Today's Stichomancy for Chris Elliott

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Tanach:

Lamentations 3: 15 He hath filled me with bitterness, He hath sated me with wormwood.

Lamentations 3: 16 He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones, He hath made me to wallow in ashes.

Lamentations 3: 17 And my soul is removed far off from peace, I forgot prosperity.

Lamentations 3: 18 And I said: 'My strength is perished, and mine expectation from the LORD.'

Lamentations 3: 19 Remember mine affliction and mine anguish, the wormwood and the gall.

Lamentations 3: 20 My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is bowed down within me.

Lamentations 3: 21 This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.

Lamentations 3: 22 Surely the LORD'S mercies are not consumed, surely His compassions fail not.

Lamentations 3: 23 They are new every morning; great is Thy faithfulness.

Lamentations 3: 24 'The LORD is my portion', saith my soul; 'Therefore will I hope in Him.'

Lamentations 3: 25 The LORD is good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh Him.

The Tanach

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Oakdale Affair by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

ing of the feet ceased. The clanking rose until the five heard the scraping of the chain against the door frame at the head of the cellar stairs. They heard it pass across the floor toward the center of the room and then, loud and piercing, there rang out against the silence of the awful night a woman's shriek.

Instantly Bridge leaped to his feet. Without a word he tore the bed from before the door.

"What are you doing?" cried the girl in a muffled scream.

"I am going down to that woman," said Bridge, and

The Oakdale Affair

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Mother by Owen Wister:

river, sparkling."

"'Here is where they are all buried,' said Ethel, and we paused before brown old headstones with Beverly upon them. 'Died 1750; died 1767,' continued Ethel, reading the names and inscriptions. 'I think one doesn't mind the idea of lying in such a place as this.'"

"Some of the young people in the pew now came along the path. 'The grandchildren,' said Ethel. 'She is probably too old to come to church. Or she is in Europe.'"

"The young people had brought a basket with flowers from their place, and now laid them over several of the grassy mounds. 'Give me some of yours,' said one to the other, presently; 'I've not enough for grandmother's.'"

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 Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard:

But now they called for mine, and I began it at the beginning, and it was strange to see their faces as they listened. All night long, till the thrushes sang down the nightingales, and the dawn shone in the east, I sat at Lily's side telling them my story, and then it was not finished. So we slept in the chambers that had been made ready for us, and on the morrow I took it up again, showing them the sword that had belonged to Bernal Diaz, the great necklace of emeralds which Guatemoc had given to me, and certain scars and wounds in witness of its truth. Never did I see folk so much amazed, and when I came to speak of the last sacrifice of the women of the Otomie, and of the horrid end of de Garcia who died

Montezuma's Daughter