Today's Stichomancy for Alyssa Milano

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf:

beyond a doubt that Mr. Bax was not the son of Mr. William Bax. There was a pause. Then Mrs. Thornbury remarked that she was still in the habit of saying Queen instead of King in the National Anthem. There was another pause. Then Miss Allan observed reflectively that going to church abroad always made her feel as if she had been to a sailor's funeral.

There was then a very long pause, which threatened to be final, when, mercifully, a bird about the size of a magpie, but of a metallic blue colour, appeared on the section of the terrace that could be seen from where they sat. Mrs. Thornbury was led to enquire whether we should like it if all our rooks were blue--"What

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin:

understand what we all wanted. Dr. Piderit[3] who has published remarks to the same effect, adds that stammerers generally frown in speaking, and that a man in doing even so trifling a thing as pulling on a boot, frowns if he finds it too tight. Some persons are such habitual frowners, that the mere effort of speaking almost always causes their brows to contract.

[2] `Mecanisme de la Physionomie Humaine,' Album, Legende iii.

[3] `Mimik und Physiognomik,' s. 46.

Men of all races frown when they are in any way perplexed in thought, as I infer from the answers which I have received to my queries; but I framed them badly, confounding absorbed meditation with perplexed reflection.

Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn:

flung himself down upon his bed, biting the coverings in order to stifle his outcry, to smother the sounds of his despair. What crime had he ever done, oh God! that he should be made to suffer thus?--was it for this he had been permitted to live? had been rescued from the sea and carried round all the world unscathed? Why should he live to remember, to suffer, to agonize? Was not Ramirez wiser?

How long the contest within him lasted, he never knew; but ere it was done, he had become, in more ways than one, a changed man. For the first,--though not indeed for the last time,--something of the deeper and nobler comprehension of human weakness and of

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 Before Adam by Jack London:

But all my search was vain.

Life was not monotonous at the caves, however. There was Red-Eye to be considered. Lop-Ear and I never knew a moment's peace except when we were in our own little cave. In spite of the enlargement of the entrance we had made, it was still a tight squeeze for us to get in. And though from time to time we continued to enlarge, it was still too small for Red-Eye's monstrous body. But he never stormed our cave again. He had learned the lesson well, and he carried on his neck a bulging lump to show where I had hit him with the rock.