Today's Stichomancy for George Washington

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Rig Veda:

HYMN XV. Agni.

1. AGNI the Herald, like a horse, is led forth at our solemn rite, God among Gods adorable.

2 Three times unto our solemn rite comes Agni like a charioteer, Bearing the viands to the Gods.

3 Round the oblations hath he paced, Agni the Wise, the Lord of

The Rig Veda

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from To-morrow by Joseph Conrad:

librium based upon self-esteem. Its disturbance causes unhappiness; and Captain Hagberd lived amongst a scheme of settled notions which it pained him to feel disturbed by people's grins. Yes, peo- ple's grins were awful. They hinted at something wrong: but what? He could not tell; and that stranger was obviously grinning--had come on purpose to grin. It was bad enough on the streets, but he had never before been outraged like this.

The stranger, unaware how near he was of hav- ing his head laid open with a spade, said seriously:

To-morrow

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter:

upon a period of suffering--a period of labor and toil and sorrow such as he had never before known, and such as the animals certainly have never known. And in that distressful state, in that doleful valley of his long pilgrimage, he still remains to-day.

Thus has the canker of self-consciousness done its work. It would be foolish and useless to rail against the process, or to blame any one for it. It had to be. Through this dismal vale of self-seeking mankind had to pass--if only in order at last to find the True Self which was (and still remains) its goal. The pilgrimage will not last for ever.

Pagan and Christian Creeds

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 On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin:

indigenes, for out of the 162 genera, no less than 100 genera are not there indigenous, and thus a large proportional addition is made to the genera of these States.

By considering the nature of the plants or animals which have struggled successfully with the indigenes of any country, and have there become naturalised, we can gain some crude idea in what manner some of the natives would have had to be modified, in order to have gained an advantage over the other natives; and we may, I think, at least safely infer that diversification of structure, amounting to new generic differences, would have been profitable to them.

The advantage of diversification in the inhabitants of the same region is,

On the Origin of Species