Today's Stichomancy for Christian Bale
The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther: We have now heard what we must do and believe, in which things the best
and happiest life consists. Now follows the third part, how we ought to
pray. For since we are so situated that no man can perfectly keep the
Ten Commandments, even though he have begun to believe, and since the
devil with all his power together with the world and our own flesh,
resists our endeavors, nothing is so necessary as that we should
continually resort to the ear of God, call upon Him, and pray to Him,
that He would give, preserve, and increase in us faith and the
fulfillment of the Ten Commandments, and that He would remove
everything that is in our way and opposes us therein. But that we might
know what and how to pray, our Lord Christ has Himself taught us both
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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 Recruit by Honore de Balzac: the warnings of the Faculty.
Thanks to her constant care, this son had grown and developed so much,
and so gracefully, that at twenty years of age, he was thought a most
elegant cavalier at Versailles. Madame de Dey possessed a happiness
which does not always crown the efforts and struggles of a mother. Her
son adored her; their souls understood each other with fraternal
sympathy. If they had not been bound by nature's ties, they would
instinctively have felt for each other that friendship of man to man,
which is so rarely to be met in this life. Appointed sub-lieutenant of
dragoons, at the age of eighteen, the young Comte de Dey had obeyed
the point of honor of the period by following the princes of the blood
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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 Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: it is not to be supposed that any considerable number of men
would ever unite in any common belief. But obviously without
such common belief no society can prosper - say rather no society
can subsist; for without ideas held in common, there is no common
action, and without common action, there may still be men, but
there is no social body. In order that society should exist,
and, a fortiori, that a society should prosper, it is required
that all the minds of the citizens should be rallied and held
together by certain predominant ideas; and this cannot be the
case, unless each of them sometimes draws his opinions from the
common source, and consents to accept certain matters of belief
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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 The Copy-Cat & Other Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: place was empty, sat down, and a wonderful wave
of content and self-respect came over him. The
poor human snail had found his shell; he had a
habitation, a roof of shelter. The little dim place
immediately assumed an aspect of home. The rain
came down in torrents, the thunder crashed, the
place was filled with blinding blue lights. Stebbins
filled his pipe more lavishly this time, tilted his
chair against the wall, smoked, and gazed about
him with pitiful content. It was really so little,
but to him it was so much. He nodded with satis-
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