Today's Stichomancy for Steve McQueen
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: Agathon. Presently a band of revellers appears, who introduce disorder
into the feast; the sober part of the company, Eryximachus, Phaedrus, and
others, withdraw; and Aristodemus, the follower of Socrates, sleeps during
the whole of a long winter's night. When he wakes at cockcrow the
revellers are nearly all asleep. Only Socrates, Aristophanes, and Agathon
hold out; they are drinking from a large goblet, which they pass round, and
Socrates is explaining to the two others, who are half-asleep, that the
genius of tragedy is the same as that of comedy, and that the writer of
tragedy ought to be a writer of comedy also. And first Aristophanes drops,
and then, as the day is dawning, Agathon. Socrates, having laid them to
rest, takes a bath and goes to his daily avocations until the evening.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: Madame de Dey re-entered her salon, affecting gaiety, and began to
play loto with the young people; but after a while she complained of
feeling ill, and returned to her chimney-corner.
Such was the situation of affairs, and of people's minds in the house
of Madame de Dey, while along the road, between Paris and Cherbourg, a
young man in a brown jacket, called a "carmagnole," worn de rigueur at
that period, was making his way to Carentan. When drafts for the army
were first instituted, there was little or no discipline. The
requirements of the moment did not allow the Republic to equip its
soldiers immediately, and it was not an unusual thing to see the roads
covered with recruits, who were still wearing citizen's dress. These
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: blue flames which suddenly dart up and babble on the hearth. We
interpret as we please the strong, harsh tones of a "burgundian."
Here I must pause to put before all ignorant persons an explanation of
that word, derived from a very distinguished etymologist who wishes
his name kept secret.
"Burgundian" is the name given, since the reign of Charles VI., to
those noisy detonations, the result of which is to fling upon the
carpet or the clothes a little coal or ember, the trifling nucleus of
a conflagration. Heat or fire releases, they say, a bubble of air left
in the heart of the wood by a gnawing worm. "Inde amor, inde
burgundus." We tremble when we see the structure we had so carefully
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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 Crito by Plato: will you nor any that belong to you be happier or holier or juster in this
life, or happier in another, if you do as Crito bids. Now you depart in
innocence, a sufferer and not a doer of evil; a victim, not of the laws,
but of men. But if you go forth, returning evil for evil, and injury for
injury, breaking the covenants and agreements which you have made with us,
and wronging those whom you ought least of all to wrong, that is to say,
yourself, your friends, your country, and us, we shall be angry with you
while you live, and our brethren, the laws in the world below, will receive
you as an enemy; for they will know that you have done your best to destroy
us. Listen, then, to us and not to Crito.'
This, dear Crito, is the voice which I seem to hear murmuring in my ears,
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