Today's Stichomancy for Franz Kafka

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis:

there was a great gulf never to be passed. Never!

The bell of the mills rang for midnight. Sunday morning had dawned. Whatever hidden message lay in the tolling bells floated past these men unknown. Yet it was there. Veiled in the solemn music ushering the risen Saviour was a key-note to solve the darkest secrets of a world gone wrong,--even this social riddle which the brain of the grimy puddler grappled with madly to-night.

The men began to withdraw the metal from the caldrons. The mills were deserted on Sundays, except by the hands who fed the fires, and those who had no lodgings and slept usually on the

Life in the Iron-Mills

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac:

flame. As the third and fourth wedges were driven in, a dreadful groan escaped him. When he saw the executioner take up the wedges for the "extraordinary question" he said no word and made no sound, but his eyes took on so terrible a fixity, and he cast upon the two great princes who were watching him a glance so penetrating, that the duke and cardinal were forced to drop their eyes. Philippe le Bel met with the same resistance when the torture of the pendulum was applied in his presence to the Templars. That punishment consisted in striking the victim on the breast with one arm of the balance pole with which money is coined, its end being covered with a pad of leather. One of the knights thus tortured, looked so intently at the king that

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

Genesis 5: 21 And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begot Methuselah.

Genesis 5: 22 And Enoch walked with God after he begot Methuselah three hundred years, and begot sons and daughters.

Genesis 5: 23 And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years.

Genesis 5: 24 And Enoch walked with God, and he was not; for God took him.

Genesis 5: 25 And Methuselah lived a hundred eighty and seven years, and begot Lamech.

Genesis 5: 26 And Methuselah lived after he begot Lamech seven hundred eighty and two years, and begot sons and daughters.

Genesis 5: 27 And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years; and he died.

Genesis 5: 28 And Lamech lived a hundred eighty and two years, and begot a son.

Genesis 5: 29 And he called his name Noah, saying: 'This same shall comfort us in our work and in the toil of our hands, which cometh from the ground which the LORD hath cursed.'

Genesis 5: 30 And Lamech lived after he begot Noah five hundred ninety and five years, and begot sons and daughters.

Genesis 5: 31 And all the days of Lamech were seven hundred seventy and seven years; and he died.

The Tanach

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 Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

were the only one to miss him. It was you who instituted the search."

The girl could not help but feel grateful to him for his kind and encouraging words. He was with her often--almost constantly for the remainder of the voyage--and she grew to like him very much indeed. Monsieur Thuran had learned that the beautiful Miss Strong, of Baltimore, was an American heiress--a very wealthy girl in her own right, and with future prospects that quite took his breath away when he contemplated them, and since he spent most of his time in that delectable pastime it is a wonder that he breathed at all.

The Return of Tarzan