Today's Stichomancy for Cindy Crawford

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato:

SOCRATES: Do you take refuge in them? I cannot say much for your teachers.

ALCIBIADES: Why, are they not able to teach?

SOCRATES: They could not teach you how to play at draughts, which you would acknowledge (would you not) to be a much smaller matter than justice?

ALCIBIADES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And can they teach the better who are unable to teach the worse?

ALCIBIADES: I think that they can; at any rate, they can teach many far better things than to play at draughts.

SOCRATES: What things?

ALCIBIADES: Why, for example, I learned to speak Greek of them, and I

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx:

supported the motion. In vain did Changarnier vote for it, or did Thiers render homage to the cautious wisdom of the late constitutional assembly. The Minister of War, St. Arnaud, answered him as Changarnier had answered Marrast--and he did so amidst the plaudits of the Mountain.

Thus did the party of Order itself, when as yet it was not the National Assembly, when as yet it was only a Ministry, brand the parliamentary regime. And yet this party objects vociferously when the 2d of December, 1851, banishes that regime from France!

We wish it a happy journey.

III

On May 29, 1849, the legislative National Assembly convened. On

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

than the cowherd what he ought to say in order to soothe the infuriated cows?

ION: No, he will not.

SOCRATES: But he will know what a spinning-woman ought to say about the working of wool?

ION: No.

SOCRATES: At any rate he will know what a general ought to say when exhorting his soldiers?

ION: Yes, that is the sort of thing which the rhapsode will be sure to know.

SOCRATES: Well, but is the art of the rhapsode the art of the general?

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 Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare:

He entertain'd a show so seeming just, And therein so ensconc'd his secret evil, That jealousy itself cold not mistrust False-creeping craft and perjury should thrust Into so bright a day such black-fac'd storms, Or blot with hell-born sin such saint-like forms.

The well-skill'd workman this mild image drew For perjur'd Sinon, whose enchanting story The credulous Old Priam after slew; Whose words, like wildfire, burnt the shining glory Of rich-built Ilion, that the skies were sorry,