Today's Stichomancy for Peter Gabriel

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Death of the Lion by Henry James:

commission from THE TATLER, whose most prominent department, 'Smatter and Chatter' - I dare say you've often enjoyed it - attracts such attention. I was honoured only last week, as a representative of THE TATLER, with the confidence of Guy Walsingham, the brilliant author of 'Obsessions.' She pronounced herself thoroughly pleased with my sketch of her method; she went so far as to say that I had made her genius more comprehensible even to herself."

Neil Paraday had dropped on the garden-bench and sat there at once detached and confounded; he looked hard at a bare spot in the lawn, as if with an anxiety that had suddenly made him grave. His

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Phantasmagoria and Other Poems by Lewis Carroll:

"Oh, Uncle, what's o'clock?"

The Uncle gravely nods, and wisely winks. It MAY mean much, but how is one to know? He opens his mouth - yet out of it, methinks, No words of wisdom flow.

EMPRESS of Art, for thee I twine This wreath with all too slender skill. Forgive my Muse each halting line, And for the deed accept the will!

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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 The Tanach:

Isaiah 49: 14 But Zion said: 'The LORD hath forsaken me, and the Lord hath forgotten me.'

Isaiah 49: 15 Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, these may forget, yet will not I forget thee.

Isaiah 49: 16 Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of My hands; thy walls are continually before Me.

Isaiah 49: 17 Thy children make haste; thy destroyers and they that made thee waste shall go forth from thee.

Isaiah 49: 18 Lift up thine eyes round about, and behold: all these gather themselves together, and come to thee. As I live, saith the LORD, thou shalt surely clothe thee with them all as with an ornament, and gird thyself with them, like a bride.

Isaiah 49: 19 For thy waste and thy desolate places and thy land that hath been destroyed--surely now shalt thou be too strait for the inhabitants, and they that swallowed thee up shall be far away.

Isaiah 49: 20 The children of thy bereavement shall yet say in thine ears: 'The place is too strait for me; give place to me that I may dwell.'

Isaiah 49: 21 Then shalt thou say in thy heart: 'Who hath begotten me these, seeing I have been bereaved of my children, and am solitary, an exile, and wandering to and fro? And who hath brought up these? Behold, I was left alone; these, where were they?'

The Tanach

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 Lesser Hippias by Plato:

slighter character of a rhetorical exercise, or in which a motive or some affinity to spurious writings can be detected, or which seem to have originated in a name or statement really occurring in some classical author, are also of doubtful credit; while there is no instance of any ancient writing proved to be a forgery, which combines excellence with length. A really great and original writer would have no object in fathering his works on Plato; and to the forger or imitator, the 'literary hack' of Alexandria and Athens, the Gods did not grant originality or genius. Further, in attempting to balance the evidence for and against a Platonic dialogue, we must not forget that the form of the Platonic writing was common to several of his contemporaries. Aeschines, Euclid, Phaedo,