Today's Stichomancy for Oliver Stone

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain:

of talk to answer back with. But, good land! what did he want to sass back for? You see, it couldn't do him no good, and it was just nuts for them. They HAD him, you know. But that was his way. I reckon he couldn't help it; he was made so, I judge. He was a good enough sort of cretur, and hadn't no harm in him, and was just a genius, as the papers said, which wasn't his fault. We can't all be sound: we've got to be the way we're made. As near as I can make out, geniuses think they know it all, and so they won't take people's advice, but always go their own way, which

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Yates Pride by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman:

whispered, leaning over her shoulder as she moved.

"Come into the other room," she murmured, "or we shall wake the baby." Her voice was softly excited.

Eudora led the way into the parlor, upon whose walls hung some really good portraits and whose furnishings still merited the adjective magnificent. There had been opulence in the Yates family; and in this room, which had been conserved, there was still undimmed and unfaded evidence of it. Eudora drew aside a brocade curtain and sat down on an embroidered satin sofa. Lawton sat beside her.

"This room looks every whit as grand as it used to look to me

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

Exodus 23: 27 I will send My terror before thee, and will discomfit all the people to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine enemies turn their backs unto thee.

Exodus 23: 28 And I will send the hornet before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee.

Exodus 23: 29 I will not drive them out from before thee in one year, lest the land become desolate, and the beasts of the field multiply against thee.

Exodus 23: 30 By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land.

Exodus 23: 31 And I will set thy border from the Red Sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness unto the River; for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand; and thou shalt drive them out before thee.

Exodus 23: 32 Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor with their gods.

Exodus 23: 33 They shall not dwell in thy land--lest they make thee sin against Me, for thou wilt serve their gods--for they will be a snare unto thee.

Exodus 24: 1 Thou shalt not utter a false report; put not thy hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness.

Exodus 24: 2 Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou bear witness in a cause to turn aside after a multitude to pervert justice;

Exodus 24: 3 neither shalt thou favour a poor man in his cause.

The Tanach

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 The Art of War by Sun Tzu:

practice, the officers will be nervous and undecided when mustering for battle; without constant practice, the general will be wavering and irresolute when the crisis is at hand."]

7. HEAVEN signifies night and day, cold and heat, times and seasons. [The commentators, I think, make an unnecessary mystery of two words here. Meng Shih refers to "the hard and the soft, waxing and waning" of Heaven. Wang Hsi, however, may be right in saying that what is meant is "the general economy of Heaven," including the five elements, the four seasons, wind and clouds,

The Art of War