Today's Stichomancy for Robert Redford

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske:

"Ever makes me shudder at the sight of frozen pools."

I have always considered this line a marvellous instance of the intensity of Dante's imagination. It shows, too, how Dante composed his poem. He did not take counsel of himself and say: "Go to, let us describe the traitors frozen up to their necks in a dismal lake, for that will be most terrible." But the picture of the lake, in all its iciness, with the haggard faces staring out from its glassy crust, came unbidden before his mind with such intense reality that, for the rest of his life, he could not look at a frozen pool without a shudder of horror. He described it exactly as he saw it; and his description makes us shudder who

The Unseen World and Other Essays

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Salome by Oscar Wilde:

de verre. Je vais boire e la sante de Cesar. Il y a des Romains ici, il faut boire e la sante de Cesar.

TOUS. Cesar! Cesar!

HERODE. Vous ne remarquez pas comme votre fille est pale.

HERODIAS. Qu'est-ce que cela vous fait qu'elle soit pale ou non?

HERODE. Jamais je ne l'ai vue si pale.

HERODIAS. Il ne faut pas la regarder.

LA VOIX D'IOKANAAN. En ce jour-le le soleil deviendra noir comme un sac de poil, et la lune deviendra comme du sang, et les etoiles du ciel tomberont sur la terre comme les figues vertes tombent d'un figuier, et les rois de la terre auront peur.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke:

Kaaterskill, where there had been nothing but the ghosts of trout for the last thirty years, but where the absence of fish was almost forgotten in the joy of a first introduction to Dickens, one very showery day, when dear old Ned Mason built a smoky fire in a cave below Haines's Falls, and, pulling The Old Curiosity Shop out of his pocket, read aloud about Little Nell until the tears ran down the cheeks of reader and listener--the smoke was so thick, you know: and the Neversink, which flows through John Burroughs's country, and past one house in particular, perched on a high bluff, where a very dreadful old woman come out and throws stones at "city fellers fishin' through her land" (as if any one wanted to touch

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 Crowd by Gustave le Bon:

concerned, are always several generations behind learned men and philosophers. All statesmen are well aware to-day of the admixture of error contained in the fundamental ideas I referred to a short while back, but as the influence of these ideas is still very powerful they are obliged to govern in accordance with principles in the truth of which they have ceased to believe.

2. THE REASONING POWER OF CROWDS

It cannot absolutely be said that crowds do not reason and are not to be influenced by reasoning.

However, the arguments they employ and those which are capable of influencing them are, from a logical point of view, of such an