Today's Stichomancy for Alanis Morissette

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad:

For the rest, I ask myself whether it was the temper of their souls or the sympathy of their imagination that made them so wonderful, so worthy of my un- dying regard.

For myself, neither my soul was highly tempered, nor my imagination properly under control. There were moments when I felt, not only that I would go mad, but that I had gone mad already; so that I dared not open my lips for fear of betraying myself by some insane shriek. Luckily I had only orders to give, and an order has a steadying influence upon

The Shadow Line

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson:

And content with simple diet; And remain, through all bewild'ring, Innocent and honest children.

Happy hearts and happy faces, Happy play in grassy places-- That was how in ancient ages, Children grew to kings and sages.

But the unkind and the unruly, And the sort who eat unduly, They must never hope for glory-- Theirs is quite a different story!

A Child's Garden of Verses

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H. P. Lovecraft:

and eat one another. The Gugs have a sentry at a narrow in the vaults of Zin, but he is often drowsy and is sometimes surprised by a party of ghasts. Though ghasts cannot live in real light, they can endure the grey twilight of the abyss for hours. So at length Carter crawled through endless burrows with three helpful ghouls bearing the slate gravestone of Col. Nepemiah Derby, obit 1719, from the Charter Street Burying Ground in Salem. When they came again into open twilight they were in a forest of vast lichened monoliths reaching nearly as high as the eye could see and forming the modest gravestones of the Gugs. On the right of the hole out

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

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 Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson:

Whether she struggled or not, he saw them.

Also, he saw that while she was hearing him Her eyes had more and more of the past in them; And while he told what cautious honor Told him was all he had best be sure of,

He wondered once or twice, inadvertently, Where shifting winds were driving his argosies, Long anchored and as long unladen, Over the foam for the golden chances.

"If men were not for killing so carelessly, And women were for wiser endurances,"