| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft: - this shocking familiarity with a set of unknown ruins, and this
monstrously exact identity of everything before me with what only
dreams and scraps of myth could have suggested - a horror beyond
all reason?
Probably it was my basic conviction then - as it
is now during my saner moments - that I was not awake at all,
and that the entire buried city was a fragment of febrile hallucination.
Eventually, I reached the lowest level and struck off to the
right of the incline. For some shadowy reason I tiled to soften
my steps, even though I lost speed thereby. There was a space
I was afraid to cross on this last, deeply buried floor.
 Shadow out of Time |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson: She half-foresaw that he, the subtle beast,
Would track her guilt until he found, and hers
Would be for evermore a name of scorn.
Henceforward rarely could she front in hall,
Or elsewhere, Modred's narrow foxy face,
Heart-hiding smile, and gray persistent eye:
Henceforward too, the Powers that tend the soul,
To help it from the death that cannot die,
And save it even in extremes, began
To vex and plague her. Many a time for hours,
Beside the placid breathings of the King,
|