Today's Stichomancy for Federico Fellini
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Phantasmagoria and Other Poems by Lewis Carroll: As when the loaded omnibus
Has reached the railway terminus:
When, for the tumult of the street,
Is heard the engine's stifled beat,
The velvet tread of porters' feet.
With glance that ever sought the ground,
She moved her lips without a sound,
And every now and then she frowned.
He gazed upon the sleeping sea,
And joyed in its tranquillity,
And in that silence dead, but she
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: letters which had sound, but were not pure vowels (i.e., the semivowels);
these too exist in a definite number; and lastly, he distinguished a third
class of letters which we now call mutes, without voice and without sound,
and divided these, and likewise the two other classes of vowels and
semivowels, into the individual sounds, and told the number of them, and
gave to each and all of them the name of letters; and observing that none
of us could learn any one of them and not learn them all, and in
consideration of this common bond which in a manner united them, he
assigned to them all a single art, and this he called the art of grammar or
letters.
PHILEBUS: The illustration, Protarchus, has assisted me in understanding
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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 Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: all some little dainty. He was so well known for his discretion, his
benevolence, and other ecclesiastical qualities, that he had customers
at Court. Then in order not to awaken the jealousy of the officials,
that of the husbands and others, in short, to endow with sanctity
these good and profitable practices, the Lady Desquerdes gave him a
bone of St. Victor, by virtue of which all the miracles were
performed. And to the curious it was said, "He has a bone which will
cure everything;" and to this, no one found anything to reply, because
it was not seemly to suspect relics. Beneath the shade of his cassock,
the good priest had the best of reputations, that of a man valiant
under arms. So he lived like a king. He made money with holy water;
 Droll Stories, V. 1 |
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 Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: land, Whiteman's Land--or Ireland the Mickle, as some called it.
For these Norse traders from Limerick had found Ari Marson, and
Ketla of Ruykjanes, supposed to have been long since drowned at sea,
and said that the people had made him and Ketla chiefs, and baptized
Ari. What is all this? and what is this, too, which the Esquimaux
children taken in Markland told the Northmen, of a land beyond them
where the folk wore white clothes, and carried flags on poles? Are
these all dreams? or was some part of that great civilisation, the
relics whereof your antiquarians find in so many parts of the United
States, still in existence some 900 years ago; and were these old
Norse cousins of ours upon the very edge of it? Be that as it may,
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