Today's Stichomancy for Jennifer Lopez

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde:

fingers creep through the curtains, and they appear to tremble. In black fantastic shapes, dumb shadows crawl into the corners of the room and crouch there. Outside, there is the stirring of birds among the leaves, or the sound of men going forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down from the hills and wandering round the silent house, as though it feared to wake the sleepers and yet must needs call forth sleep from her purple cave. Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. The wan mirrors get back their mimic life. The flameless tapers

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley:

above, as well as from below. The just aristocracy of virtue and wisdom becomes an unjust one of mere power and privilege; that again, one of mere wealth corrupting and corrupt; and is destroyed, not by the people from below, but by the monarch from above. The hereditary bondsmen may know

Who would be free, Himself must strike the blow.

But they dare not, know not how. The king must do it for them. He must become the State. "Better one tyrant," as Voltaire said, "than many." Better stand in fear of one lion far away, than of many wolves, each in the nearest wood. And so arise those truly

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

to bear him in his arms, till he came to the mouth of a lonely cave, at the foot of a mighty cliff.

Above the cliff the snow-wreaths hung, dripping and cracking in the sun; but at its foot around the cave's mouth grew all fair flowers and herbs, as if in a garden, ranged in order, each sort by itself. There they grew gaily in the sunshine, and the spray of the torrent from above; while from the cave came the sound of music, and a man's voice singing to the harp.

Then AEson put down the lad, and whispered -

'Fear not, but go in, and whomsoever you shall find, lay your

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 Glasses by Henry James:

"Then what has become of him?"

"He's at home in Hampshire. He has got back his old place and I believe by this time his old sisters. It's not half a bad little place."

"Yet its attractions say nothing to Flora?"

"Oh Flora's by no means on her back!" my fried declared.

"She's not on her back because she's on yours. Have you got her for the rest of your life?"

Once more Mrs. Meldrum genially glared. "Did she tell you how much the Hammond Synges have kindly left her to live on? Not quite eighty pounds a year."