Today's Stichomancy for Hugh Jackman
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: I hailed the son, and asked him my direction. He pointed loosely
west and north-west, muttered an inaudible comment, and, without
slackening his pace for an instant, stalked on, as he was going,
right athwart my path. The mother followed without so much as
raising her head. I shouted and shouted after them, but they
continued to scale the hillside, and turned a deaf ear to my
outcries. At last, leaving Modestine by herself, I was constrained
to run after them, hailing the while. They stopped as I drew near,
the mother still cursing; and I could see she was a handsome,
motherly, respectable-looking woman. The son once more answered me
roughly and inaudibly, and was for setting out again. But this
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: expressed themselves in a vast mass of ritual and myth--
customs, ceremonies, legends, stories--which on account
of their popular and concrete form were handed down
for generations, and some of which linger on still in the
midst of our modern civilization. These rituals and legends
were, many of them, absurd enough, rambling and childish
in character, and preposterous in conception, yet they gave
the expression needed; and some of them of course, as we
have seen, were full of meaning and suggestion.
A critical and commercial Civilization, such as ours,
in which (notwithstanding much TALK about Art) the artistic
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: would often sit silently together, understanding thus, better than by
speech, the eloquence of their souls. This profound sentiment, the
life itself of the two old people, animated their every thought. Here
were not three existences, but one,--one only, which, like the flame
on the hearth, divided itself into three tongues of fire. If,
occasionally, some memory of Napoleon's benefits and misfortunes, if
the public events of the moment distracted the minds of the old people
from this source of their constant solicitude, they could always talk
of those interests without affecting their community of thought, for
Ginevra shared their political passions. What more natural, therefore,
than the ardor with which they found a refuge in the heart of their
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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 Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: maybe I'd better sell it somewhere else after all."
"I don't mean that," explained Wilson quickly. "I just meant----"
His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage. Then
I heard footsteps on a stairs, and in a moment the thickish figure of a
woman blocked out the light from the office door. She was in the middle
thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously
as some women can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue
crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty, but there was an
immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body
were continually smouldering. She smiled slowly and, walking through her
husband as if he were a ghost, shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in
The Great Gatsby |
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