Today's Stichomancy for Federico Fellini

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn:

head and hands tunnelling the foam hills.... One--two--three lines passed!--four!--that is where they first begin to crumble white from the summit,--five!--that he can ride fearlessly! ... Then swiftly, easily, he advances, with a long, powerful breast-stroke,--keeping his bearded head well up to watch for drift,--seeming to slide with a swing from swell to swell,--ascending, sinking,--alternately presenting breast or shoulder to the wave; always diminishing more and more to the eyes of Mateo and Miguel,--till he becomes a moving speck, occasionally hard to follow through the confusion of heaping waters ... You are not afraid of the sharks, Feliu!--no: they

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Tin Woodman of Oz by L. Frank Baum:

"straw is much more delicious, to my notion, and it's more scarce in this neighborhood, too. Also I must confess that I can't get across the ditch, for my body is too heavy and clumsy for me to jump the distance. I can stretch my neck across, though, and you will notice that I've nibbled the hay on the farther edge -- not because I liked it, but because one must eat, and if one can't get the sort of food he desires, he must take what is offered or go hungry."

"Ah, I see you are a philosopher," remarked the Scarecrow.

The Tin Woodman of Oz

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

says, in conversation good men, even in their sports and at their wine, let fall many sayings that are worth preserving." See Grote, "Plato," ii. 228 foll. as to the sportive character of the work.

[4] Or, "let me describe a scene which I was witnes of." See Hug. "Plat. Symp." p. xv. foll.

The occasion was a horse-race[5] at the great Panathenaic festival.[6] Callias,[7] the son of Hipponicus, being a friend and lover of the boy Autolycus,[8] had brought the lad, himself the winner of the pankration,[9] to see the spectacle.

[5] See "Hipparch," ii. 1.

[6] "Held towards the end of July (Hecatombaeon) every year, and with

The Symposium

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 Figure in the Carpet by Henry James:

hand he had certainly become engaged the day he returned. The happy pair went down to Torquay for their honeymoon, and there, in a reckless hour, it occurred to poor Corvick to take his young bride a drive. He had no command of that business: this had been brought home to me of old in a little tour we had once made together in a dogcart. In a dogcart he perched his companion for a rattle over Devonshire hills, on one of the likeliest of which he brought his horse, who, it was true, had bolted, down with such violence that the occupants of the cart were hurled forward and that he fell horribly on his head. He was killed on the spot; Gwendolen escaped unhurt.