Today's Stichomancy for Rebecca Gayheart

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare:

Saw division grow together; To themselves yet either-neither, Simple were so well compounded.

That it cried how true a twain Seemeth this concordant one! Love hath reason, reason none If what parts can so remain.

Whereupon it made this threne To the phoenix and the dove, Co-supreme and stars of love; As chorus to their tragic scene.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley:

To which I answer, Try "the Wonders of the Shore." There are along every sea-beach more strange things to be seen, and those to be seen easily, than in any other field of observation which you will find in these islands. And on the shore only will you have the enjoyment of finding new species, of adding your mite to the treasures of science.

For not only the English ferns, but the natural history of all our land species, are now well-nigh exhausted. Our home botanists and ornithologists are spending their time now, perforce, in verifying a few obscure species, and bemoaning themselves, like Alexander, that there are no more worlds left to conquer. For the geologist,

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

colourless sac, composed of a pulpy substance, which lines the exterior case, but does not extend within the extreme conical points. In some specimens, small but perfect spheres of brownish granular matter supplied the places of the septa; and I observed the curious process by which they were produced. The pulpy matter of the internal coating suddenly grouped itself into lines, some of which assumed a form radiating from a common centre; it then continued, with an irregular and rapid movement, to contract itself, so that in the course of a second the whole was united into a perfect little sphere, which occupied the

The Voyage of the Beagle

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 Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu:

Like a strange, fated bride as yet unknown, His timid future shrinking there alone, Beneath her marriage-veil of mysteries.

LIFE

Children, ye have not lived, to you it seems Life is a lovely stalactite of dreams, Or carnival of careless joys that leap About your hearts like billows on the deep In flames of amber and of amethyst.

Children, ye have not lived, ye but exist Till some resistless hour shall rise and move