Today's Stichomancy for Pol Pot

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell:

the lotus and the cherry, the plum and wistaria, grow wantonly side by side; a land where the bamboo embosoms the maple, where the pine at last has found its palm-tree, and the tropic and the temperate zones forget their separate identity in one long self-obliterating kiss.

Chapter 7. Religion.

In regard to their religion, nations, like individuals, seem singularly averse to practising what they have preached. Whether it be that his self-constructed idols prove to the maker too suggestive of his own intellectual chisel to deceive him for long, or whether sacred soil, like less hallowed ground, becomes after a time

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson:

May - for, considering we are in France and serve up our song- birds, I am ashamed to say, on a little field of toast and with a sprig of thyme (my own receipt) in their most innocent and now unvocal bellies - considering all this, we have a wonderfully fair wood-music round this Solitude of ours. What can I say more? - All this awaits you. KENNST DU DAS LAND, in short. - Your sincere friend,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Letter: TO W. H. LOW

LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, VAR, [APRIL 1884].

MY DEAR LOW, - The blind man in these sprawled lines sends

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

2_Kings 16: 3 But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, yea, and made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen, whom the LORD cast out from before the children of Israel.

2_Kings 16: 4 And he sacrificed and offered in the high places, and on the hills, and under every leafy tree.

2_Kings 16: 5 Then Rezin king of Aram and Pekah son of Remaliah king of Israel came up to Jerusalem to war; and they besieged Ahaz, but could not overcome him.

2_Kings 16: 6 At that time Rezin king of Aram recovered Elath to Aram, and drove the Jews from Elath; and the Edomites came to Elath, and dwelt there, unto this day.

2_Kings 16: 7 So Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, saying: 'I am thy servant and thy son; come up, and save me out of the hand of the king of Aram, and out of the hand of the king of Israel, who rise up against me.'

2_Kings 16: 8 And Ahaz took the silver and gold that was found in the house of the LORD, and in the treasures of the king's house, and sent it for a present to the king of Assyria.

2_Kings 16: 9 And the king of Assyria hearkened unto him; and the king of Assyria went up against Damascus, and took it, and carried the people of it captive to Kir, and slew Rezin.

2_Kings 16: 10 And king Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, and saw the altar that was at Damascus; and king Ahaz sent to Urijah the priest the fashion of the altar, and the pattern of it, according to all the workmanship thereof.

The Tanach

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 Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield:

off at the larst. Many's the time they drawn one and a half pints from 'im at the 'ospital...It seemed like a judgmint."

Alice burned to know exactly what it was that was drawn from him. She ventured, "I suppose it was water."

But Mrs. Stubbs fixed Alice with her eyes and replied meaningly, "It was liquid, my dear."

Liquid! Alice jumped away from the word like a cat and came back to it, nosing and wary.

"That's 'im!" said Mrs. Stubbs, and she pointed dramatically to the life- size head and shoulders of a burly man with a dead white rose in the buttonhole of his coat that made you think of a curl of cold mutting fat.