Today's Stichomancy for Eminem
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: If the Mutuals have really nothing among them worth admiring, that
alters the question. But if they are men with noble powers and
qualities, let me tell you, that, next to youthful love and family
affections, there is no human sentiment better than that which
unites the Societies of Mutual Admiration. And what would
literature or art be without such associations? Who can tell what
we owe to the Mutual Admiration Society of which Shakspeare, and
Ben Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher were members? Or to that of
which Addison and Steele formed the centre, and which gave us the
Spectator? Or to that where Johnson, and Goldsmith, and Burke, and
Reynolds, and Beauclerk, and Boswell, most admiring among all
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini: "In view of his relations with you, M. de Kercadiou, and because
of my deep regard for you, I did my best to avoid this, even though
as you will understand the death of my dear friend and cousin
Chabrillane seemed to summon me to action, even though I knew that
my circumspection was becoming matter for criticism among my friends.
But yesterday this unbridled young man made further restraint
impossible to me. He provoked me deliberately and publicly. He
put upon me the very grossest affront, and... to-morrow morning in
the Bois... we meet."
He faltered a little at the end, fully conscious of the hostile
atmosphere in which he suddenly found himself. Hostility from M.
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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 The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle: with his feet wide apart, stood firmly planted, waiting the other, smiling.
Then the King swung back his arm, and, balancing himself a moment,
he delivered a buffet at Robin that fell like a thunderbolt. Down went Robin
headlong upon the grass, for the stroke would have felled a stone wall.
Then how the yeomen shouted with laughter till their sides ached,
for never had they seen such a buffet given in all their lives.
As for Robin, he presently sat up and looked all around him, as though
he had dropped from a cloud and had lit in a place he had never seen before.
After a while, still gazing about him at his laughing yeomen, he put
his fingertips softly to his ear and felt all around it tenderly.
"Will Scarlet," said he, "count this fellow out his fifty pounds;
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood |
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 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: The mirage of this fortune hung before successive members of the
Jenkin family until her death in 1825, when it dissolved and left
the latest Alnaschar face to face with bankruptcy. The grandniece,
Stephen's daughter, the one who had not 'married imprudently,'
appears to have been the first; for she was taken abroad by the
golden aunt, and died in her care at Ghent in 1792. Next she
adopted William, the youngest of the five nephews; took him abroad
with her - it seems as if that were in the formula; was shut up
with him in Paris by the Revolution; brought him back to Windsor,
and got him a place in the King's Body-Guard, where he attracted
the notice of George III. by his proficiency in German. In 1797,
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