Today's Stichomancy for Denzel Washington
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson: And welcome her, welcome the land's desire,
The sea-kings' daughter as happy as fair,
Blissful bride of a blissful heir,
Bride of the heir of the kings of the sea--
O joy to the people and joy to the throne,
Come to us, love us, and make us your own:
For Saxon or Dane or Norman we,
Teuton or Celt, or whatever we be,
We are each all Dane in our welcome of thee,
Alexandra!
ODE
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: Metaphysic Laws, instead of to natural phenomena, as the expressions of
Physical ones. If you wish to see the highest instances of this method,
read Plato himself, not Proclus. If you wish to see how the same method
can be applied to Christian truth, read the dialectic passages in
Augustine's "Confessions." Whether or not you shall agree with their
conclusions, you will not be likely, if you have a truly scientific
habit of mind, to complain that they want either profundity, severity,
or simplicity.
So concludes the history of one of the Alexandrian schools of
Metaphysic. What was the fate of the other is a subject which I must
postpone to my next Lecture.
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: Isles, as old as mankind, and, whether that does or not, will
endure as long; for the decay of other literatures makes the soil
in which it thrives.
The West is preparing to add its fables to those of the East. The
valleys of the Ganges, the Nile, and the Shine having yielded
their crop, it remains to be seen what the valleys of the Amazon,
the Plate, the Orinoco, the St. Lawrence, and the Mississippi
will produce. Perchance, when, in the course of ages, American
liberty has become a fiction of the past--as it is to some extent
a fiction of the present--the poets of the world will be inspired
by American mythology.
Walking |
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 Philebus by Plato: moral action differ, and some are best explained upon one principle and
some upon another: the virtue of justice seems to be naturally connected
with one theory of morals, the virtues of temperance and benevolence with
another. The characters of men also differ; and some are more attracted by
one aspect of the truth, some by another. The firm stoical nature will
conceive virtue under the conception of law, the philanthropist under that
of doing good, the quietist under that of resignation, the enthusiast under
that of faith or love. The upright man of the world will desire above all
things that morality should be plain and fixed, and should use language in
its ordinary sense. Persons of an imaginative temperament will generally
be dissatisfied with the words 'utility' or 'pleasure': their principle of
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