Today's Stichomancy for George Clooney
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: Roquette, "Xen. Vit." S. 26; Newman, "Pol. Arist." i. 538; and
"Xenophontis qui fertur libellus de Republica Atheniensium," ed.
A. Kirchhoff (MDCCCLXXIV), whose text I have chiefly followed.
[2] Lit. "I do not praise their choice of the (particular) type, in so
far as . . ."
In the first place, I maintain, it is only just that the poorer
classes[3] and the People of Athens should be better off than the men
of birth and wealth, seeing that it is the people who man the
fleet,[4] and put round the city her girdle of power. The
steersman,[5] the boatswain, the lieutenant,[6] the look-out-man at
the prow, the shipright--these are the people who engird the city with
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: just enough to be tortured by it. He determined to stay after the
departure of the two old men, to confirm or dissipate his
suspicions. He drew out his purse to pay Adelaide; but carried
away by his poignant thoughts, he laid it on the table, falling
into a reverie of brief duration; then, ashamed of his silence,
he rose, answered some commonplace question from Madame de
Rouville, and went close up to her to examine the withered
features while he was talking to her.
He went away, racked by a thousand doubts. He had gone down but a
few steps when he turned back to fetch the forgotten purse.
"I left my purse here!" he said to the young girl.
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from In Darkest England and The Way Out by General William Booth: themselves at nightfall destitute. These now betake themselves to the
seats under the plane trees on the Embankment. Formerly they
endeavoured to occupy all the seats, but the lynx-eyed Metropolitan
Police declined to allow any such proceedings, and the dossers, knowing
the invariable kindness of the City Police, made tracks for that
portion of the Embankment which, lying east of the Temple, comes under
the control of the Civic Fathers. Here, between the Temple and
Blackfriars, I found the poor wretches by the score; almost every seat
contained its full complement of six--some men, some women--all
reclining in various postures and nearly all fast asleep. Just as
Big Ben strikes two, the moon, flashing across the Thames and lighting
In Darkest England and The Way Out |
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 Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: a whiter colour, less hairy, and with shorter claws. He added,
how I had endeavoured to persuade him, that in my own and other
countries, the YAHOOS acted as the governing, rational animal,
and held the HOUYHNHNMS in servitude; that he observed in me all
the qualities of a YAHOO, only a little more civilized by some
tincture of reason, which, however, was in a degree as far
inferior to the HOUYHNHNM race, as the YAHOOS of their country
were to me; that, among other things, I mentioned a custom we had
of castrating HOUYHNHNMS when they were young, in order to render
them tame; that the operation was easy and safe; that it was no
shame to learn wisdom from brutes, as industry is taught by the
Gulliver's Travels |
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