Today's Stichomancy for Hugo Chavez

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

dangers of disease? or do the courageous know them? or are the physicians the same as the courageous?

NICIAS: Not at all.

LACHES: No more than the husbandmen who know the dangers of husbandry, or than other craftsmen, who have a knowledge of that which inspires them with fear or confidence in their own arts, and yet they are not courageous a whit the more for that.

SOCRATES: What is Laches saying, Nicias? He appears to be saying something of importance.

NICIAS: Yes, he is saying something, but it is not true.

SOCRATES: How so?

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from On Horsemanship by Xenophon:

[1] Lit. "To proceed: when you have bought a horse which you admire and have brought him home."

[2] i.e. "where he will be brought as frequently as possible under the master's eye." Cf. "Econ." xii. 20.

Nor is it only to avoid the risk of food being stolen that a secure horse-box is desirable, but for the further reason that if the horse takes to scattering his food, the action is at once detected; and any one who observes that happening may take it as a sign and symptom either of too much blood,[3] which calls for veterinary aid, or of over-fatigue, for which rest is the cure, or else that an attack of indigestion[4] or some other malady is coming on. And just as with

On Horsemanship

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

profession. He leaps, like the Belgian boating men, to the notion that I must be an athlete myself.

But the gymnast is not my favourite; he has little or no tincture of the artist in his composition; his soul is small and pedestrian, for the most part, since his profession makes no call upon it, and does not accustom him to high ideas. But if a man is only so much of an actor that he can stumble through a farce, he is made free of a new order of thoughts. He has something else to think about beside the money-box. He has a pride of his own, and, what is of far more importance, he has an aim before him that he can never quite attain. He has gone upon a pilgrimage that will last him his

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 Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

"He is a murderer, Monsieur," continued the officer. "I have followed him for a long time to take him back to stand trial for the killing of his superior officer."

Werper was upon his feet now, gazing, white and trembling, at the fate which had overtaken him even in the fastness of the labyrinthine jungle. Instinctively he turned to flee; but Tarzan of the Apes reached out a strong hand and grasped him by the shoulder.

"Wait!" said the ape-man to his captive. "This gentleman wishes you, and so do I. When I am through

Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar