Today's Stichomancy for Napoleon Bonaparte

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

'Why is this?' The answer is that you praise Homer not by art but by divine inspiration.

ION: That is good, Socrates; and yet I doubt whether you will ever have eloquence enough to persuade me that I praise Homer only when I am mad and possessed; and if you could hear me speak of him I am sure you would never think this to be the case.

SOCRATES: I should like very much to hear you, but not until you have answered a question which I have to ask. On what part of Homer do you speak well?--not surely about every part.

ION: There is no part, Socrates, about which I do not speak well: of that I can assure you.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Symposium by Xenophon:

breath, much less to speak a word in season. But if (to borrow language from the mint of Gorgias[52]), if only the attendants will bedew us with a frequent mizzle[53] of small glasses, we shall not be violently driven on by wine to drunkenness, but with sweet seduction reach the goal of sportive levity.

[46] Cf. Plat. "Laws," 649; Aristoph. "Knights," 96:

Come, quick now, bring me a lusty stoup of wine, To moisten my understanding and inspire me (H. Frere).

[47] Cf. Plat. "Rep." vi. 488 C; Dem. "Phil." iv. 133. 1; Lucian v., "Tim." 2; lxxiii., "Dem. Enc." 36. See "Othello," iii. 3. 330:

Not poppy, nor mandragora,

The Symposium

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac:

for his instruction the particular public he was expected to gull, crammed him with phrases, fed him with impromptu replies, provisioned him with unanswerable arguments, and, so to speak, sharpened the file of the tongue which was about to operate upon the life of France.

The puppet amply rewarded the pains bestowed upon him. The heads of the company boasted of the illustrious Gaudissart, showed him such attention and proclaimed the great talents of this perambulating prospectus so loudly in the sphere of exalted banking and commercial diplomacy, that the financial managers of two newspapers (celebrated at that time but since defunct) were seized with the idea of employing him to get subscribers. The proprietors of the "Globe," an organ 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 Herbert West: Reanimator by H. P. Lovecraft:

Our experiences had often been hideous in the extreme; the results of defective reanimation, when lumps of graveyard clay had been galvanised into morbid, unnatural, and brainless motion by various modifications of the vital solution. One thing had uttered a nerve-shattering scream; another had risen violently, beaten us both to unconsciousness, and run amuck in a shocking way before it could be placed behind asylum bars; still another, a loathsome African monstrosity, had clawed out of its shallow grave and done a deed -- West had had to shoot that object. We could not get bodies fresh enough to shew any trace of reason when reanimated,

Herbert West: Reanimator