Today's Stichomancy for Alanis Morissette

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft:

- is that the natives are now repellently decadent, having gone far along that path of retrogression so common in many New England backwaters. They have come to form a race by themselves, with the well-defined mental and physical stigmata of degeneracy and inbreeding. The average of their intelligence is woefully low, whilst their annals reek of overt viciousness and of half-hidden murders, incests, and deeds of almost unnameable violence and perversity. The old gentry, representing the two or three armigerous families which came from Salem in 1692, have kept somewhat above the general level of decay; though many branches are sunk into the sordid populace so deeply that only their names remain as

The Dunwich Horror

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Love and Friendship by Jane Austen:

open air as the Dew was falling the Evening before. This I feared was but too probably the case; since how could it be otherwise accounted for that I should have escaped the same indisposition, but by supposing that the bodily Exertions I had undergone in my repeated fits of frenzy had so effectually circulated and warmed my Blood as to make me proof against the chilling Damps of Night, whereas, Sophia lying totally inactive on the ground must have been exposed to all their severity. I was most seriously alarmed by her illness which trifling as it may appear to you, a certain instinctive sensibility whispered me, would in the End be fatal to her.

Love and Friendship

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Oakdale Affair by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

consumed in the heat of his skin. A quick side glance that required all his will power to consummate showed him that no one appeared to have noticed his faux pas and Willie was again slowly returning to normal when the proprietor of the restaurant came up from behind and asked him to remove his hat.

Never had Willie Case spent so frightful a half hour as that within the brilliant interior of The Elite Restau- rant. Twenty-three minutes of this eternity was con- sumed in waiting for his order to be served and seven minutes in disposing of the meal and paying his check.

The Oakdale Affair

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 Richard III by William Shakespeare:

CATESBY. I will my lord, with all convenient haste. KING RICHARD. Ratcliff, come hither. Post to Salisbury; When thou com'st thither- [To CATESBY] Dull, unmindfull villain, Why stay'st thou here, and go'st not to the Duke? CATESBY. First, mighty liege, tell me your Highness' pleasure, What from your Grace I shall deliver to him. KING RICHARD. O, true, good Catesby. Bid him levy straight The greatest strength and power that he can make And meet me suddenly at Salisbury. CATESBY. I go. Exit

Richard III