Today's Stichomancy for Federico Fellini

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from War and the Future by H. G. Wells:

"only evil continually") speculates upon what would be the consequences of one good bump from the wheel of a mule cart. Down below, the trees that one sees through a wisp of cloud look far too small and spiky and scattered to hold out much hope for a fallen man of letters. And at the high positions they are too used to the vertical life to understand the secret feelings of the visitor from the horizontal. General Bompinani, whose writings are well known to all English students of military matters, showed me the Gibraltar he is making of a great mountain system east of the Adige.

"Let me show you," he said, and flung himself on to the edge of

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

from what our fathers used to serve. Bring us, then, obvious authority!'

Their apostles said unto them, 'We are only mortals like yourselves; but God is gracious unto whomsoever He will of His servants, and it is not for us to bring you an authority, save by His permission; but upon God do the believers rely!' What ails us that we should not rely on God when He has guided us in our paths? we will be surely patient in your hurting us; for upon God rely those do rely.

And those who misbelieved said to their apostles, 'We will drive you forth from our land; or else ye shall return to our faith!' And their Lord inspired them, 'We will surely destroy the unjust; and we

The Koran

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James:

an altar, such as was after all within everybody's compass, lighted with perpetual candles and dedicated to these secret rites, reared itself in his spiritual spaces. He had wondered of old, in some embarrassment, whether he had a religion; being very sure, and not a little content, that he hadn't at all events the religion some of the people he had known wanted him to have. Gradually this question was straightened out for him: it became clear to him that the religion instilled by his earliest consciousness had been simply the religion of the Dead. It suited his inclination, it satisfied his spirit, it gave employment to his piety. It answered his love of great offices, of a solemn and splendid ritual; for no

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 Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson:

If still in my veins the glee Of the black night and the sun And the lost battle, run: If, an adept, The iniquitous lists I still accept With joy, and joy to endure and be withstood, And still to battle and perish for a dream of good: God, if that were enough?

If to feel, in the ink of the slough, And the sink of the mire, Veins of glory and fire