| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: beneficial or not,--a thing, too, which is esteemed of the highest
importance by the Hellenes:--(for parents, as soon as their children are,
as they think, come to years of discretion, urge them to consider how
wealth may be acquired, since by riches the value of a man is judged):--
When, I say, we are thus in earnest, and you, who agree in other respects,
fall to disputing about a matter of such moment, that is, about wealth, and
not merely whether it is black or white, light or heavy, but whether it is
a good or an evil, whereby, although you are now the dearest of friends and
kinsmen, the most bitter hatred may arise betwixt you, I must hinder your
dissension to the best of my power. If I could, I would tell you the
truth, and so put an end to the dispute; but as I cannot do this, and each
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: presence and personality; now that she was abandoned, left again
to her own devices, she felt herself suddenly at the mercy of
the influences from which she thought she had escaped.
In the queer social whirligig from which she had so lately fled,
it seemed natural enough that a shake of the box should have
tossed Nat Fulmer into celebrity, and sent Violet Melrose
chasing back from the ends of the earth to bask in his success.
Susy knew that Mrs. Melrose belonged to the class of moral
parasites; for in that strange world the parts were sometimes
reversed, and the wealthy preyed upon the pauper. Wherever
there was a reputation to batten on, there poor Violet appeared,
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: CHAPTER XIII
ABOUT THE ZU-VENDI PEOPLE
And now the curtain is down for a few hours, and the actors in
this novel drama are plunged in dewy sleep. Perhaps we should
except Nyleptha, whom the reader may, if poetically inclined,
imagine lying in her bed of state encompassed by her maidens,
tiring women, guards, and all the other people and appurtenances
that surround a throne, and yet not able to slumber for thinking
of the strangers who had visited a country where no such strangers
had ever come before, and wondering, as she lay awake, who they
were and what their past has been, and if she was ugly compared
Allan Quatermain |
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 Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: fellow-prisoners. The image on the monolith, of course, was carefully
removed and carried back by Legrasse.
Examined at headquarters
after a trip of intense strain and weariness, the prisoners all
proved to be men of a very low, mixed-blooded, and mentally aberrant
type. Most were seamen, and a sprinkling of Negroes and mulattoes,
largely West Indians or Brava Portuguese from the Cape Verde Islands,
gave a colouring of voodooism to the heterogeneous cult. But before
many questions were asked, it became manifest that something far
deeper and older than Negro fetishism was involved. Degraded and
ignorant as they were, the creatures held with surprising consistency
Call of Cthulhu |
