Today's Stichomancy for Calista Flockhart

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

And shall continue, our Graces towards him. By your leaue Hostesse.

Exeunt.

Scena Septima.

Hoboyes. Torches. Enter a Sewer, and diuers Seruants with Dishes and Seruice ouer the Stage. Then enter Macbeth

Macb. If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twer well, It were done quickly: If th' Assassination Could trammell vp the Consequence, and catch With his surcease, Successe: that but this blow

Macbeth

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber:

under-feeding had chiseled about her nose, and mouth, and eyes. When your last meal is an eighteen-hour-old memory, and when that memory has only near-coffee and a roll to dwell on, there is something in the sight of January peaches and great strawberries carelessly spilling out of a tipped box, just like they do in the fruit picture on the dining-room wall, that is apt to carve sharp lines in the corners of the face.

The tragic line dwindled, going about its business. The man with the dinner pail and the lime on his boots spat, drew the back of his hand across his mouth, and turned away with an ugly look. (Pork was up to $14.25, dressed.)

Buttered Side Down

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome:

"holding out," of a city standing a siege without a water supply, for her imports were so necessary to her economy that they may justly be considered as essential irrigation. There could be no question for her of improvement, of strengthening. She was faced with the fact until the war should end she had to do with what she had, and that the things she had formerly counted on importing would be replaced by guns and shells, to be used, as it turned out, in battering Russian property that happened to be in enemy hands. She even learned that she had to develop gun-making and shell-making at home, at the expense of those

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 Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske:

more clearly in another class of myths. To the primitive man the shaft of light coming down from heaven was typical of the original descent of fire for the benefit and improvement of the human race. The Sioux Indians account for the origin of fire by a myth of unmistakable kinship; they say that "their first ancestor obtained his fire from the sparks which a friendly panther struck from the rocks as he scampered up a stony hill."[52] This panther is obviously the counterpart of the Aryan bird which drops schamir. But the Aryan imagination hit upon a far more remarkable conception. The ancient Hindus obtained fire by a process similar to that employed by Count

Myths and Myth-Makers