Today's Stichomancy for Rudi Bakhtiar

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dreams by Olive Schreiner:

his forehead. The bright light shot into his eyes, dazzling him, and the frozen blood began to run. And he said:

"Yes, why should I die here in this awful darkness? They are warm, they melt my frozen blood!" and he stretched out his hands to take them.

Then in a moment there arose before him the image of the thing he had loved, and his hand dropped to his side.

"Oh, come to us!" they cried.

But he buried his face.

"You dazzle my eyes," he cried, "you make my heart warm; but you cannot give me what I desire. I will wait here--wait till I die. Go!"

He covered his face with his hands and would not listen; and when he looked

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

Sovereigne Lord, King James of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland, the fiftie-fourth, 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

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence:

into a soft black puddle, and cradling them down. On this spring morning she felt a quiver in her womb too, as if the sunshine had touched it and made it happy.

'It is many years since you lost your husband?' she said to Mrs Bolton as she took up another little plant and laid it in its hole.

'Twenty-three!' said Mrs Bolton, as she carefully separated the young columbines into single plants. 'Twenty-three years since they brought him home.'

Connie's heart gave a lurch, at the terrible finality of it. 'Brought him home!'

'Why did he get killed, do you think?' she asked. 'He was happy with

Lady Chatterley's Lover

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 Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson:

You drink and risk delirium tremens, Your whole estate a common seaman's! Regard your friend and school companion, Soon to be wed to Miss Trevanion (Smooth, honourable, fat and flowery, With Heaven knows how much land in dowry), Look at me - Am I in good case? Look at my hands, look at my face; Look at the cloth of my apparel; Try me and test me, lock and barrel; And own, to give the devil his due,