Today's Stichomancy for Yoshitaka Amano

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Sir John Mandeville:

diversity of their language and speech, forasmuch as they speak in their throats; and we in England have in our language and speech two letters more than they have in their a. b. c.; and that is [character which cannot be reproduced] and [character which cannot be reproduced], which be clept thorn and 30gh.

CHAPTER XVI

OF THE LANDS OF ALBANIA AND OF LIBIA. OF THE WISHINGS FOR WATCHING OF THE SPARROW-HAWK; AND OF NOAH'S SHIP

NOW, sith I have told you before of the Holy Land and of that country about, and of many ways for to go to that land and to the Mount Sinai, and of Babylon the more and the less, and to other

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac:

disappeared as wealth came to her. The savage and terrible face of Comte d'Herouville, who asked her hand, rose before her like a thunder-cloud, spreading its gloom over the smiling meadows so lately gilded by the sun. The poor countess strove to cast from her memory the scenes of weeping and despair brought about by her long resistance.

At last came an awful night when her mother, pale and dying, threw herself at her daughter's feet. Jeanne could save Chaverny's life by yielding; she yielded. It was night. The count, arriving bloody from the battlefield was there; all was ready, the priest, the altar, the torches! Jeanne belonged henceforth to misery. Scarcely had she time

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad:

turn up in his brother's office regularly about twelve. Sat in a corner like a good boy, reading the paper and smoking his pipe. So they go out. . . Model brothers, says Cloete - two love-birds - I am looking after the tinned-fruit side of this cozy little show. . . Gives me that sort of talk. Then by-and-by: What sort of old thing is that Sagamore? Finest ship out - eh? I dare say all ships are fine to you. You live by them. I tell you what; I would just as soon put my money into an old stocking. Sooner!"

He drew a breath, and I noticed his hand, lying loosely on the table, close slowly into a fist. In that immovable man it was startling, ominous, like the famed nod of the Commander.

Within the Tides

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 Falk by Joseph Conrad:

showed her to be a Norwegian. She made an awful lot of smoke; and before it had quite blown away, a high-sided, short, wooden barque, in ballast and towed by a paddle-tug, appeared in front of the windows. All her hands were forward busy setting up the headgear; and aft a woman in a red hood, quite alone with the man at the wheel, paced the length of the poop back and forth, with the grey wool of some knitting work in her hands.

"German I should think," muttered one. "The skipper has his wife on board," remarked another;

Falk