Today's Stichomancy for Robert Oppenheimer

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells:

close upon him, and his companion, thrice hit, lay dead across his bombs. His followers manifestly did not mean either to upset or shoot him, but inexorably they drove him down, down. At last he was curving and flying a hundred yards or less over the level fields of rice and maize. Ahead of him and dark against the morning sunrise was a village with a very tall and slender campanile and a line of cable bearing metal standards that he could not clear. He stopped his engine abruptly and dropped flat. He may have hoped to get at the bombs when he came down, but his pitiless pursuers drove right over him and shot him as he fell.

Three other aeroplanes curved down and came to rest amidst grass

The Last War: A World Set Free

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

YOUNG SOCRATES: Let me hear.

STRANGER: If any one who is in a private station has the skill to advise one of the public physicians, must not he also be called a physician?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: And if any one who is in a private station is able to advise the ruler of a country, may not he be said to have the knowledge which the ruler himself ought to have?

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: But surely the science of a true king is royal science?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: And will not he who possesses this knowledge, whether he happens

Statesman

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous by Oscar Wilde:

I will not spin to-night.

SIMONE. It matters not. To-morrow you shall spin, and every day Shall find you at your distaff. So Lucretia Was found by Tarquin. So, perchance, Lucretia Waited for Tarquin. Who knows? I have heard Strange things about men's wives. And now, my lord, What news abroad? I heard to-day at Pisa That certain of the English merchants there Would sell their woollens at a lower rate Than the just laws allow, and have entreated

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 Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad:

silver-mine, and the splendour of the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, whose name, cried out in the night (Dr. Monygham heard it pass over his head--in Linda Viola's voice), dominated even after death the dark gulf containing his conquests of treasure and love--all that had come down crashing about my ears. I felt I could never pick up the pieces--and in that very moment I was saying, "Won't you sit down?"

The sea is strong medicine. Behold what the quarter-deck training even in a merchant ship will do! This episode should give you a new view of the English and Scots seamen (a much- caricatured folk) who had the last say in the formation of my

Some Reminiscences