Today's Stichomancy for Pancho Villa
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Poems by Oscar Wilde: Some goat-foot Pan make merry minstrelsy
Amid the reeds! some startled Dryad-maid
In girlish flight! or lurking in the glade,
The soft brown limbs, the wanton treacherous face
Of woodland god! Queen Dian in the chase,
White-limbed and terrible, with look of pride,
And leash of boar-hounds leaping at her side!
Or Hylas mirrored in the perfect stream.
O idle heart! O fond Hellenic dream!
Ere long, with melancholy rise and swell,
The evening chimes, the convent's vesper bell,
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac: calculation, a necessity, the practice of which offers certain
opportunities for grandeur to the guilty man and the possibility of a
return to good--reigned absolutely between Cerizet and his clients.
Never did Cerizet make an error, nor his poor people either; neither
side ever denied what was due, either capital or interests. Many a
time Cerizet, who was born among the people, corrected from one week
to another some accidental error, to the benefit of a poor man who had
never discovered it. He was called a Jew, but an honest one, and his
word in that city of sorrows was sacred. A woman died, causing a loss
to him of thirty francs:
[*] A book on which the author has been at work since 1833, the year
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from 1984 by George Orwell: disposes of the products as it thinks fit. In the years following the
Revolution it was able to step into this commanding position almost
unopposed, because the whole process was represented as an act of
collectivization. It had always been assumed that if the capitalist class
were expropriated, Socialism must follow: and unquestionably the
capitalists had been expropriated. Factories, mines, land, houses,
transport--everything had been taken away from them: and since these
things were no longer private property, it followed that they must be
public property. Ingsoc, which grew out of the earlier Socialist movement
and inherited its phraseology, has in fact carried out the main item in
the Socialist programme; with the result, foreseen and intended beforehand,
1984 |
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 Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: proportioned to his deserts--a post in which he could accomplish much
for science and the general welfare. The youthful dignitary surrounded
himself with artists, poets, and learned men. He wished to give work
to all, to encourage all. He undertook, at his own expense, a number
of useful publications; gave numerous orders to artists; offered
prizes for the encouragement of different arts; spent a great deal of
money, and finally ruined himself. But, full of noble impulses, he did
not wish to relinquish his work, sought to raise a loan, and finally
betook himself to the well-known usurer. Having borrowed a
considerable sum from him, the man in a short time changed completely.
He became a persecutor and oppressor of budding talent and intellect.
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
|
|
