Today's Stichomancy for Simon Bolivar
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: the History of Maria Monk is at the opposite extreme of merit (this is
a guess: I have never read it); but it is certain that a boy let
loose in a library would go for Maria Monk and have no use whatever
for Mr Chamberlain. I should probably have read Maria Monk myself if
I had not had the Arabian Nights and their like to occupy me better.
In art, children, like adults, will find their level if they are left
free to find it, and not restricted to what adults think good for
them. Just at present our young people are going mad over ragtimes,
apparently because syncopated rhythms are new to them. If they had
learnt what can be done with syncopation from Beethoven's third
Leonora overture, they would enjoy the ragtimes all the more; but they
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: furnish something, and I may add, the best of everything, to supply
the City of London with provisions; I mean by provisions, corn,
flesh, fish, butter, cheese, salt, fuel, timber, etc., and clothes
also; with everything necessary for building, and furniture for
their own use or for trade; of all which in their order.
On this shore also are taken the best and nicest, though not the
largest, oysters in England; the spot from whence they have their
common appellation is a little bank called Woelfleet, scarce to be
called an island, in the mouth of the River Crouch, now called
Crooksea Water; but the chief place where the said oysters are now
had is from Wyvenhoe and the shores adjacent, whither they are
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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 Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen: lay a town, whose appearance we can, in some measure, realize to ourselves by
beating the white of an egg in a glass Of water. The matter of which it was
built was just as soft, and formed similar towers, and domes, and pillars,
transparent and rocking in the thin air; while above his head our earth was
rolling like a large fiery ball.
He perceived immediately a quantity of beings who were certainly what we call
"men"; yet they looked different to us. A far more, correct imagination than
that of the pseudo-Herschel* had created them; and if they had been placed in
rank and file, and copied by some skilful painter's hand, one would, without
doubt, have exclaimed involuntarily, "What a beautiful arabesque!"
*This relates to a book published some years ago in Germany, and said to be by
 Fairy Tales |
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 Menexenus by Plato: Marathon only showed the Hellenes that it was possible to ward off the
barbarians by land, the many by the few; but there was no proof that they
could be defeated by ships, and at sea the Persians retained the reputation
of being invincible in numbers and wealth and skill and strength. This is
the glory of the men who fought at sea, that they dispelled the second
terror which had hitherto possessed the Hellenes, and so made the fear of
numbers, whether of ships or men, to cease among them. And so the soldiers
of Marathon and the sailors of Salamis became the schoolmasters of Hellas;
the one teaching and habituating the Hellenes not to fear the barbarians at
sea, and the others not to fear them by land. Third in order, for the
number and valour of the combatants, and third in the salvation of Hellas,
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