Today's Stichomancy for Natalie Portman

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells:

retrospect far more significantly than they did at the time. I played them in bursts, and then forgot them for long periods; through the spring and summer I was mostly out of doors, and school and classes caught me early. And in the retrospect I see them all not only magnified and transfigured, but fore-shortened and confused together. A clockwork railway, I seem to remember, came and went; one or two clockwork boats, toy sailing ships that, being keeled, would do nothing but lie on their beam ends on the floor; a detestable lot of cavalrymen, undersized and gilt all over, given me by a maiden aunt, and very much what one might expect from an aunt, that I used as Nero used his Christians to ornament my public

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from King James Bible:

shutteth up a man, and there can be no opening.

JOB 12:15 Behold, he withholdeth the waters, and they dry up: also he sendeth them out, and they overturn the earth.

JOB 12:16 With him is strength and wisdom: the deceived and the deceiver are his.

JOB 12:17 He leadeth counsellors away spoiled, and maketh the judges fools.

JOB 12:18 He looseth the bond of kings, and girdeth their loins with a girdle.

JOB 12:19 He leadeth princes away spoiled, and overthroweth the mighty.

JOB 12:20 He removeth away the speech of the trusty, and taketh away

King James Bible

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad:

finality that there were no accounts to render and no property to inherit. The whole fortune was his very own. He was very good- natured about the young man's misapprehension of the true state of affairs, but of course felt obliged to maintain his position firmly. Old friends came and went busily, voluntary mediators appeared travelling on most horrible roads from the most distant corners of the three provinces; and the Marshal of the Nobility (ex-officio guardian of all well-born orphans) called a meeting of landowners to "ascertain in a friendly way how the misunderstanding between X and his stepsons had arisen and devise proper measures to remove the same." A deputation to that effect

Some Reminiscences

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 First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells:

phosphorescent deep. Then, presently, a long ultra-marine vista down the turgid stream of one of the channels of traffic, and a landing stage, and then, perhaps, a glimpse up the enormous crowded shaft of one of the vertical ways.

"In one great place heavy with glistening stalactites a number of boats were fishing. We went alongside one of these and watched the long-armed Selenites winding in a net. They were little, hunchbacked insects, with very strong arms, short, bandy legs, and crinkled face-masks. As they pulled at it that net seemed the heaviest thing I had come upon in the moon; it was loaded with weights - no doubt of gold - and it took a long time to draw, for in those waters the larger and more edible fish lurk

The First Men In The Moon