Today's Stichomancy for Kim Jong Il

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Light of Western Stars by Zane Grey:

stepped up and then delivered a mighty swing at the ball. He missed. The power and momentum of his swing flung him off his feet, and he actually turned upside down and spun round on his head. The cowboys howled. Stillwell's stentorian laugh rolled across the mesa. Madeline and her guests found it impossible to restrain their mirth. And when Nels got up he cast a reproachful glance at Madeline. His feelings were hurt.

His second attempt, not by any means so violent, resulted in as clean a miss as the first, and brought jeers from the cowboys. Nels's red face flamed redder. Angrily he swung again. The mound of sand spread over the teeing-ground and the exasperating

The Light of Western Stars

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau:

established government be obeyed--and no longer. This principle being admitted, the justice of every particular case of resistance is reduced to a computation of the quantity of the danger and grievance on the one side, and of the probability and expense of redressing it on the other." Of this, he says, every man shall judge for himself. But Paley appears never to have contemplated those cases to which the rule of expediency does not apply, in which a people, as well and an individual, must do justice, cost what it may. If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself.

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells:

him about the moon with the remorse of this fatal indiscretion growing in his mind. During a certain time I am inclined to guess the Grand Lunar was deliberating the new situation, and for all that time Cavor may have gone as free as ever he had gone. But obstacles of some sort prevented his getting to his electromagnetic apparatus again after that message I have just given. For some days we received nothing. Perhaps he was having fresh audiences, and trying to evade his previous admissions. Who can hope to guess?

And then suddenly, like a cry in the night, like a cry that is followed by a stillness, came the last message. It is the briefest fragment, the broken beginnings of two sentences.

The First Men In The Moon

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 Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson:

Poem: III

The Abbot for a walk went out, A wealthy cleric, very stout, And Robin has that Abbot stuck As the red hunter spears the buck. The djavel or the javelin Has, you observe, gone bravely in, And you may hear that weapon whack Bang through the middle of his back. HENCE WE MAY LEARN THAT ABBOTS SHOULD NEVER GO WALKING IN A WOOD.