Today's Stichomancy for Cindy Crawford

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from When the World Shook by H. Rider Haggard:

Rising stiffly we emerged from beneath the tree and perceived that we were at the foot of the cliff against which the remains of the yacht had been borne by the great tempest. Indeed there it was within a couple of hundred yards of us.

Following Marama we climbed the sloping path which ran up the cliff and ascended a knoll whence we could see the lake and the cone of the volcano in its centre. At least we used to be able to see this cone, but now, at any rate with the naked eye, we could make out nothing, except a small brown spot in the midst of the waters of the lake.

"The mountain which rose up many feet in that storm which

When the World Shook

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake:

Who made up a heaven of our misery.'

NURSE'S SONG

When the voices of children are heard on the green, And whisperings are in the dale, The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind, My face turns green and pale.

Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down, And the dews of night arise; Your spring and your day are wasted in play, And your winter and night in disguise.

THE SICK ROSE

Songs of Innocence and Experience

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift:

It is grown a word of course for writers to say, "This critical age," as divines say, "This sinful age."

It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. FUTURE AGES SHALL TALK OF THIS; THIS SHALL BE FAMOUS TO ALL POSTERITY. Whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.

The chameleon, who is said to feed upon nothing but air, hath, of all animals, the nimblest tongue.

When a man is made a spiritual peer he loses his surname; when a temporal, his Christian name.

It is in disputes as in armies, where the weaker side sets up false

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 Sophist by Plato:

There is another point of view in which this passage should also be considered. The great enemy of Plato is the world, not exactly in the theological sense, yet in one not wholly different--the world as the hater of truth and lover of appearance, occupied in the pursuit of gain and pleasure rather than of knowledge, banded together against the few good and wise men, and devoid of true education. This creature has many heads: rhetoricians, lawyers, statesmen, poets, sophists. But the Sophist is the Proteus who takes the likeness of all of them; all other deceivers have a piece of him in them. And sometimes he is represented as the corrupter of the world; and sometimes the world as the corrupter of him and of itself.

Of late years the Sophists have found an enthusiastic defender in the