Today's Stichomancy for Andy Warhol

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot:

Nam duo magnorum viridi coeuntia silva Corpora serpentum baculi violaverat ictu Deque viro factus, mirabile, femina septem Egerat autumnos; octavo rursus eosdem Vidit et 'est vestrae si tanta potentia plagae', Dixit 'ut auctoris sortem in contraria mutet, Nunc quoque vos feriam!' percussis anguibus isdem Forma prior rediit genetivaque venit imago. Arbiter hic igitur sumptus de lite iocosa Dicta Iovis firmat; gravius Saturnia iusto Nec pro materia fertur doluisse suique

The Waste Land

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson:

letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage is a document which, in my sight, if you had filled me with bread when I was starving, if you had sat up to nurse my father when he lay a-dying, would yet absolve me from the bonds of gratitude. You know enough, doubtless, of the process of canonisation to be aware that, a hundred years after the death of Damien, there will appear a man charged with the painful office of the DEVIL'S ADVOCATE. After that noble brother of mine, and of all frail clay, shall have lain a century at rest, one shall accuse, one defend him. The circumstance is unusual that the devil's advocate should be a volunteer, should be a member of a sect immediately rival, and should make haste to take upon himself

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

gifts to men such as the world has never received before. They may begin at a higher point and yet take with them all the results of the past. The co-operation of many may have effects not less striking, though different in character from those which the creative genius of a single man, such as Bacon or Newton, formerly produced. There is also great hope to be derived, not merely from the extension of education over a wider area, but from the continuance of it during many generations. Educated parents will have children fit to receive education; and these again will grow up under circumstances far more favourable to the growth of intelligence than any which have hitherto existed in our own or in former ages.

Even if we were to suppose no more men of genius to be produced, the great

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 Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius:

To summon the fields back to primeval floods: So big the rains that be sent down on men By burst of cloud and by the hurricane, What time the thunder-clap, from burning bolt That cracks the cloud, flies forth along. At times The force of wind, excited from without, Smiteth into a cloud already hot With a ripe thunderbolt. And when that wind Hath splintered that cloud, then down there cleaves forthwith Yon fiery coil of flame which still we call, Even with our fathers' word, a thunderbolt.

Of The Nature of Things