Today's Stichomancy for Ricky Martin
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: life and the freedom of her hand.
I had on the first opportunity spoken to her of Geoffrey Dawling,
and she had listened to my story so far as she had the art of such
patience, asking me indeed more questions about him than I could
answer; then she had capped my anecdote with others much more
striking, the disclosure of effects produced in the most
extraordinary quarters: on people who had followed her into
railway carriages; guards and porters even who had literally stuck
there; others who had spoken to her in shops and hung about her
house door; cabmen, upon her honour, in London, who, to gaze their
fill at her, had found excuses to thrust their petrifaction through
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: would be foolish in telling, for he could not give any necessary reason,
nor indeed any tolerable or probable explanation of them. Again, red, when
mingled with black and white, becomes purple, but it becomes umber (Greek)
when the colours are burnt as well as mingled and the black is more
thoroughly mixed with them. Flame-colour (Greek) is produced by a union of
auburn and dun (Greek), and dun by an admixture of black and white; pale
yellow (Greek), by an admixture of white and auburn. White and bright
meeting, and falling upon a full black, become dark blue (Greek), and when
dark blue mingles with white, a light blue (Greek) colour is formed, as
flame-colour with black makes leek green (Greek). There will be no
difficulty in seeing how and by what mixtures the colours derived from
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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 Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: take a prominent position among predisposing causes in the
history of Russian pessimism. . . . Here is our garden . . . I
fancy it has grown neither better nor worse since I was a
student. I don't like it. It would be far more sensible if there
were tall pines and fine oaks growing here instead of
sickly-looking lime-trees, yellow acacias, and skimpy pollard
lilacs. The student whose state of mind is in the majority of
cases created by his surroundings, ought in the place where he is
studying to see facing him at every turn nothing but what is
lofty, strong and elegant. . . . God preserve him from gaunt
trees, broken windows, grey walls, and doors covered with torn
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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 A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for
making them beneficial to the publick.
by Dr. Jonathan Swift. 1729
It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great
town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the
roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex,
followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and
importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers instead of
being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to
employ all their time in stroling to beg sustenance for their
helpless infants who, as they grow up, either turn thieves for
 A Modest Proposal |
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