Today's Stichomancy for Tupac Shakur

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

the next, and so on."

The alarm, too, of those hounds for ever at its heels pursuing combines with everything[46] to rob the creature of all prescience; so that for this reason alone it will run its head into a hundred dangers unawares, and fall into the toils. If it held on its course uphill,[47] it would seldom meet with such a fate; but now, through its propensity to circle round and its attachment to the place where it was born and bred, it courts destruction. Owing to its speed it is not often overtaken by the hounds by fair hunting.[48] When caught, it is the victim of a misfortune alien to its physical nature.

[46] {meta touton}, sc. "with these other causes"; al. "with the

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare:

To beare him to my Bower in Fairy Land. And now I haue the Boy, I will vndoe This hatefull imperfection of her eyes. And gentle Pucke, take this transformed scalpe, From off the head of this Athenian swaine; That he awaking when the other doe, May all to Athens backe againe repaire, And thinke no more of this nights accidents, But as the fierce vexation of dreame. But first I will release the Fairy Queene. Be thou as thou wast wont to be;

A Midsummer Night's Dream

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley:

and Uruguay, where its beds of tangled vine, they say, tinge the clear waters a dark-brown like that of peat, and convert whole streams into a healthful and pleasant tonic. On the virtues of this China (then supposed to be a root) Vesalius wrote a famous little book, into which he contrived to interweave his opinions on things in general, as good Bishop Berkeley did afterwards into his essay on the virtues of tar-water. Into this book, however, Vesalius introduced--as Bishop Berkeley did not--much, and perhaps too much, about himself; and much, though perhaps not too much, about poor old Galen, and his substitution of an ape's inside for that of a human being. The storm which had been long gathering burst upon him. The

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 Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne:

heaven; and at the level of man's life and business it was clear and chill. By silent consent, we paid the hack off, and proceeded arm in arm towards the Poodle Dog for dinner.

At one of the first hoardings, I was aware of a bill-sticker at work: it was a late hour for this employment, and I checked Pinkerton until the sheet should be unfolded. This is what I read:--

TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS REWARD. OFFICERS AND MEN OF THE

WRECKED BRIG FLYING SCUD