Today's Stichomancy for Tim Burton
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: Russians, called Ozomys; there we heard that several troops of
Kalmucks had been abroad upon the desert, but that we were now
completely out of danger of them, which was to our great
satisfaction. Here we were obliged to get some fresh horses, and
having need enough of rest, we stayed five days; and my partner and
I agreed to give the honest Siberian who conducted us thither the
value of ten pistoles.
In five days more we came to Veussima, upon the river Witzogda, and
running into the Dwina: we were there, very happily, near the end
of our travels by land, that river being navigable, in seven days'
passage, to Archangel. From hence we came to Lawremskoy, the 3rd
Robinson Crusoe |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: promised to bury him decently.
It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to
devote himself to the eradication of any, even to most
enormous, wrong; he may still properly have other concerns
to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his
hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to
give it practically his support. If I devote myself to
other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at
least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's
shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his
contemplations too. See what gross inconsistency is tolerated.
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: awful murmurs, and shrieks, and deep, shuddering whispers of the
blast, sometimes forming themselves into words almost articulate,
would have seized upon Mr. Smooth-it-away's comfortable
explanation as greedily as we did. The inhabitants of the cavern,
moreover, were unlovely personages, dark, smoke-begrimed,
generally deformed, with misshapen feet, and a glow of dusky
redness in their eyes as if their hearts had caught fire and were
blazing out of the upper windows. It struck me as a peculiarity
that the laborers at the forge and those who brought fuel to the
engine, when they began to draw short breath, positively emitted
smoke from their mouth and nostrils.
Mosses From An Old Manse |
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 Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas: faint. I am very, very ill, Colbert; I am very near my end!"
Colbert started. The cardinal was indeed very ill; large
drops of sweat flowed down upon his bed of agony, and the
frightful pallor of a face streaming with water was a
spectacle which the most hardened practitioner could not
have beheld without compassion. Colbert was, without doubt,
very much affected, for he quitted the chamber, calling
Bernouin to attend the dying man and went into the corridor.
There, walking about with a meditative expression, which
almost gave nobility to his vulgar head, his shoulders
thrown up, his neck stretched out, his lips half open, to
Ten Years Later |
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