Today's Stichomancy for Friedrich Nietzsche

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Call of the Wild by Jack London:

mind the hunger so much, but the lack of water caused him severe suffering and fanned his wrath to fever-pitch. For that matter, high-strung and finely sensitive, the ill treatment had flung him into a fever, which was fed by the inflammation of his parched and swollen throat and tongue.

He was glad for one thing: the rope was off his neck. That had given them an unfair advantage; but now that it was off, he would show them. They would never get another rope around his neck. Upon that he was resolved. For two days and nights he neither ate nor drank, and during those two days and nights of torment, he accumulated a fund of wrath that boded ill for whoever first fell

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister:

blossoms, and the yellow of the trailing jessamine; but the bird could not sing the silence away, and spring with all her abundance could not hide this spiritual autumn.

Dreams, a land of dreams, where even the high noon itself was dreamy; a melting together of earth and air and water in one eternal gentleness of revery! Whence came the melancholy of this? I had seen woods as solitary and streams as silent, I had felt nature breathing upon me a greater awe; but never before such penetrating and quiet sadness. I only know that this is the perpetual mood of those Southern shores, those rivers that wind in from the ocean among their narrowing marshes and their hushed forests, and that it does not come from any memory of human hopes and

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

Rusticolis came to France with Catherine de Medici, having been ousted about that time from their infinitesimal Tuscan sovereignty. They are distantly related to the house of Este, and connected by marriage to the Guises. On the day of Saint-Bartholomew they slew a goodly number of Protestants, and Charles IX. bestowed the hand of the heiress of the Comte de la Palferine upon the Rusticoli of that time. The Comte, however, being a part of the confiscated lands of the Duke of Savoy, was repurchased by Henri IV. when that great king so far blundered as to restore the fief; and in exchange, the Rusticoli--who had borne arms long before the Medici bore them to-wit, /argent/ a cross flory /azure/ (the cross flower-de-luced by letters patent granted by

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 Magic of Oz by L. Frank Baum:

very miserable. That is our plan, and if you agree to it, we will all march at once into the Land of Oz and quickly conquer our enemies."

When the stranger ceased speaking, a great silence fell on the assemblage, for the beasts were thinking of what he had said. Finally one of the walruses asked:

"Can you really transform beasts into men, and men into beasts?"

"He can--he can!" cried Loo the Unicorn, prancing up and down in an excited manner. "He transformed ME, only last evening, and he can transform us all."

Gugu the King now stepped forward.

"You have heard the stranger speak," said he, "and now you must answer him.

The Magic of Oz