Today's Stichomancy for Arthur E. Waite

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare:

'Twixt the turtle and his queen; But in them it were a wonder.

So between them love did shine, That the turtle saw his right Flaming in the phoenix' sight: Either was the other's mine.

Property was thus appall'd, That the self was not the same; Single nature's double name Neither two nor one was call'd.

Reason, in itself confounded,

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

and all the waters of Pellucidar would run to one spot and drown us. No, Pellucidar is quite flat and extends no man knows how far in all directions. At the edges, so my ancestors have reported and handed down to me, is a great wall that prevents the earth and waters from escaping over into the burning sea whereon Pellucidar floats; but I never have been so far from Anoroc as to have seen this wall with my own eyes. However, it is quite reasonable to believe that this is true, whereas there is no reason at all in the foolish belief of the Mahars. According to them Pellucidarians who live upon the opposite

At the Earth's Core

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf:

bronze horse reared so high that the stump of a tree had to sustain his forequarters. The waters of family life seemed to rise and close over her head, and she munched in silence.

At length Mrs. Denham looked up from her teacups and remarked:

"You see, Miss Hilbery, my children all come in at different hours and want different things. (The tray should go up if you've done, Johnnie.) My boy Charles is in bed with a cold. What else can you expect?--standing in the wet playing football. We did try drawing-room tea, but it didn't do."

A boy of sixteen, who appeared to be Johnnie, grumbled derisively both at the notion of drawing-room tea and at the necessity of carrying a

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 Pathology of Lying, Etc. by William and Mary Healy:

eines normalen psychologischen Vorgangs in ein pathologisches Symptom, fur Aerzte und Juristen.'' Pp. 131, Stuttgart, 1891.

Through an elaborate and exhaustive investigation of the lies told by five patients over a period of years, he came to the conclusion that the form of falsifying in these cases deserves a new and separate name. It was not ordinary lying, or delusion, or false memory, these words express only part of the conception; hence he coined the new term, pseudologia phantastica, to cover the species of lying with which he was concerned. Later German writers have also adopted his terminology.

To emphasize the method by which he arrived at this conclusion