The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: with women and buffoons! Do not tell me that the enterprise is
impossible. Have not the Mercenaries already possessed Rhegium and
other fortified places in Italy? Who is to prevent you? Hamilcar is
away; the people execrate the rich; Gisco can do nothing with the
cowards who surround him. Command them! Carthage is ours; let us fall
upon it!"
"No!" said Matho, "the curse of Moloch weighs upon me. I felt it in
her eyes, and just now I saw a black ram retreating in a temple."
Looking around him he added: "But where is she?"
Then Spendius understood that a great disquiet possessed him, and did
not venture to speak again.
Salammbo |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: There is something lacking among the oaks of Fontainebleau; and
when the dessert comes in at Barbizon, people look to the door for
a figure that is gone.
The third of our companions at Origny was no less a person than the
landlady's husband: not properly the landlord, since he worked
himself in a factory during the day, and came to his own house at
evening as a guest: a man worn to skin and bone by perpetual
excitement, with baldish head, sharp features, and swift, shining
eyes. On Saturday, describing some paltry adventure at a duck-
hunt, he broke a plate into a score of fragments. Whenever he made
a remark, he would look all round the table with his chin raised,
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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 Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: and I could feel the mate's regret as he wrote of her bombardment
and sinking. Of the swarthy cult-fiends on the Alert he speaks
with significant horror. There was some peculiarly abominable
quality about them which made their destruction seem almost a
duty, and Johansen shews ingenuous wonder at the charge of ruthlessness
brought against his party during the proceedings of the court
of inquiry. Then, driven ahead by curiosity in their captured
yacht under Johansen's command, the men sight a great stone pillar
sticking out of the sea, and in S. Latitude 47°9', W. Longitude
l23°43', come upon a coastline of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy
Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible
Call of Cthulhu |
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 A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: an account that Father Baradas, with the Emperor's nephew, and many
other persons of distinction, waited for us at some distance; we
loaded our camels, and following the course of the river, came in
seven hours to the place we were directed to halt at. Father Manuel
Baradas and all the company, who had waited for us a considerable
time on the top of the mountain, came down when they saw our tents,
and congratulated our arrival. It is not easy to express the
benevolence and tenderness with which they embraced us, and the
concern they showed at seeing us worn away with hunger, labour, and
weariness, our clothes tattered, and our feet bloody.
We left this place of interview the next day, and on the 21st of
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