Today's Stichomancy for Federico Fellini

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling:

you shall have 'em, Miss Phil. They're all ready put by for you." And, would you believe it, the old sinner pulled my three silver spoons out of his dirty pocket, and polished them on his cuff. "Here they be," he says, and he gave them to me, just as cool as though I'd come to have my warts charmed. That's the worst of people having known you when you were young. But I preserved my composure. "Jerry," I said, "what in the world are we to do? If you'd been caught with these things on you, you'd have been hanged."

'"I know it," he said. "But they're yours now."

'"But you made my Cissie steal them," I said.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy:

Bear had swung round it outwardly to the east, till he was now at a right angle with the meridian. A difference of colour in the stars -- oftener read of than seen in England-was really perceptible here. The sovereign brilliancy of Sirius pierced the eye with a steely glitter, the star called Capella was yellow, Aldebaran and Betelgueux shone with a fiery red. To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement. The sensation may be caused by the panoramic glide of the stars past earthly

Far From the Madding Crowd

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson:

In a middle state of grace, Quite dead, but not yet gone to Hell, And walking for a space,

Quite dead, and looking it, and yet All eagerness to show The Social-Contract forgeries By Chatterton - Rousseau -

A hundred such as these I tried, And hundreds after that, I fitted Social Theories As one would fit a hat!

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 Agesilaus by Xenophon:

upon his duty; whether it were to help some tribe to throw off the Persian yoke, or to save from destruction a revolted district, or if nothing else, at any rate to saddle the Persian with such troubles of his own that he should cease to trouble Hellas? An ardent hater of Persia surely was he, who, when his own country was at war with Hellenes, did not neglect the common good of Hellas, but set sail to wreak what harm he might upon the barbarians.[12]

[11] Or, "the worse the mischief he can work, the better the side."

[12] See Isocr. "Ep." ix. "To Archidamus," S. 11-14.

VIII

To turn to another side, that grace of manner which was his, claims