Today's Stichomancy for Ray Bradbury

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

upon you; for whomsoever my wrath lights upon he falls!

'Yet am I forgiving unto him who repents and believes and does right, and then is guided.

'But what has hastened thee on away from thy people, O Moses?'

He said, 'They were here upon my track and I hastened on to Thee, my Lord! that thou mightest be pleased.'

Said He, 'Verily, we have tried thy people, since thou didst leave, and es Samariy has led them astray.'

And Moses returned to his people, wrathful, grieving!

Said he, 'O my people! did not your Lord promise you a good promise? Has the time seemed too long for you, or do you desire that wrath

The Koran

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw:

moment in astonishment, and in some concern, skimmed away into the crowd. When he reached the opposite bank he took off his skates and asked Jane, who strayed intentionally in his direction, to tell Miss Wylie that he was gone, and would skate no more there. Without adding a word of explanation he left her and made for his dwelling. As he went down into the hollow where the road passed through the plantation on the college side of the chalet he descried a boy, in the uniform of the post office, sliding along the frozen ditch. A presentiment of evil tidings came upon him like a darkening of the sky. He quickened his pace.

"Anything for me?" he said.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis:

What fables sway the Milky Way? In Mars, what avatar?

When morning skims with crimson wings Across the meres of Mercury, What dreaming Memnon wakes and sings Of miracles on Mercury? What Christs, what avatars, Claim Mars?

THE GOD-MAKER, MAN

NEVERMORE Shall the shepherds of Arcady follow

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 Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson:

evening worship. When I returned, after eight, the moon was near down; she seemed little brighter than before, but now that the cloud no longer played its part of a nocturnal sun, we could see that sight, so rare with us at home that it was counted a portent, so customary in the tropics, of the dark sphere with its little gilt band upon the belly. The planet had been setting faster, and was now below the crescent. They were still of an equal brightness.

I could not resist trying to reproduce this in words, as a specimen of these incredibly beautiful and imposing meteors of the tropic sky that make so much of my pleasure here;