Today's Stichomancy for Kurt Goedel

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson:

V. Industrious pirate! see him sweep

A MARTIAL ELEGY FOR SOME LEAD SOLDIERS

For certain soldiers lately dead

THE GRAVER AND THE PEN: OR, SCENES FROM NATURE, WITH APPROPRIATE VERSES

I. PROEM - Unlike the common run of men II. THE PRECARIOUS MILL - Alone above the stream it stands III. THE DISPUTATIOUS PINES - The first pine to the second said IV. THE TRAMPS - Now long enough had day endured V. THE FOOLHARDY GEOGRAPHER - The howling desert miles around VI. THE ANGLER AND THE CLOWN - The echoing bridge you here may

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte:

grimace, but took a candle and proceeded before me up the back stairs (a long, steep, double flight), and through a long, narrow passage, to a small but tolerably comfortable room. She then asked me if I would take some tea or coffee. I was about to answer No; but remembering that I had taken nothing since seven o'clock that morning, and feeling faint in consequence, I said I would take a cup of tea. Saying she would tell 'Brown,' the young lady departed; and by the time I had divested myself of my heavy, wet cloak, shawl, bonnet, &c., a mincing damsel came to say the young ladies desired to know whether I would take my tea up there or in the schoolroom. Under the plea of fatigue I chose to take it

Agnes Grey

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson:

read his works dispassionately, and find in this unseemly jester's serious passages the image of a kind, wise, and self-respecting gentleman. It is customary, I suppose, in reading Martial, to leave out these pleasant verses; I never heard of them, at least, until I found them for myself; and this partiality is one among a thousand things that help to build up our distorted and hysterical conception of the great Roman Empire.

This brings us by a natural transition to a very noble book - the MEDITATIONS of Marcus Aurelius. The dispassionate gravity, the noble forgetfulness of self, the tenderness of

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 Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft:

en masse in the face of horrible peril; and several from different branches of humanity. I talked with the mind of Yiang-Li, a philosopher from the cruel empire of Tsan-Chan, which is to come in 5,000 A.D.; with that of a general of the greatheaded brown people who held South Africa in 50,000 B.C.; with that of a twelfth-century Florentine monk named Bartolomeo Corsi; with that of a king of Lomar who had ruled that terrible polar land one hundred thousand years before the squat, yellow Inutos came from the west to engulf it. I talked with the mind of Nug-Soth, a magician of the dark

Shadow out of Time