Today's Stichomancy for Michael Jackson

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac:

226 OLYMPIA

poison I had prepared for her and her lover. I crave it for myself, but she will not let me die; she gives me bread, and I eat it.

"I have done well to eat and live; I had not reckoned on robbers!"

"Yes, Eccellenza, when those fools the honest men are asleep, we are wide awake."

"Oh, Rinaldo, all I possess shall

The Muse of the Department

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

most skill in planting will take most pleasure in being watched by others; and so too the most skilful sower. Ask any question you may choose about results thus beautifully wrought, and not one feature in the whole performance will the doer of it seek to keep concealed. To such height of nobleness (he added), Socrats, does husbandry appear, like some fair mistress, to conform the soul and disposition of those concerned with it.

[8] "Nay, if you will but listen, Socrates, with husbandry it is not the same as with the other arts."

[9] {katatribenai}, "worn out." See "Mem." III. iv. 1; IV. vii. 5. Al. "bored to death."

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

were a thern to appear in public without it."

In another moment I stood garbed in the habiliments of a Holy Thern.

At Thuvia's suggestion two of the released prisoners bore the body of the dead thern upon their shoulders with us as we continued our journey toward the storeroom, which we reached without further mishap.

Here the keys which Thuvia bore from the dead thern of the prison vault were the means of giving us immediate entrance to the chamber, and very quickly we were thoroughly outfitted with arms and ammunition.

By this time I was so thoroughly fagged out that I could

The Gods of Mars

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 On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin:

maintain that the ass has a prepotent power over the horse, so that both the mule and the hinny more resemble the ass than the horse; but that the prepotency runs more strongly in the male-ass than in the female, so that the mule, which is the offspring of the male-ass and mare, is more like an ass, than is the hinny, which is the offspring of the female-ass and stallion.

Much stress has been laid by some authors on the supposed fact, that mongrel animals alone are born closely like one of their parents; but it can be shown that this does sometimes occur with hybrids; yet I grant much less frequently with hybrids than with mongrels. Looking to the cases which I have collected of cross-bred animals closely resembling one parent,

On the Origin of Species