Today's Stichomancy for Bob Dylan

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Jungle Tales of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

and with great caution. Noiselessly he moved through the lush grasses of the open spaces, and where the forest was dense, swung from one swaying branch to another, or leaped lightly over tangled masses of fallen trees where there was no way through the lower terraces, and the ground was choked and impassable.

And so presently he came within sight of the black warriors of Mbonga, the chief. They were engaged in a pursuit with which Tarzan was more or less familiar, having watched them at it upon other occasions. They were placing and baiting a trap for Numa, the lion.

The Jungle Tales of Tarzan

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells:

Some few were appropriate, others quite parrot-like.

I was so intent upon these peculiarities that I scarcely noticed the path we followed. Presently we came to trees, all charred and brown, and so to a bare place covered with a yellow-white incrustation, across which a drifting smoke, pungent in whiffs to nose and eyes, went drifting. On our right, over a shoulder of bare rock, I saw the level blue of the sea. The path coiled down abruptly into a narrow ravine between two tumbled and knotty masses of blackish scoria. Into this we plunged.

It was extremely dark, this passage, after the blinding sunlight reflected from the sulphurous ground. Its walls grew steep, and approached

The Island of Doctor Moreau

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from When a Man Marries by Mary Roberts Rinehart:

dishabille out into the obscurity of the library. But Aunt Selina was too quick for him.

"Come in," she called, "I want you, young man. It seems that there are only two fools in the house, and you are one."

He straightened at that and looked bewildered, but he tried to smile.

"I thought I was the only one," he said. "Is it possible that there is another?"

"I am the other," she announced. I think she expected him to say "Impossible," but, whatever he was, he was never banal.

"Is that so?" he asked politely, trying to be interested and to

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 Caesar's Commentaries in Latin by Julius Caesar:

nemo. His rebus et suam rem familiarem auxisse et facultates ad largiendum magnas comparasse; magnum umerum equitatus suo sumptu semper alere et circum se habere, neque solum domi, sed etiam apud finitimas civitates largiter posse, atque huius potentiae causa matrem in Biturigibus homini illic nobilissimo ac potentissimo conlocasse; ipsum ex Helvetiis uxorem habere, sororum ex matre et propinquas suas nuptum in alias civitates conlocasse. Favere et cupere Helvetiis propter eam adfinitatem, odisse etiam suo nomine Caesarem et Romanos, quod eorum adventu potentia eius deminuta et Diviciacus frater in antiquum locum gratiae atque honoris sit restitutus. Si quid accidat Romanis, summam in spem per Helvetios regni obtinendi venire; imperio populi Romani non modo