Today's Stichomancy for Philip K. Dick
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake: Merry, merry sparrow!
Under leaves so green
A happy blossom
Sees you, swift as arrow,
Seek your cradle narrow,
Near my bosom.
Pretty, pretty robin!
Under leaves so green
A happy blossom
Hears you sobbing, sobbing,
Pretty, pretty robin,
Songs of Innocence and Experience |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tales of the Klondyke by Jack London: eyes of man had never dwelt upon, and messages. These messages
were sealed, and protected shrewdly from the weather, and I was to
deliver them to the whale-ships of the Arctic, ice-bound by the
great Mackenzie. Never was there so great a river, forgetting
only our own Yukon, the Mother of all Rivers.
"All of which is neither here nor there, for my story deals not
with the whale-ships, nor the berg-bound winter I spent by the
Mackenzie. Afterward, in the spring, when the days lengthened and
there was a crust to the snow, we came south, Passuk and I, to the
Country of the Yukon. A weary journey, but the sun pointed out
the way of our feet. It was a naked land then, as I have said,
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey: whole course of his seventy years, had never stolen, never betrayed, never
murdered, never killed, save in self-defence. Gazing at the chief's fine
features, now calm, yet showing traces of past storms, Jim believed he spoke
the truth.
When the young minister came, however, to study the hostile Indians that
flocked to the village, any conclusive delineation of character, or any
satisfactory analysis of their mental state in regard to the paleface
religion, eluded him. Their passive, silent, sphinx-like secretiveness was
baffling. Glickhican had taught him how to propitiate the friendly braves, and
with these he was successful. Little he learned, however, from the unfriendly
ones. When making gifts to these redmen he could never be certain that his
The Spirit of the Border |
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 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle: story. He ran when he saw his father on the ground. Then here are
the father's feet as he paced up and down. What is this, then? It
is the butt-end of the gun as the son stood listening. And this?
Ha, ha! What have we here? Tiptoes! tiptoes! Square, too, quite
unusual boots! They come, they go, they come again--of course
that was for the cloak. Now where did they come from?" He ran up
and down, sometimes losing, sometimes finding the track until we
were well within the edge of the wood and under the shadow of a
great beech, the largest tree in the neighborhood. Holmes traced
his way to the farther side of this and lay down once more upon
his face with a little cry of satisfaction. For a long time he
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes |
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