Today's Stichomancy for Sigmund Freud
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Octopus by Frank Norris: country side waked to another day. Crossing the irrigating ditch
further on, he met a gang of Portuguese, with picks and shovels
over their shoulders, just going to work. Hooven, already
abroad, shouted him a "Goot mornun" from behind the fence of Los
Muertos. Far off, toward the southwest, in the bare expanse of
the open fields, where a clump of eucalyptus and cypress trees
set a dark green note, a thin stream of smoke rose straight into
the air from the kitchen of Derrick's ranch houses.
But a mile or so beyond the Long Trestle he was surprised to see
Magnus Derrick's protege, the one-time shepherd, Vanamee, coming
across Quien Sabe, by a trail from one of Annixter's division
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: "Come along!" and having locked up the sanctum after himself, led
the way along a narrow dirty pavement, lined with barrows and
swept at times by avalanche-like porters bearing burthens to
vans, to Farringdon Street. He hailed a passing cab superbly,
and the cabman was infinitely respectful. "Schafer's," he said,
and off we went side by side--and with me more and more amazed at
all these things--to Schafer's Hotel, the second of the two big
places with huge lace curtain-covered windows, near the corner of
Blackfriars Bridge.
I will confess I felt a magic charm in our relative proportions
as the two colossal, pale-blue-and-red liveried porters of
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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 Dust by Mr. And Mrs. Haldeman-Julius: life with him. But, somehow, from the first, even before they
were married, when with Martin, such chatter had died unuttered
on Rose's tongue. The few remarks which she did venture,
nowadays, had the effect of a disconcerting splash before they
sank into the gloomy depths of the thick silence. Occasionally,
in sheer self defense, she carried on a light monologue, but
Martin's lack of interest gave her such an odd, lonely,
stage-struck sensation that she, too, became untalkative, keeping
to herself the ideas which chased through her ever-active mind.
Innately just, she attributed this peculiarity of his to the fact
that he had lived so long alone, and while it fretted her, she
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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 At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: frames, gave her a sense of intoxication which doubled her alarms. She
would perhaps have fainted if an unknown rapture had not surged up in
her heart to vivify her whole being, in spite of this chaos of
sensations. She nevertheless believed herself to be under the power of
the Devil, of whose awful snares she had been warned of by the
thundering words of preachers. This moment was to her like a moment of
madness. She found herself accompanied to her cousin's carriage by the
young man, radiant with joy and love. Augustine, a prey to an
agitation new to her experience, an intoxication which seemed to
abandon her to nature, listened to the eloquent voice of her heart,
and looked again and again at the young painter, betraying the emotion
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