow.
The supernatural origin of the Scythian nation, from the union of
Hercules and the monstrous Echidna, is set aside by him for the
more probable account that they were a nomad tribe driven by the
Massagetae from Asia; and he appeals to the local names of their
country as proof of the fact that the Kimmerians were the original
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