Today's Stichomancy for Steven Spielberg

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells:

daylight. I might have seen it at first. . . . Three experts who'd been got at; they thought _I_'d been got at; two Labour men who'd do anything you wanted them to do provided you called them 'level-headed.' Wagstaffe the socialist art critic who could be trusted to play the fool and make nationalization look silly, and the rest mine owners, railway managers, oil profiteers, financial adventurers. . . . "

He was fairly launched. "It's the blind folly of it! In the days before the war it was different. Then there was abundance. A little grabbing or cornering was all to the good. All to the good. It prevented things being used up too

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon:

of revolutions have been accomplished in order to place a new sovereign in power. Now this sovereign knows very well that the first condition of maintaining his power consists in not too exclusively favouring a single class, but in seeking to conciliate all. To do this he will establish a sort of equilibrium between them, so as not to be dominated by any one of these classes. To allow one class to become predominant is to condemn himself presently to accept that class as his master. This law is one of the most certain of political psychology. The kings of France understood it very well when they struggled so energetically against the encroachments first of the nobility and

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Case of The Lamp That Went Out by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner:

her husband's love for her. The poor weak little woman grew pale and ill. She wrote finally to her step-brother, but he could think of no way out; he wrote only that if the matter came to a scandal there would be nothing for him to do but to kill himself. This was one reason more for her silence, and Mrs. Thome faded to a wan shadow of her former sunny self.

As she looked down from the balcony, she was like a woman suffering from a deathly illness. A new terror had come to her heart because her husband had gone away so early without telling her why or whither he had gone. When she saw him coming towards the door of the hotel, pale and drooping, and when she saw Mrs. Bernauer beside him, her

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 The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther:

like distress, and do not save him, although you know ways and means to do so, you have killed him. And it will not avail you to make the pretext that you did not afford any help, counsel, or aid thereto for you have withheld your love from him and deprived him of the benefit whereby his life would have been saved.

Therefore God also rightly calls all those murderers who do not afford counsel and help in distress and danger of body and life, and will pass a most terrible sentence upon them in the last day, as Christ Himself has announced when He shall say, Matt.25, 42f.: I was an hungered, and ye gave Me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me no drink; I was a stranger, and ye took Me not in; naked, and ye clothed Me not; sick and