Today's Stichomancy for Galileo Galilei

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from King Lear by William Shakespeare:

It was some fiend. Therefore, thou happy father, Think that the clearest gods, who make them honours Of men's impossibility, have preserv'd thee. Glou. I do remember now. Henceforth I'll bear Affliction till it do cry out itself 'Enough, enough,' and die. That thing you speak of, I took it for a man. Often 'twould say 'The fiend, the fiend'- he led me to that place. Edg. Bear free and patient thoughts.

Enter Lear, mad, [fantastically dressed with weeds].

But who comes here?

King Lear

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac:

Well, what do you want, Ulysses-Lagingeole-Elie Magus?"

These words will give an idea of the mildness and wit with which Fougeres employed what painters call studio fun.

"Well, I don't deny that you are to paint me two pictures for nothing."

"Oh! oh!"

"I'll leave you to do it, or not; I don't ask it. But you're an honest man."

"Come, out with it!"

"Well, I'm prepared to bring you a father, mother, and only daughter."

"All for me?"

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson:

or merely 'Mother Athens,' and the game is up, for the trochaic beat has been suggested. The eccentric scansion of the groups is an adornment; but as soon as the original beat has been forgotten, they cease implicitly to be eccentric. Variety is what is sought; but if we destroy the original mould, one of the terms of this variety is lost, and we fall back on sameness. Thus, both as to the arithmetical measure of the verse, and the degree of regularity in scansion, we see the laws of prosody to have one common purpose: to keep alive the opposition of two schemes simultaneously followed; to keep them notably apart, though still coincident; and to

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 Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift:

vindication, if my name had not been made use of by several persons, to whom I never lent it; one of which, a few days ago, was pleased to father on me a new sett of predictions. But I think those are things too serious to be trifled with. It grieved me to the heart, when I saw my labours, which had cost me so much thought and watching, bawl'd about by common hawkers, which I only intended for the weighty consideration of the gravest persons. This prejudiced the world so much at first, that several of my friends had the assurance to ask me whether I were in jest? To which I only answered coldly, that the event would shew. But it is the talent of our age and nation, to turn things of the