Today's Stichomancy for Avril Lavigne

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu:

Your ancient forests hoard and hold The legends of their centuried sleep; Your birds of peace white-pinioned float O'er ruined fort and storied plain, Your faithful stewards sleepless guard The harvests of your gold and grain.

God give you joy, God give you grace To shield the truth and smite the wrong, To honour Virtue, Valour, Worth. To cherish faith and foster song. So may the lustre of your days

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Aeneid by Virgil:

She feeds their altars with Sabaean smoke, With hourly care the sacrifice renews, And anxiously the panting entrails views. What priestly rites, alas! what pious art, What vows avail to cure a bleeding heart! A gentle fire she feeds within her veins, Where the soft god secure in silence reigns.

Sick with desire, and seeking him she loves, From street to street the raving Dido roves. So when the watchful shepherd, from the blind, Wounds with a random shaft the careless hind,

Aeneid

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson:

was busy fitting what I saw with appropriate words; when I sat by the roadside, I would either read, or a pencil and a penny version- book would be in my hand, to note down the features of the scene or commemorate some halting stanzas. Thus I lived with words. And what I thus wrote was for no ulterior use, it was written consciously for practice. It was not so much that I wished to be an author (though I wished that too) as that I had vowed that I would learn to write. That was a proficiency that tempted me; and I practised to acquire it, as men learn to whittle, in a wager with myself. Description was the principal field of my exercise; for to any one with senses there is always something worth describing, 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 Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon:

doctrine and decree, princes by their sword, and all learnings, both Christian and moral, as by their Mercury rod, do damn and send to hell for ever, those facts and opinions tending to the support of the same; as hath been already in good part done. Surely in counsels concerning religion, that coun- sel of the apostle would be prefixed, Ira hominis non implet justitiam Dei. And it was a notable observation of a wise father, and no less ingenu- ously confessed; that those which held and per- suaded pressure of consciences, were commonly

Essays of Francis Bacon