Today's Stichomancy for Alyssa Milano

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton:

under his own roof. The reproach trembled on her lip--but she remembered her own part in the wretched business, and the impossibility of avowing it to Strefford, and of revealing to him that Nick had left her for that very reason. She was not afraid that the discovery would diminish her in Strefford's eyes: he was untroubled by moral problems, and would laugh away her avowal, with a sneer at Nick in his new part of moralist. But that was just what she could not bear: that anyone should cast a doubt on the genuineness of Nick's standards, or should know how far below them she had fallen.

She remained silent, and Strefford, after a moment, drew her

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

been piling one thing upon another. I should like to be beside him to remind him of what he said when passing this way, and to add, How much better a prophet I am than you!

What then? do I say man is not made for an active life? Far from it! . . . But there is a great difference between other men's occupations and ours. . . . A glance at theirs will make it clear to you. All day long they do nothing but calculate, contrive, consult how to wring their profit out of food-stuffs, farm-plots and the like. . . . Whereas, I entreat you to learn what the administration of the World is, and what place a Being endowed with reason holds therein: to consider what you are

The Golden Sayings of Epictetus

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

2_Chronicles 35: 4 And prepare ye after your fathers' houses by your courses, according to the writing of David king of Israel, and according to the writing of Solomon his son.

2_Chronicles 35: 5 And stand in the holy place according to the divisions of the fathers' houses of your brethren the children of the people, and let there be for each a portion of a father's house of the Levites.

2_Chronicles 35: 6 And kill the passover lamb, and sanctify yourselves, and prepare for your brethren, to do according to the word of the LORD by the hand of Moses.'

2_Chronicles 35: 7 And Josiah gave to the children of the people, of the flock, lambs and kids, all of them for the passover-offerings, unto all that were present, to the number of thirty thousand, and three thousand bullocks; these were of the king's substance.

2_Chronicles 35: 8 And his princes gave willingly unto the people, to the priests, and to the Levites. Hilkiah and Zechariah and Jehiel, the rulers of the house of God, gave unto the priests for the passover-offerings two thousand and six hundred small cattle, and three hundred oxen.

2_Chronicles 35: 9 Conaniah also, and Shemaiah and Nethanel, his brethren, and Hashabiah and Jeiel and Jozabad, the chiefs of the Levites, gave unto the Levites for the passover-offerings five thousand small cattle, and five hundred oxen.

2_Chronicles 35: 10 So the service was prepared, and the priests stood in their place, and the Levites by their courses, according to the king's commandment.

The Tanach

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 The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson:

To fool him back, with penitent scared eyes That had in them the laughter of the moon For baffled lovers, and to make him think -- Before she gave him time enough to wink -- Sin's kisses were the keys to Paradise.

For Some Poems by Matthew Arnold

Sweeping the chords of Hellas with firm hand, He wakes lost echoes from song's classic shore, And brings their crystal cadence back once more To touch the clouds and sorrows of a land Where God's truth, cramped and fettered with a band