Today's Stichomancy for Igor Stravinsky

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Royalty Restored/London Under Charles II by J. Fitzgerald Molloy:

earl was member of the privy council to his majesty, and moreover held a still closer connection to the queen mother; for, according to Sir John Reresby, Madame Buviere, and others, her majesty had privately married his lordship abroad--an act of condescension he repaid with inhumanity. Madame Buviere says he never gave the queen a good word; and when she spoke to him he used to say, "Que me veut cette femme?" The same authority adds, he treated her majesty in an extremely ill manner, "so that whilst she had not a faggot to warm herself, he had in his apartments a good fire and a sumptuous table." [This testimony concerning the queen's poverty is borne out by Cardinal de Retz.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot:

of Frazer, and because I associate him with the hooded figure in the passage of the disciples to Emmaus in Part V. The Phoenician Sailor and the Merchant appear later; also the 'crowds of people', and Death by Water is executed in Part IV. The Man with Three Staves (an authentic member of the Tarot pack) I associate, quite arbitrarily, with the Fisher King himself.

60. Cf. Baudelaire:

Fourmillante cité, cité pleine de rêves, Où le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant.

63. Cf. INFERNO, iii. 55-7.

si lunga tratta

The Waste Land

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Tanach:

Psalms 78: 47 He destroyed their vines with hail, and their sycamore-trees with frost.

Psalms 78: 48 He gave over their cattle also to the hail, and their flocks to fiery bolts.

Psalms 78: 49 He sent forth upon them the fierceness of His anger, wrath, and indignation, and trouble, a sending of messengers of evil.

Psalms 78: 50 He levelled a path for His anger; He spared not their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence;

Psalms 78: 51 And smote all the first-born in Egypt, the first-fruits of their strength in the tents of Ham;

Psalms 78: 52 But He made His own people to go forth like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock.

Psalms 78: 53 And He led them safely, and they feared not; but the sea overwhelmed their enemies.

Psalms 78: 54 And He brought them to His holy border, to the mountain, which His right hand had gotten.

Psalms 78: 55 He drove out the nations also before them, and allotted them for an inheritance by line, and made the tribes of Israel to dwell in their tents.

Psalms 78: 56 Yet they tried and provoked God, the Most High, and kept not His testimonies;

Psalms 78: 57 But turned back, and dealt treacherously like their fathers; they were turned aside like a deceitful bow.

The Tanach

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 Jolly Corner by Henry James:

- rarely much before midnight, but then for a considerable vigil - he watched with his glimmering light; moving slowly, holding it high, playing it far, rejoicing above all, as much as he might, in open vistas, reaches of communication between rooms and by passages; the long straight chance or show, as he would have called it, for the revelation he pretended to invite. It was a practice he found he could perfectly "work" without exciting remark; no one was in the least the wiser for it; even Alice Staverton, who was moreover a well of discretion, didn't quite fully imagine.

He let himself in and let himself out with the assurance of calm proprietorship; and accident so far favoured him that, if a fat