Today's Stichomancy for Elizabeth Taylor

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

Repair for judgment; let them, if they can, From Natural Warfare and insensate Chance, Create the new Ideal rule for man! Methinks that was not my inheritance; For I was nurtured otherwise, my soul Passes from higher heights of life to a more supreme goal.

Lo! while we spake the earth did turn away Her visage from the God, and Hecate's boat Rose silver-laden, till the jealous day Blew all its torches out: I did not note The waning hours, to young Endymions

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas:

about at Rome in the ancient days, when she was brought from Etruria to the Eternal City, amid the blare of trumpets and the worship of a whole nation.

This public exhibition of the tulip was an act of adoration rendered by an entire nation, unlettered and unrefined, to the refinement and culture of its illustrious and devout leaders, whose blood had stained the foul pavement of the Buytenhof, reserving the right at a future day to inscribe the names of its victims upon the highest stone of the Dutch Pantheon.

It was arranged that the Prince Stadtholder himself should

The Black Tulip

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells:

it. . . . It's a struggle with suicidal imbeciles. It's--! But I'm talking! I didn't come here to talk Fuel."

"You think there may be a smash-up?"

"I lie awake at night, thinking of it."

"A social smash-up."

"Economic. Social. Yes. Don't you?"

"A social smash-up seems to me altogether a possibility. All sorts of people I find think that," said the doctor. "All sorts of people lie awake thinking of it."

"I wish some of my damned Committee would!"

The doctor turned his eyes to the window. "I lie awake too,"

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:

Of its old ills and ashes, and the traps Of its apparent wrath. Many with ears That hear not yet, shall have ears given to them, And then they shall hear strangely. Many with eyes That are incredulous of the Mystery Shall yet be driven to feel, and then to read Where language has an end and is a veil, Not woven of our words. Many that hate Their kind are soon to know that without love Their faith is but the perjured name of nothing. I that have done some hating in my time