Today's Stichomancy for Noah Wyle

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell:

no distinguishing insignia except here and there a torn hat brim pinned up with a wreathed "C.S.A." Many were barefooted and here and there a dirty bandage wrapped a head or arm. They went past, looking neither to left nor right, so silent that had it not been for the steady tramp of feet they might all have been ghosts.

"Take a good look at them," came Rhett's gibing voice, "so you can tell your grandchildren you saw the rear guard of the Glorious Cause in retreat."

Suddenly she hated him, hated him with a strength that momentarily overpowered her fear, made it seem petty and small. She knew her safety and that of the others in the back of the wagon depended on

Gone With the Wind

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

Quickly I walked toward the mournful voice, but it had ceased ere I reached the further wall, and then from the other end of the chamber came another voice, shrill and piercing:

"Fools! Fools!" it shrieked. "Thinkest thou to defeat the eternal laws of life and death? Wouldst cheat the mysterious Issus, Goddess of Death, of her just dues? Did not her mighty messenger, the ancient Iss, bear you upon her leaden bosom at your own behest to the Valley Dor?

"Thinkest thou, O fools, that Issus wilt give up her own? Thinkest thou to escape from whence in all the countless ages but a single soul has fled?

The Gods of Mars

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato:

STRANGER: And seeing that language is true and false, and that thought is the conversation of the soul with herself, and opinion is the end of thinking, and imagination or phantasy is the union of sense and opinion, the inference is that some of them, since they are akin to language, should have an element of falsehood as well as of truth?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: Do you perceive, then, that false opinion and speech have been discovered sooner than we expected?--For just now we seemed to be undertaking a task which would never be accomplished.

THEAETETUS: I perceive.

STRANGER: Then let us not be discouraged about the future; but now having

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 Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson:

The clans upon the left and the clans upon the right Now oiled their carven maces and scoured their daggers bright; They gat them to the thicket, to the deepest of the shade, And lay with sleepless eyes in the deadly ambuscade. And oft in the starry even the song of morning rose, What time the oven smoked in the country of their foes; For oft to loving hearts, and waiting ears and sight, The lads that went to forage returned not with the night. Now first the children sickened, and then the women paled, And the great arms of the warrior no more for war availed. Hushed was the deep drum, discarded was the dance;

Ballads