Today's Stichomancy for Louis B. Mayer
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock: In the height of this imaginary turmoil, he awoke, and conceived for a few
moments that certain sounds which rang in his ears, were the continuation
of those of his dream, in that sort of half-consciousness between
sleeping and waking, when reality and phantasy meet and mingle in dim
and confused resemblance. He was, however, very soon fully awake
to the fact of his guards calling on him to arm, which he did in haste,
and beheld the machine in flames, and a furious conflict raging around it.
He hurried to the spot, and found that his camp had been suddenly assailed
from one side by a party of foresters, and that the baron's people
had made a sortie on the other, and that they had killed the guards,
and set fire to the machine, before the rest of the camp could come
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells: This rudely amphitheatral space seemed now the
better part of a mile to its outer edge. It was gold
lit on the left hand, catching the sunlight, and below
and to the right clear and cold in the shadow. Above
the shadowy grey Council House that stood in the
midst of it, the great black banner of the surrender
still hung in sluggish folds against the blazing sunset.
Severed rooms, halls and passages gaped strangely,
broken masses of metal projected dismally from the
complex wreckage, vast masses of twisted cable
dropped like tangled seaweed, and from its base came
When the Sleeper Wakes |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: which, in her last days, she was now subjected. She showed him a
letter signed F, in which the history of her grandson's secret
espionage was recounted step by step. The letter accused Monsieur de
Maulincour of actions that were unworthy of a man of honor. He had, it
said, placed an old woman at the stand of hackney-coaches in the rue
de Menars; an old spy, who pretended to sell water from her cask to
the coachmen, but who was really there to watch the actions of Madame
Jules Desmarets. He had spied upon the daily life of a most
inoffensive man, in order to detect his secrets,--secrets on which
depended the lives of three persons. He had brought upon himself a
relentless struggle, in which, although he had escaped with life three
Ferragus |
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 Aeneid by Virgil: Fly, when distress'd, and thence relief demand.
The priest on skins of off'rings takes his ease,
And nightly visions in his slumber sees;
A swarm of thin aerial shapes appears,
And, flutt'ring round his temples, deafs his ears:
These he consults, the future fates to know,
From pow'rs above, and from the fiends below.
Here, for the gods' advice, Latinus flies,
Off'ring a hundred sheep for sacrifice:
Their woolly fleeces, as the rites requir'd,
He laid beneath him, and to rest retir'd.
Aeneid |
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