Today's Stichomancy for Joan of Arc

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

Then we come into action and tug the guns again-- Make way there--way for the twenty yoke Of the Forty-Pounder train!

CAVALRY HORSES

By the brand on my shoulder, the finest of tunes Is played by the Lancers, Hussars, and Dragoons, And it's sweeter than "Stables" or "Water" to me-- The Cavalry Canter of "Bonnie Dundee"!

Then feed us and break us and handle and groom, And give us good riders and plenty of room, And launch us in column of squadron and see

The Jungle Book

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato:

tell a lie?

Yes, said Ctesippus; I should be mad to say anything else.

And in telling a lie, do you tell the thing of which you speak or not?

You tell the thing of which you speak.

And he who tells, tells that thing which he tells, and no other?

Yes, said Ctesippus.

And that is a distinct thing apart from other things?

Certainly.

And he who says that thing says that which is?

Yes.

And he who says that which is, says the truth. And therefore Dionysodorus,

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Mayflower Compact:

Anno. Domini, 1620.

Mr. John Carver Mr. Stephen Hopkins Mr. William Bradford Digery Priest Mr. Edward Winslow Thomas Williams Mr. William Brewster Gilbert Winslow Isaac Allerton Edmund Margesson Miles Standish Peter Brown John Alden Richard Bitteridge John Turner George Soule Francis Eaton Edward Tilly James Chilton John Tilly

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 Cratylus by Plato:

half the dialogue. But then, we remember that the Euthydemus is a still longer jest, in which the irony is preserved to the very end. There he is parodying the ingenious follies of early logic; in the Cratylus he is ridiculing the fancies of a new school of sophists and grammarians. The fallacies of the Euthydemus are still retained at the end of our logic books; and the etymologies of the Cratylus have also found their way into later writers. Some of these are not much worse than the conjectures of Hemsterhuis, and other critics of the last century; but this does not prove that they are serious. For Plato is in advance of his age in his conception of language, as much as he is in his conception of mythology. (Compare Phaedrus.)