Today's Stichomancy for Jennifer Connelly

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

evidence about them can be adduced. And we are as confident that the Epistles are spurious, as that the Republic, the Timaeus, and the Laws are genuine.

On the whole, not a twentieth part of the writings which pass under the name of Plato, if we exclude the works rejected by the ancients themselves and two or three other plausible inventions, can be fairly doubted by those who are willing to allow that a considerable change and growth may have taken place in his philosophy (see above). That twentieth debatable portion scarcely in any degree affects our judgment of Plato, either as a thinker or a writer, and though suggesting some interesting questions to the scholar and critic, is of little importance to the general reader.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde:

LADY WINDERMERE. Stop! Don't you hear voices?

MRS. ERLYNNE. No, no! There was no one!

LADY WINDERMERE. Yes, there is! Listen! Oh! that is my husband's voice! He is coming in! Save me! Oh, it's some plot! You have sent for him.

[Voices outside.]

MRS. ERLYNNE. Silence! I'm here to save you, if I can. But I fear it is too late! There! [Points to the curtain across the window.] The first chance you have, slip out, if you ever get a chance!

LADY WINDERMERE. But you?

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske:

secge, forthon heo locath on helle.--Tell me, why is the sun red at even? I tell thee, because she looketh on hell." Thorpe, Analecta Anglo-Saxonica, p. 115, apud Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 63. Barbaric thought had partly anticipated my childish theory.

[34] "Still in North Germany does the peasant say of thunder, that the angels are playing skittles aloft, and of the snow, that they are shaking up the feather beds in heaven."-- Baring-Gould, Book of Werewolves, p. 172.

[35] "The Polynesians imagine that the sky descends at the horizon and encloses the earth. Hence they call foreigners

Myths and Myth-Makers

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 Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac:

officer's mournful musings. Every time that he looked over the valley that lay before him, he could not help thinking of the trouble that had befallen the canton, of the man who had died so lately, and of the blank left by his death.

Before long, Genestas reached the cottage where he had asked for a cup of milk on his first journey. The sight of the smoke rising above the hovel where the charity-children were being brought up recalled vivid memories of Benassis and of his kindness of heart. The officer made up his mind to call there. He would give some alms to the poor woman for his dead friend's sake. He tied his horse to a tree, and opened the door of the hut without knocking.