Today's Stichomancy for Yasser Arafat

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

of abortion on the mind, after listening to most modern utterances on the question, whether made from the emotional platform of the moral reformer, or the intellectual platform of the would-be scientist. We are left with a feeling that the matter has been handled but not dealt with: that the knife has not reached the core.)

Wherever in the history of the past this type has reached its full development and has comprised the bulk of the females belonging to any dominant class or race, it has heralded its decay. In Assyria, Greece, Rome, Persia, as in Turkey today, the same material conditions have produced the same social disease among wealthy and dominant races; and again and again when the nation so affected has come into contact with

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare:

He wanted pikes to set before his archers; Instead whereof sharp stakes pluck'd out of hedges They pitched in the ground confusedly, To keep the horsemen off from breaking in. More than three hours the fight continued; Where valiant Talbot above human thought Enacted wonders with his sword and lance: Hundreds he sent to hell, and none durst stand him; Here, there, and every where, enrag'd he slew: The French exclaim'd, the devil was in arms; All the whole army stood agaz'd on him.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Under the Red Robe by Stanley Weyman:

believed in me, who opened their house to me? Clon had not frightened me, nor the loneliness of the leagued village, nor the remoteness of this corner where the dread Cardinal seemed a name, and the King's writ ran slowly, and the rebellion long quenched elsewhere, still smouldered. But Madame's pure faith, the younger woman's tenderness--how was I to face these?

I cursed the Cardinal--would he had stayed at Luchon. I cursed the English fool who had brought me to this, I cursed the years of plenty and scarceness, and the Quartier Marais, and Zaton's, where I had lived like a pig, and--

A touch fell on my arm. I turned. It was Clon. How he had

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 Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson:

happy I keep.

SATURDAY. - I have received such a nice long letter (four sides) from Leslie Stephen to-day about my Victor Hugo. It is accepted. This ought to have made me gay, but it hasn't. I am not likely to be much of a tonic to-night. I have been very cynical over myself to-day, partly, perhaps, because I have just finished some of the deedest rubbish about Lord Lytton's fables that an intelligent editor ever shot into his wastepaper basket. If Morley prints it I shall be glad, but my respect for him will be shaken.

TUESDAY. - Another cold day; yet I have been along the hillside, wondering much at idiotic sheep, and raising partridges at every