Today's Stichomancy for Clive Barker

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mountains by Stewart Edward White:

mining work, or was fleeced out of in the towns. Then joyfully he turned back to his beloved mountains and the life of his slow deep delight and his pecking away before the open doors of fortune. By and by he would build himself a little cabin down in the lower pine mountains, where he would grow a white beard, putter with occult wilderness crafts, and smoke long contemplative hours in the sun before his door. For tourists he would braid rawhide reins and quirts, or make buckskin. The jays and woodpeckers and Douglas squirrels would become

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

Song_of_songs 1: 17 The beams of our houses are cedars, and our panels are cypresses.

Song_of_songs 2: 1 I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys.

Song_of_songs 2: 2 As a lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.

Song_of_songs 2: 3 As an apple-tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. Under its shadow I delighted to sit, and its fruit was sweet to my taste.

Song_of_songs 2: 4 He hath brought me to the banqueting-house, and his banner over me is love.

Song_of_songs 2: 5 'Stay ye me with dainties, refresh me with apples; for I am love-sick.'

Song_of_songs 2: 6 Let his left hand be under my head, and his right hand embrace me.

Song_of_songs 2: 7 'I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles, and by the hinds of the field, that ye awaken not, nor stir up love, until it please.'

Song_of_songs 2: 8 Hark! my beloved! behold, he cometh, leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.

Song_of_songs 2: 9 My beloved is like a gazelle or a young hart; behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh in through the windows, he peereth through the lattice.

Song_of_songs 2: 10 My beloved spoke, and said unto me: 'Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.

The Tanach

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving:

olykoek, and the crisp and crumbling cruller; sweet cakes and short cakes, ginger cakes and honey cakes, and the whole family of cakes. And then there were apple pies, and peach pies, and pumpkin pies; besides slices of ham and smoked beef; and moreover delectable dishes of preserved plums, and peaches, and pears, and quinces; not to mention broiled shad and roasted chickens; together with bowls of milk and cream, all mingled higgledy- pigglely, pretty much as I have enumerated them, with the motherly teapot sending up its clouds of vapor from the midst-- Heaven bless the mark! I want breath and time to discuss this banquet as it deserves, and am too eager to get on with my story.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

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 Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft:

Mamie,' she said, 'an' naowadays they's more nor what I know myself. I vaow afur Gawd, I dun't know what he wants nor what he's a-tryin' to dew.' That Hallowe'en the hill noises sounded louder than ever, and fire burned on Sentinel Hill as usual; but people paid more attention to the rhythmical screaming of vast flocks of unnaturally belated whippoorwills which seemed to be assembled near the unlighted Whateley farmhouse. After midnight their shrill notes burst into a kind of pandemoniac cachinnation which filled all the countryside, and not until dawn did they finally quiet down. Then they vanished, hurrying southward where they were fully a month overdue. What

The Dunwich Horror