Today's Stichomancy for Arthur E. Waite

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac:

whom we love conveys to us her virtues, her conscience. She invites us with a smile to the noble life; from her we learn the self-devotion which she practises. Woe to the man who has not had his Henriette. Woe to that other one who has never known a Lady Dudley. The latter, if he marries, will not be able to keep his wife; the other will be abandoned by his mistress. But joy to him who can find the two women in one woman; happy the man, dear Natalie, whom you love.

After my return to Paris Arabella and I became more intimate than ever. Soon we insensibly abandoned all the conventional restrictions I had carefully imposed, the strict observance of which often makes the world forgive the false position in which Lady Dudley had placed

The Lily of the Valley

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry:

Harris says to the reporters, in the Greek language, that he's often heard about the United States, and he admires Roosevelt next to Raisuli, who is one of the whitest and most gentlemanly kidnappers that he ever worked alongside of. So you see, Pick," winds up Caligula, "we've got the law of nations on our side. We'll cut this colonel man out of the herd, and corral him in them little mountains, and stick up his heirs and assigns for ten thousand dollars."

"Well, you seldom little red-headed territorial terror," I answers, "you can't bluff your uncle Tecumseh Pickens! I'll be your company in this graft. But I misdoubt if you've absorbed the inwardness of this Burdick Harris case, Calig; and if on any morning we get a telegram

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young:

with or without hats on, standing on the gray cliffs, and looking down--maybe into the heart of a worldwide violet there, off the edge of the cliff, such as Bessie Bell saw or fancied she saw.

So many Ladies.

Bessie Bell leaned against the little fluted post of the gallery to the cabin that she and Sister Helen Vincula lived in, and decided to herself that, strange as it was, yet was it true that the whole world was full of--Ladies.

There were yet stranger things for Bessie Bell to learn.

She had not for long played with those many little girls in all sorts of clothes, and with larger girls, and with boys,--some with

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 U. S. Project Trinity Report by Carl Maag and Steve Rohrer:

reports addressing test events in the continental United States.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Project TRINITY was the name given to the war-time effort to produce the first nuclear detonation. A plutonium-fueled implosion device was detonated on 16 July 1945 at the Alamogordo Bombing Range in south-central New Mexico.

Three weeks later, on 6 August, the first uranium-fueled nuclear bomb, a gun-type weapon code-named LITTLE BOY, was detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. On 9 August, the FAT MAN nuclear bomb, a plutonium-fueled implosion weapon identical to the TRINITY device, was