Today's Stichomancy for Mel Gibson

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

into the jungle. His acute sense of smell told him that both of those he sought had fled from the camp in this direction, and a moment later he had taken up the trail and was following the faint spoor.

Far ahead of him a terror-stricken young woman was slinking along a narrow game-trail, fearful that the next moment would bring her face to face with some savage beast or equally savage man. As she ran on, hoping against hope that she had hit upon the direction that would lead her eventually to the great river, she came suddenly upon a familiar spot.

At one side of the trail, beneath a giant tree, lay a little

The Beasts of Tarzan

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso:

Their strife for bellows served to anger's fire.

XXXII He thinks, such thoughts self-guiltiness finds out, They scorned his power, and therefore scorned the pain, "Nay, nay," quoth he, "let be your strife and doubt, You both shall win, and fit reward obtain." With that the sergeants hent the young man stout, And bound him likewise in a worthless chain; Then back to back fast to a stake both ties, Two harmless turtles dight for sacrifice.

XXXIII

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske:

in others as we commonly find it, vortex-motion owes its origin to friction and is after a while brought to an end by friction. But in 1858 the equations of motion of an incompressible frictionless fluid were first successfully solved by Helmholtz, and among other things he proved that, though vortex-motion could not be originated in such a fluid, yet supposing it once to exist, it would exist to all eternity and could not be diminished by any mechanical action whatever. A vortex-ring, for example, in such a fluid, would forever preserve its own rotation, and would thus forever retain its peculiar individuality, being, as it were, marked off from its neighbour vortex-rings. Upon this

The Unseen World and Other Essays

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 An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce:

shouted these words to his hands, for the undoing of the noose had been succeeded by the direst pang that he had yet experienced. His neck ached horribly; his brain was on fire, his heart, which had been fluttering faintly, gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at his mouth. His whole body was racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish! But his disobedient hands gave no heed to the command. They beat the water vigorously with quick, downward strokes, forcing him to the surface. He felt his head emerge; his eyes were blinded by the sunlight; his chest expanded convulsively, and with a supreme and crowning agony his lungs

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge