Today's Stichomancy for Leonard Cohen

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Hamlet by William Shakespeare:

Ham. And smelt so? Puh

Hor. E'ene so, my Lord

Ham. To what base vses we may returne Horatio. Why may not Imagination trace the Noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bunghole

Hor. 'Twere to consider: to curiously to consider so

Ham. No faith, not a iot. But to follow him thether with modestie enough, & likeliehood to lead it; as thus. Alexander died: Alexander was buried: Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make Lome, and why of that Lome (whereto he was conuerted)

Hamlet

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Awakening & Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin:

Two hectic blotches came suddenly into her pale cheeks. She looked up at the girl.

"Do you think there are any eights-and-a-half among these?"

There were any number of eights-and-a-half. In fact, there were more of that size than any other. Here was a light-blue pair; there were some lavender, some all black and various shades of tan and gray. Mrs. Sommers selected a black pair and looked at them very long and closely. She pretended to be examining their texture, which the clerk assured her was excellent.

"A dollar and ninety-eight cents," she mused aloud. "Well, I'll take this pair." She handed the girl a five-dollar bill and

Awakening & Selected Short Stories

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

her see his face; or would that be cruel? For did they not say that it was from the very ugliness of it that he kept his helm closed to hide the repulsive sight from the eyes of men!

As her thoughts wandered back to her brief meeting with him two years before, she wrote and dispatched her reply to Norman of Torn.

In the great hall that night as the King's party sat at supper, Philip of France, addressing Henry, said:

"And who thinkest thou, My Lord King, rode by my side to Battel today, that I might not be set upon by

The Outlaw of Torn

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 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad:

a decent sort of friend, after all; enough of a friend to find for his silence the excuse of forgetfulness natural to a state of transcendental bliss? I waited indulgently, but nothing ever came. And the East seemed to drop out of my life without an echo, like a stone falling into a well of prodigious depth.

CHAPTER IV

I suppose praiseworthy motives are a sufficient justification almost for anything. What could be more commendable in the abstract than a girl's determination that "poor papa" should not be worried, and her anxiety that the man of her choice should be kept by any means from every occasion of doing something rash, something

'Twixt Land & Sea