Today's Stichomancy for Aleister Crowley

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy:

Stephen hesitated. 'I might tell,' he said; 'at the same time, perhaps, it is as well----'

She let go his arm and imperatively pushed it from her, tossing her head. She had just learnt that a good deal of dignity is lost by asking a question to which an answer is refused, even ever so politely; for though politeness does good service in cases of requisition and compromise, it but little helps a direct refusal. 'I don't wish to know anything of it; I don't wish it,' she went on. 'The carriage is waiting for us at the top of the hill; we must get in;' and Elfride flitted to the front. 'Papa, here is your Elfride!' she exclaimed to the dusky figure of the old

A Pair of Blue Eyes

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Paradise Lost by John Milton:

The supple knee? Ye will not, if I trust To know ye right, or if ye know yourselves Natives and sons of Heaven possessed before By none; and if not equal all, yet free, Equally free; for orders and degrees Jar not with liberty, but well consist. Who can in reason then, or right, assume Monarchy over such as live by right His equals, if in power and splendour less, In freedom equal? or can introduce Law and edict on us, who without law

Paradise Lost

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac:

do not belong to my wife, for a mere trifle.'

" 'Without feeling it incumbent upon me to tell you my private affairs, I will tell you this much M. le Comte--if Mme. la Comtesse has taken your diamonds, you should have sent a circular around to all the jewelers, giving them notice not to buy them; she might have sold them separately.'

" 'You know my wife, sir!' roared the Count.

" 'True.'

" 'She is in her husband's power.'

" 'That is possible.'

" 'She had no right to dispose of those diamonds----'

Gobseck

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 Lesser Hippias by Plato:

and his school. That the dialogue falls below the standard of Plato's other works, or that he has attributed to Socrates an unmeaning paradox (perhaps with the view of showing that he could beat the Sophists at their own weapons; or that he could 'make the worse appear the better cause'; or merely as a dialectical experiment)--are not sufficient reasons for doubting the genuineness of the work.

LESSER HIPPIAS

Plato (see Appendix I above)

Translated by Benjamin Jowett.

PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Eudicus, Socrates, Hippias.