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 Richard III by William Shakespeare:

KEEPER. Had you such leisure in the time of death To gaze upon these secrets of the deep? CLARENCE. Methought I had; and often did I strive To yield the ghost, but still the envious flood Stopp'd in my soul and would not let it forth To find the empty, vast, and wand'ring air; But smother'd it within my panting bulk, Who almost burst to belch it in the sea. KEEPER. Awak'd you not in this sore agony? CLARENCE. No, no, my dream was lengthen'd after life. O, then began the tempest to my soul!

Richard III

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

blent of nobleness and beauty.[11] See you not what chaste severity dwells on his brow;[12] how tranquil his gaze;[13] how moderate his words; how gentle his intonation; now radiant his whole character. And if he enjoys the friendship of the most holy gods, he keeps a place in his regard for us poor mortals. But how is it that you alone, Antisthenes, you misanthrope, love nobody?

[3] Cf. Shelley, "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty":

The awful shadow of some unseen Power Floats, though unseen, among us. . . .

[4] Reading with L. D. after Blomfield (Aesch. "Ag." p. 304), {idrumenou}, or if as vulg. {isoumenou}, transl. "but in soul is

The Symposium

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton:

result of some hint of Flamel's? The thought turned Glennard sick, but he preserved sufficient lucidity to tell himself, a moment later, that his last hope of self-control would be lost if he yielded to the temptation of seeing a hidden purpose in everything she said and did. How much Flamel guessed, he had no means of divining; nor could he predicate, from what he knew of the man, to what use his inferences might be put. The very qualities that had made Flamel a useful adviser made him the most dangerous of accomplices. Glennard felt himself agrope among alien forces that his own act had set in motion. . . .

Alexa was a woman of few requirements; but her wishes, even in

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 War and the Future by H. G. Wells:

past half-century as to make it on the whole almost a beneficial thing. But at most I can find it in no greater good than the good of a nightmare that awakens the sleeper in a dangerous place to a realisation of the extreme danger of his sleep. Better had he been awake--or never there. In Venetia Captain Pirelli, whose task it was to keep me out of mischief in the war zone, was insistent upon the way in which all Venetia was being opened up by the new military roads; there has been scarcely a new road made in Venetia since Napoleon drove his straight, poplar- bordered highways through the land. M. Joseph Reinach, who was my companion upon the French front, was equally impressed by the