Today's Stichomancy for John Von Neumann

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

Psalms 130: 8 And He will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.

Psalms 131: 1 A Song of Ascents; of David. LORD, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty; neither do I exercise myself in things too great, or in things too wonderful for me.

Psalms 131: 2 Surely I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with his mother; my soul is with me like a weaned child.

Psalms 131: 3 O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time forth and for ever.

Psalms 132: 1 A Song of Ascents. LORD, remember unto David all his affliction;

Psalms 132: 2 How he swore unto the LORD, and vowed unto the Mighty One of Jacob:

Psalms 132: 3 'Surely I will not come into the tent of my house, nor go up into the bed that is spread for me;

Psalms 132: 4 I will not give sleep to mine eyes, nor slumber to mine eyelids;

Psalms 132: 5 Until I find out a place for the LORD, a dwelling-place for the Mighty One of Jacob.'

Psalms 132: 6 Lo, we heard of it as being in Ephrath; we found it in the field of the wood.

Psalms 132: 7 Let us go into His dwelling-place; let us worship at His footstool.

The Tanach

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

very top of a house next the roof, two rooms with a staircase between them. Each of us was to pay sixty francs a year. So there we were housed, my humble friend and I. We dined together. Bourgeat, who earned about fifty sous a day, had saved a hundred crowns or so; he would soon be able to gratify his ambition by buying a barrel and a horse. On learning of my situation--for he extracted my secrets with a quiet craftiness and good nature, of which the remembrance touches my heart to this day, he gave up for a time the ambition of his whole life; for twenty-two years he had been carrying water in the street, and he now devoted his hundred crowns to my future prospects."

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells:

another--a quiet, shy man with a beard--whom I didn't know, and who, as far as my observation went, never opened his mouth all the evening. There was some speculation at the dinner-table about the Time Traveller's absence, and I suggested time travelling, in a half-jocular spirit. The Editor wanted that explained to him, and the Psychologist volunteered a wooden account of the `ingenious paradox and trick' we had witnessed that day week. He was in the midst of his exposition when the door from the corridor opened slowly and without noise. I was facing the door, and saw it first. `Hallo!' I said. `At last!' And the door opened wider, and the Time Traveller stood before

The Time Machine

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 Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac:

very bosom of his prosperity that the color came into his face.

"Lost?--well, not precisely," said Birotteau, thunder-struck at his own stupidity: "they told me certain things about your /liaison/ with Madame Roguin. The devil! taking the wife of another man--"

"You are beating round the bush, old fellow," thought du Tillet, and as the words crossed his mind he came back to his original project, and vowed to bring that virtue low, to trample it under foot, to render despicable in the marts of Paris the honorable and virtuous merchant who had caught him, red-handed, in a theft. All hatreds, public or private, from woman to woman, from man to man, have no other cause then some such detection. People do not hate each other for

Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau