Today's Stichomancy for Robert Redford

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare:

Deade or asleepe? I see no bloud, no wound, Lysander, if you liue, good sir awake

Lys. And run through fire I will for thy sweet sake. Transparent Helena, nature her shewes art, That through thy bosome makes me see thy heart. Where is Demetrius? oh how fit a word Is that vile name, to perish on my sword! Hel. Do not say so Lysander, say not so: What though he loue your Hermia? Lord, what though? Yet Hermia still loues you; then be content

Lys. Content with Hermia? no, I do repent

A Midsummer Night's Dream

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The War in the Air by H. G. Wells:

there was still much smoke, and near the position of the Niagara railway station the houses were burning vigorously. Everything was deserted now, everything was still. One little abandoned thing lay on a transverse path between town and road, a crumpled heap of clothes with sprawling limbs....

"'Ave a look round," said Bert, and taking a path that ran through the middle of the island he presently discovered the wreckage of the two Asiatic aeroplanes that had fallen out of the struggle that ended the Hohenzollern.

With the first he found the wreckage of an aeronaut too.

The machine had evidently dropped vertically and was badly

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft:

seen at the alley turning in the ruins above; and of the faint musical piping - potentially of tremendous significance in the light of Lake’s dissection report, despite its close resemblance to the cave-mouth echoes of the windy peaks - which he thought he had shortly afterward half heard from unknown depths below. I, in my turn, whispered of how the camp was left - of what had disappeared, and of how the madness of a lone survivor might have conceived the inconceivable - a wild trip across the monstrous mountains and a descent into the unknown, primal masonry - But we could not convince each other, or even ourselves, of anything definite. We had turned off all light as we stood still, and vaguely

At the Mountains of Madness

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 In Darkest England and The Way Out by General William Booth:

the purpose, to extort contributions from the charitable."--(Page 15.)

"In the large towns beggary was an organised imposture, with a sort of government and police of its own. Each beggar had his beat, with orderly successions and promotions, as with other governments. There were battles to decide conflicting claims, and a good beat was not unfreguently a marriage portion or a thumping legacy."--(Page 16.)

"He saw that it was not enough to forbid beggary by law or to punish it by imprisonment. The beggars cared for neither. The energetic Yankee Statesman attacked the question as he did problems in physical science. He studied beggary and beggars. How would he deal with one individual beggar? Send him for a month to prison to beg again as soon as he came

In Darkest England and The Way Out