Today's Stichomancy for Leonardo da Vinci

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Glinda of Oz by L. Frank Baum:

could make this tent appear, with our dinners and beds all ready for us."

Ozma smiled.

"Yes, it is indeed wonderful," she agreed. "Not all fairies know that sort of magic, but some fairies can do magic that fills me with astonishment. I think that is what makes us modest and unassuming -- the fact that our magic arts are divided, some being given each of us. I'm glad I don't know everything, Dorothy, and that there still are things in both nature and in wit for me to marvel at."

Glinda of Oz

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell:

off she went to Atlanta with Wade Hampton and his nurse Prissy, a headful of admonitions as to her conduct from Ellen and Mammy and a hundred dollars in Confederate bills from Gerald. She did not especially want to go to Atlanta. She thought Aunt Pitty the silliest of old ladies and the very idea of living under the same roof with Ashley's wife was abhorrent. But the County with its memories was impossible now, and any change was welcome.

PART TWO

CHAPTER VIII

As the train carried Scarlett northward that May morning in 1862, she thought that Atlanta couldn't possibly be so boring as

Gone With the Wind

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Mistress Wilding by Rafael Sabatini:

the Duke's face. So, without giving any of them time to say him nay, he added quickly and very seriously, "I am begging this in the interests of justice. Your Grace has told me that some lingering doubt still haunts your mind upon the subject of this letter - the other charges can matter little, apart from that treasonable document. It lies within my power to resolve such doubts most clearly and finally. But I warn you, sirs, that not one word will I utter in this connection until I have had speech with Mr. Trenchard."

There was about his mien and voice a firmness that forewarned Albemarle that to insist would be worse than idle. A slight pause followed his words, and Luttrell leaned across to whisper in His Grace's ear; from

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 Phantasmagoria and Other Poems by Lewis Carroll:

Much like a waving field of golden grain, Or a tempestuous ocean.

And thus they give the time, that Nature meant For peaceful sleep and meditative snores, To ceaseless din and mindless merriment And waste of shoes and floors.

And One (we name him not) that flies the flowers, That dreads the dances, and that shuns the salads, They doom to pass in solitude the hours, Writing acrostic-ballads.

How late it grows! The hour is surely past