Today's Stichomancy for Tupac Shakur

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

Not even in the days when she ran "shrill as a cicada and thin as a match" through the chill mists of her native mountains could she ever have felt so cold, so wretched, and so desolate. Her very soul, her grave, indignant, and fantastic soul, seemed to drowse like an exhausted traveller surrendering himself to the sleep of death. But when I asked her again to lie down she managed to answer me, "Not in this room." The dumb spell was broken. She turned her head from side to side, but oh! how cold she was! It seemed to come out of her, numbing me, too; and the very diamonds on the arrow of gold sparkled like hoar frost in the light of the one candle.

The Arrow of Gold

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

upon the strange new creatures which confronted them.

Number Ten was grinning broadly, while Number Three advanced cautiously toward one of the creatures, making a low guttural noise, that could only be interpreted as peaceful and conciliatory--more like a feline purr it was than anything else.

"What are you doing?" cried Bulan. "Leave them alone. They have not offered to harm us."

"They are like us," replied Number Three. "They must be our own people. I am going with them."

"And I," said Number Ten.

The Monster Men

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

lightly broken...These are a few of the Problems of Friendship, some of them suggested by the Lysis, others by modern life, which he who wishes to make or keep a friend may profitably study. (Compare Bacon, Essay on Friendship; Cic. de Amicitia.)

LYSIS, OR FRIENDSHIP

Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates, who is the narrator, Menexenus, Hippothales, Lysis, Ctesippus.

SCENE: A newly-erected Palaestra outside the walls of Athens.

Lysis

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 Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin:

very hard rock, which had an average thickness of nearl three hundred feet, and a breadth varying from rather les than two miles to four miles? The river, though it has s little power in transporting even inconsiderable fragments yet in the lapse of ages might produce by its gradual erosio an effect of which it is difficult to judge the amount. Bu in this case, independently of the insignificance of such a agency, good reasons can be assigned for believing that thi valley was formerly occupied by an arm of the sea. It i needless in this work to detail the arguments leading to thi conclusion, derived from the form and the nature of th

The Voyage of the Beagle