Today's Stichomancy for Kate Beckinsale

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson:

startling nightmares realised. It is not easy to select the best; some may like one and some another; the nude, depilated devil bounding and casting darts against the Wicket Gate; the scroll of flying horrors that hang over Christian by the Mouth of Hell; the horned shade that comes behind him whispering blasphemies; the daylight breaking through that rent cave-mouth of the mountains and falling chill adown the haunted tunnel; Christian's further progress along the causeway, between the two black pools, where, at every yard or two, a gin, a pitfall, or a snare awaits the passer-by - loathsome white devilkins harbouring close under the bank to

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Reign of King Edward the Third by William Shakespeare:

DERBY. The Emperour greeteth you.

[Presenting Letters.]

KING EDWARD. --Would it were the Countess!

DERBY. And hath accorded to your highness suite.

KING EDWARD. --Thou liest, she hath not; but I would she had.

AUDLEY. All love and duty to my Lord the King!

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu:

But still she gazed in her mirror and sighed: "O King, my heart is unsatisfied."

Seven queens shone round her ivory bed, Like seven soft gems on a silken thread,

Like seven fair lamps in a royal tower, Like seven bright petals of Beauty's flower

Queen Gulnaar sighed like a murmuring rose "Where is my rival, O King Feroz?"

III

When spring winds wakened the mountain floods, And kindled the flame of the tulip buds,

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 Theaetetus by Plato:

Greek living in the fifth or fourth century B.C. To this was often added, as at the end of the fifth book of the Republic, the idea of relation, which is equally distinct from either of them; also a fourth notion, the conclusion of the dialectical process, the making up of the mind after she has been 'talking to herself' (Theat.).

We are not then surprised that the sphere of opinion and of Not-being should be a dusky, half-lighted place (Republic), belonging neither to the old world of sense and imagination, nor to the new world of reflection and reason. Plato attempts to clear up this darkness. In his accustomed manner he passes from the lower to the higher, without omitting the intermediate stages. This appears to be the reason why he seeks for the