Today's Stichomancy for Ben Affleck
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: discover whereabouts the brutes lay up for the day. About three hundred
yards from the waggon was the crest of a rise covered with single mimosa
trees, dotted about in a park-like fashion, and beyond this lay a
stretch of open plain running down to a dry pan, or water-hole, which
covered about an acre of ground, and was densely clothed with reeds, now
in the sere and yellow leaf. From the further edge of this pan the
ground sloped up again to a great cleft, or nullah, which had been cut
out by the action of the water, and was pretty thickly sprinkled with
bush, amongst which grew some large trees, I forget of what sort.
"It at once struck me that the dry pan would be a likely place to find
my friends in, as there is nothing a lion is fonder of than lying up in
Long Odds |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: with mercantile business, he would promote me by sending me with
a cargo of flour and bread, etc., to the West Indies, and procure
me commissions from others which would be profitable; and, if I
manag'd well, would establish me handsomely. The thing pleas'd me;
for I was grown tired of London, remembered with pleasure the happy
months I had spent in Pennsylvania, and wish'd again to see it;
therefore I immediately agreed on the terms of fifty pounds a year,
Pennsylvania money; less, indeed, than my present gettings as
a compositor, but affording a better prospect.
I now took leave of printing, as I thought, for ever, and was daily
employed in my new business, going about with Mr. Denham among
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche: long, and might be tempted to become fishers in it, and casters of nets,--
so rich is the world in wonderful things, great and small!
Especially the human world, the human sea:--towards IT do I now throw out
my golden angle-rod and say: Open up, thou human abyss!
Open up, and throw unto me thy fish and shining crabs! With my best bait
shall I allure to myself to-day the strangest human fish!
--My happiness itself do I throw out into all places far and wide 'twixt
orient, noontide, and occident, to see if many human fish will not learn to
hug and tug at my happiness;--
Until, biting at my sharp hidden hooks, they have to come up unto MY
height, the motleyest abyss-groundlings, to the wickedest of all fishers of
Thus Spake Zarathustra |
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 Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: and what depends on them. The vast and unprecedented amount of
capital, of social interest, of actual human intellect invested--I
may say locked up--in these railroads, and telegraphs, and other
triumphs of industry and science, will not enter into competition
against themselves. They will not set themselves free to seek new
discoveries in directions which are often actually opposed to their
own, always foreign to it. If the money of thousands are locked up
in these great works, the brains of hundreds of thousands, and of
the very shrewdest too, are equally locked up therein likewise; and
are to be subtracted from the gross material of social development,
and added (without personal fault of their owners, who may be very
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