Today's Stichomancy for Alan Moore

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald:

ceaselessly about the room.

"It was a madman," he said. "He must have been mad."

"Wouldn't you like some coffee?" I urged him.

"I don't want anything. I'm all right now, Mr.----"

"Carraway."

"Well, I'm all right now. Where have they got Jimmy?" I took him into the drawing-room, where his son lay, and left him there. Some little boys had come up on the steps and were looking into the hall; when I told them who had arrived, they went reluctantly away.

After a little while Mr. Gatz opened the door and came out, his mouth ajar, his face flushed slightly, his eyes leaking isolated and

The Great Gatsby

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Complete Angler by Izaak Walton:

tree near to the brow of that primrose-hill. There I sat viewing the silver streams glide silently towards their centre, the tempestuous sea; yet sometimes opposed by rugged roots and pebble-stones, which broke their waves, and turned them into foam; and sometimes I beguiled time by viewing the harmless lambs; some leaping securely in the cool shade, whilst others sported themselves in the cheerful sun; and saw others craving comfort from the swollen udders of their bleating dams. As I thus sat, these and other sights had so fully possess my soul with content, that I thought, as the poet has happily express it,

I was for that time lifted above earth: And possest joys not promis'd in my birth.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft:

preserved in the Museum at Hyde Park; and I studied it long and well, finding it a thing of balefully exquisite workmanship, and with the same utter mystery, terrible antiquity, and unearthly strangeness of material which I had noted in Legrasse's smaller specimen. Geologists, the curator told me, had found it a monstrous puzzle; for they vowed that the world held no rock like it. Then I thought with a shudder of what Old Castro had told Legrasse about the Old Ones; "They had come from the stars, and had brought Their images with Them." Shaken with such a mental revolution as I had never before known, I now resolved to visit Mate Johansen

Call of Cthulhu

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 Tao Teh King by Lao-tze:

sage is always skilful at saving men, and so he does not cast away any man; he is always skilful at saving things, and so he does not cast away anything. This is called 'Hiding the light of his procedure.'

2. Therefore the man of skill is a master (to be looked up to) by him who has not the skill; and he who has not the skill is the helper of (the reputation of) him who has the skill. If the one did not honour his master, and the other did not rejoice in his helper, an (observer), though intelligent, might greatly err about them. This is called 'The utmost degree of mystery.'

28. 1. Who knows his manhood's strength, Yet still his female feebleness maintains;