Today's Stichomancy for Fidel Castro

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Mistress Wilding by Rafael Sabatini:

a little darker than the encompassing dark grey.

"Give fire!"

On the word Mr. Wilding lost the delicate, precarious balance he had been sustaining on the edge of the ditch, and went over backwards, at the imminent risk - as he afterwards related - of breaking his neck. At the same instant a jagged, eight-pointed line of flame slashed the darkness, and the thunder of the volley pealed forth to lose itself in the greater din of battle on Penzoy Pound, hard by.

CHAPTER XXIII MR. WILDING'S BOOTS

In the filth of the ditch, Mr. Wilding rolled over and lay prone. He

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Art of War by Sun Tzu:

in natural obstacles, or that the enemy has laid an ambush on it, he will not follow that road. A hostile force may be open to attack, but if he knows that it is hard-pressed and likely to fight with desperation, he will refrain from striking," and so on.]

7. Hence in the wise leader's plans, considerations of advantage and of disadvantage will be blended together.

["Whether in an advantageous position or a disadvantageous one," says Ts`ao Kung, "the opposite state should be always present to your mind."]

8. If our expectation of advantage be tempered in this way,

The Art of War

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

privilege.

Then there was an old lady, or indeed I am not sure that she was as much old as antiquated and strangely out of place, who had left her husband, and was travelling all the way to Kansas by herself. We had to take her own word that she was married; for it was sorely contradicted by the testimony of her appearance. Nature seemed to have sanctified her for the single state; even the colour of her hair was incompatible with matrimony, and her husband, I thought, should be a man of saintly spirit and phantasmal bodily presence. She was ill, poor thing; her soul turned from the viands; the dirty tablecloth shocked her like an impropriety; and the whole strength of

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 Lin McLean by Owen Wister:

minimum thermometer," and I nodded punctually when Jode went through some calculation. At last I heard something that I could understand--a series of telegraphic replies to Jode from brother signal-service officers all over the United States. He read each one through from date of signature, and they all made any rain to-morrow entirely impossible. "And I tell you," Jode concluded, in his high, egg-shell voice, "there's no chance of precipitation now, sir. I tell you, sir,"--he was shrieking jubilantly-- "there's not a damn' thing to precipitate!"

We left him in his triumph among his glass and mercury. "Gee whiz!" said the Governor. "I guess we'd better go and tell Hilbrun it's no use."

We went, and Hilbrun smiled with a certain compassion for the antiquated