Today's Stichomancy for Arthur E. Waite

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane:

poundin' 'im. When I come nights I can't git no rest 'cause yer allus poundin' a kid. Let up, d'yeh hear? Don't be allus poundin' a kid."

The woman's operations on the urchin instantly increased in violence. At last she tossed him to a corner where he limply lay cursing and weeping.

The wife put her immense hands on her hips and with a chieftain-like stride approached her husband.

"Ho," she said, with a great grunt of contempt. "An' what in the devil are you stickin' your nose for?"

The babe crawled under the table and, turning, peered out cautiously. The ragged girl retreated and the urchin in the corner

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare:

Call Egeus

Ege. Heere mighty Theseus

The. Say, what abridgement haue you for this euening? What maske? What musicke? How shall we beguile The lazie time, if not with some delight? Ege. There is a breefe how many sports are rife: Make choise of which your Highnesse will see first

Lis. The battell with the Centaurs to be sung By an Athenian Eunuch, to the Harpe

The. Wee'l none of that. That haue I told my Loue In glory of my kinsman Hercules

A Midsummer Night's Dream

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

is a house of cards which we are pulling to pieces and putting together again (compare however Laws). Yet perhaps Plato may regard these sides or faces as only the forms which are impressed on pre-existent matter. It is remarkable that he should speak of each of these solids as a possible world in itself, though upon the whole he inclines to the opinion that they form one world and not five. To suppose that there is an infinite number of worlds, as Democritus (Hippolyt. Ref. Haer. I.) had said, would be, as he satirically observes, 'the characteristic of a very indefinite and ignorant mind.'

The twenty triangular faces of an icosahedron form the faces or sides of two regular octahedrons and of a regular pyramid (20 = 8 x 2 + 4); and

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 Menexenus by Plato:

I place the battle of Plataea. And now the Lacedaemonians as well as the Athenians took part in the struggle; they were all united in this greatest and most terrible conflict of all; wherefore their virtues will be celebrated in times to come, as they are now celebrated by us. But at a later period many Hellenic tribes were still on the side of the barbarians, and there was a report that the great king was going to make a new attempt upon the Hellenes, and therefore justice requires that we should also make mention of those who crowned the previous work of our salvation, and drove and purged away all barbarians from the sea. These were the men who fought by sea at the river Eurymedon, and who went on the expedition to Cyprus, and who sailed to Egypt and divers other places; and they should be