Today's Stichomancy for Jim Jones
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: sometimes fill with tears as he held the hand of Gabrielle to his
lips. Like his mother, but at this moment happier in his love than she
had been in hers, the hated son looked down upon the sea, at that hour
golden on the shore, black on the horizon, and slashed here and there
with those silvery caps which betoken a coming storm. Gabrielle,
conforming to her friend's action, looked at the sight and was silent.
A single look, one of those by which two souls support each other,
sufficed to communicate their thoughts. Each loved with that love so
divinely like unto itself at every instant of its eternity that it is
not conscious of devotion or sacrifice or exaction, it fears neither
deceptions nor delay. But Etienne and Gabrielle were in absolute
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: are called, or in the harmony of song, which is termed concord, because he
moves all together by an harmonious power, as astronomers and musicians
ingeniously declare. And he is the God who presides over harmony, and
makes all things move together, both among Gods and among men. And as in
the words akolouthos and akoitis the alpha is substituted for an omicron,
so the name Apollon is equivalent to omopolon; only the second lambda is
added in order to avoid the ill-omened sound of destruction (apolon). Now
the suspicion of this destructive power still haunts the minds of some who
do not consider the true value of the name, which, as I was saying just
now, has reference to all the powers of the God, who is the single one, the
everdarting, the purifier, the mover together (aplous, aei Ballon,
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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 The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: this? And how did he come to mention this forgotten name.
"Yes, he has, but how did you know it?" he murmured in surprise.
He received no answer, for Muller was already walking quickly down
the street. The old man stared after him for some few minutes,
then suddenly his knees began to tremble. He closed the door with
difficulty, and sank down on a bench beside it. The wind had blown
out the light of his lantern; Berner was sitting in the dark
without knowing it, for a sudden terrible light had burst upon his
soul, burst upon it so sharply that he hid his eyes with his hands,
and his old lips murmured, "Horrible! Horrible! The brother
against the sister."
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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 Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: scenes and tones of color to painters. What a forest of crossbeams
supported the mills with their huge sails and their wheels! What
strange effects were produced by the piles or props driven into the
water to project the upper floors of the houses above the stream!
Unfortunately, the art of genre painting did not exist in those days,
and that of engraving was in its infancy. We have therefore lost that
curious spectacle, still offered, though in miniature, by certain
provincial towns, where the rivers are overhung with wooden houses,
and where, as at Vendome, the basins, full of water grasses, are
enclosed by immense iron railings, to isolate each proprietor's share
of the stream, which extends from bank to bank.
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