Today's Stichomancy for Lindsay Lohan

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol:

priests have harnessed and beaten orthodox Christians! What! such torture has been permitted on Russian soil by the cursed unbelievers! And they have done such things to the leaders and the hetman? Nay, this shall not be, it shall not be." Such words came from all quarters. The Zaporozhtzi were moved, and knew their power. It was not the excitement of a giddy-minded folk. All who were thus agitated were strong, firm characters, not easily aroused, but, once aroused, preserving their inward heat long and obstinately. "Hang all the Jews!" rang through the crowd. "They shall not make petticoats for their Jewesses out of popes' vestments! They shall not place their signs upon the holy wafers! Drown all the heathens in the Dnieper!"

Taras Bulba and Other Tales

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Love Songs by Sara Teasdale:

Two italicized lines are marked by asterisks (*). Lines longer than 78 characters are broken, and the continuation is indented two spaces.]

[This etext was transcribed from a 1918 reprinting of the 1917 edition, which was the original. It is interesting that some of those poems included from earlier volumes have been slightly changed in this book.]

Love Songs

By Sara Teasdale Author of "Rivers to the Sea", "Helen of Troy and Other Poems", Etc.

To E.

I have remembered beauty in the night,

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Symposium by Xenophon:

vexed, which rob me of his sight; but to daylight and the sun I owe eternal thanks, for they restore him to me, my heart's joy, Cleinias.[24]

[20] Or, "beautiful and good."

[21] Or, "whose fair face draws me." Was Cleinias there as a "muta persona"? Hardly, in spite of {nun}. It is the image of him which is present to the mind's eye.

[22] Lit. "being beautiful"; but there is a touch of bombast infused into the speech by the artist. Cf. the speech of Callias ("Hell." VI. iii. 3) and, for the humour, "Cyrop." passim.

[23] See Cobet, "Pros. Xen." p. 59. Cf. "Mem." I. iii. 8.

The Symposium

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 Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac:

could be cheated like a child. He has not the slightest idea of the value of these fine things that you have! He so little suspects it, that he would give them away for a morsel of bread if he did not keep them all his life for love of you, always supposing that he lives after you, for he will die of your death. But /I/ am here; I will take his part against anybody and everybody! . . . I and Cibot will defend him."

"Dear Mme. Cibot!" said Pons, "what would have become of me if it had not been for you and Schmucke?" He felt touched by this horrible prattle; the feeling in it seemed to be ingenuous, as it usually is in the speech of the people.