Today's Stichomancy for Jon Stewart
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: hundreds of miles down a long swift river. You sit in the bow of
the canoe, your partner in the stern, watching ahead; and there
comes a slide of smooth green water, and you go over it, and into
a torrent of foaming white, which seizes you and rushes you along
with the speed of a race-horse. With every sense alert, You watch
for the rocks, and when you see one, you dip your paddle on one
side or the other and with a quick motion draw the canoe clear of
the danger. If by any chance you fail to do it, over you go, and
your partner with you, and all your belongings go down-stream,
and maybe you are sucked into a whirlpool, and not seen for
several hours afterwards. Precisely like this is the voyage of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to answer some of these
questions in this book. In most books, the I, or first person, is
omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism,
is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is,
after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not
talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as
well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness
of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer,
first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not
merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as
he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has
Walden |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: retailer, "that I honour and respect an unselfish man: not,
however, because he is unselfish, but because I think he has a
right to be useful to another man at his own expense. In short,
the question is always who HE is, and who THE OTHER is. For
instance, in a person created and destined for command, self-
denial and modest retirement, instead of being virtues, would be
the waste of virtues: so it seems to me. Every system of
unegoistic morality which takes itself unconditionally and
appeals to every one, not only sins against good taste, but is
also an incentive to sins of omission, an ADDITIONAL seduction
under the mask of philanthropy--and precisely a seduction and
Beyond Good and Evil |
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 Glinda of Oz by L. Frank Baum: with every tribe of people and every strange and hidden
country in all Oz, but I am kept so busy at my palace
making laws and planning for the comforts of those who
live near the Emerald City, that I do not often find
time to make long journeys."
"Well," replied Dorothy, "we'll prob'bly find out a
lot on this trip, and we'll learn all about the
Skeezers and Flatheads, anyhow. Time doesn't make much
diff'rence in the Land of Oz, 'cause we don't grow up,
or get old, or become sick and die, as they do other
places; so, if we explore one place at a time, we'll
Glinda of Oz |
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