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 Bucolics by Virgil: Dear child of gods, great progeny of Jove!
See how it totters- the world's orbed might,
Earth, and wide ocean, and the vault profound,
All, see, enraptured of the coming time!
Ah! might such length of days to me be given,
And breath suffice me to rehearse thy deeds,
Nor Thracian Orpheus should out-sing me then,
Nor Linus, though his mother this, and that
His sire should aid- Orpheus Calliope,
And Linus fair Apollo. Nay, though Pan,
With Arcady for judge, my claim contest,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: so often decorated processes of thought, and bore, written up among their
leaves, as if they were scraps of paper on which one scribbles notes in
the rush of reading--he slipped, seeing all this, smoothly into
speculation suggested by an article in THE TIMES about the number of
Americans who visit Shakespeare's house every year. If Shakespeare
had never existed, he asked, would the world have differed much from what
it is today? Does the progress of civilization depend upon great men? Is
the lot of the average human being better now than in the time of the
Pharaohs? Is the lot of the average human being, however, he asked
himself, the criterion by which we judge the measure of civilization?
Possibly not. Possibly the greatest good requires the existence of a
 To the Lighthouse |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson: 'What make ye here, my merry men, among the greenwood shaws?'
And Gamelyn made answer - he looked never adown:
'O, they must need to walk in wood that may not walk in town!'"
The singer paused, a faint clink of iron followed, and then
silence.
The two lads stood looking at each other. Whoever he might be,
their invisible neighbour was just beyond the ruin. And suddenly
the colour came into Matcham's face, and next moment he had crossed
the fallen rafter, and was climbing cautiously on the huge pile of
lumber that filled the interior of the roofless house. Dick would
have withheld him, had he been in time; as it was, he was fain to
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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 The Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu: fit for the gods; and the gods have drunk it, the dead gods of
Etruria, two thousand years ago. Did I say dead? No, for the
gods are immortal, and one might still find them loitering in
some solitary dell on the grey hillsides of Fiesole. Have I seen
them? Yes, looking with dreaming eyes, I have found them sitting
under the olives, in their grave, strong, antique
beauty--Etruscan gods!"
In Italy she watches the faces of the monks, and at one moment
longs to attain to their peace by renunciation, longs for
Nirvana; "then, when one comes out again into the hot sunshine
that warms one's blood, and sees the eager hurrying faces of men
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