Today's Stichomancy for Harry Houdini
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: consequently it is at least as certain that God, who is this Perfect
Being, is, or exists, as any demonstration of geometry can be.
But the reason which leads many to persuade them selves that there is a
difficulty in knowing this truth, and even also in knowing what their mind
really is, is that they never raise their thoughts above sensible objects,
and are so accustomed to consider nothing except by way of imagination,
which is a mode of thinking limited to material objects, that all that is
not imaginable seems to them not intelligible. The truth of this is
sufficiently manifest from the single circumstance, that the philosophers
of the schools accept as a maxim that there is nothing in the
understanding which was not previously in the senses, in which however it
 Reason Discourse |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: is, one partakes of being, which is not the same with one; the words
'being' and 'one' have different meanings. Observe the consequence: In
the one of being or the being of one are two parts, being and one, which
form one whole. And each of the two parts is also a whole, and involves
the other, and may be further subdivided into one and being, and is
therefore not one but two; and thus one is never one, and in this way the
one, if it is, becomes many and infinite. Again, let us conceive of a one
which by an effort of abstraction we separate from being: will this
abstract one be one or many? You say one only; let us see. In the first
place, the being of one is other than one; and one and being, if different,
are so because they both partake of the nature of other, which is therefore
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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 Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: The sailors stopped immediately, and let their oars lie on the water.
"The skipper is right," said Thomas coolly. A great wave caught up the
boat, carried it high on its crest, only to plunge it, as it were,
into the trough of the sea that seemed to yawn for them. At this
mighty upheaval, this sudden outbreak of the wrath of the sea, the
company in the stern turned pale, and sent up a terrible cry.
"We are lost!"
"Oh, not yet!" said the skipper calmly.
As he spoke, the clouds immediately above their heads were torn
asunder by the vehemence of the wind. The gray mass was rent and
scattered east and west with ominous speed, a dim uncertain light from
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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 Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare: If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,
By unions married, do offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.
Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;
Resembling sire and child and happy mother,
Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing:
Whose speechless song being many, seeming one,
Sings this to thee: 'Thou single wilt prove none.'
IX
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