Today's Stichomancy for Rudi Bakhtiar

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad:

I stepped out into the saloon with my heart lighter than it had been for days. Ransome was at the sideboard preparing to lay the table for the first sea dinner of the passage. He turned his head, and something in his eyes checked my modest elation.

Instinctively I asked: "What is it now?" not ex- pecting in the least the answer I got. It was given with that sort of contained serenity which was characteristic of the man.

"I am afraid we haven't left all sickness behind us, sir."

The Shadow Line

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather:

We lay back and looked, meditating, at the dark cover of the world. The gurgle of the water had become heavier. We had often noticed a mutinous, complaining note in it at night, quite different from its cheerful daytime chuckle, and seeming like the voice of a much deeper and more powerful stream. Our water had always these two moods: the one of sunny complaisance, the other of inconsolable, passionate regret.

"Queer how the stars are all in sort of diagrams," remarked Otto. "You could do most any proposition in geometry with 'em. They always look as if they meant something. Some folks say everybody's fortune is all written out in the stars, don't they?"

The Troll Garden and Selected Stories

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

By his Cockle hat and staffe, and his Sandal shoone

Qu. Alas sweet Lady: what imports this Song? Ophe. Say you? Nay pray you marke. He is dead and gone Lady, he is dead and gone, At his head a grasse-greene Turfe, at his heeles a stone. Enter King.

Qu. Nay but Ophelia

Ophe. Pray you marke. White his Shrow'd as the Mountaine Snow

Qu. Alas, looke heere my Lord

Ophe. Larded with sweet Flowers:

Hamlet

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 Confessio Amantis by John Gower:

Thus tok he leve and forth goth he, And tho began he forto muse Hou he the queene mihte excuse Toward the king of that is falle; And fond a craft amonges alle, Thurgh which he hath a See foul daunted, With his magique and so enchaunted, 2130 That he flyh forth, whan it was nyht, Unto the kinges tente riht, Wher that he lay amidde his host: And whanne he was aslepe most,

Confessio Amantis