Today's Stichomancy for Bill Gates
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Sir John Mandeville: thereof a thick liquor, the which they receive in vessels, and dry
it at the heat of the sun; and then they have it to a mill to grind
and it becometh fair meal and white. And the honey and the wine
and the venom be drawn out of other trees in the same manner, and
put in vessels for to keep.
In that isle is a dead sea, that is a lake that hath no ground; and
if anything fall into that lake it shall never come up again. In
that lake grow reeds, that be canes, that they clepe Thaby, that be
thirty fathoms long; and of these canes men make fair houses. And
there be other canes that be not so long, that grow near the land
and have so long roots that endure well a four quarters of a
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: him, and we relapsed again into silence.
This time I was the first to break it. "I suppose," I said,
drearily, "all those horrid people will have come by now."
"Horrid people," he repeated, with rather an uncertain laugh, and
through the darkness I saw his figure bend forward as he stretched
out his hand to caress my horse's neck. "Why, Evie, I thought you
were pining for gayety, and that it was, in fact, for the purpose
of meeting these 'horrid people' that you came here."
"Yes, I know," I said, wistfully; "but somehow the last week has
been so pleasant that I cannot believe that anything will ever be
quite so nice again."
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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 The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: The dear black cat of Anna the witch;
Upon me, at night, seven were-wolves came down,
Seven women they were, from out of the town.
Wille wau wau wau!
Wille wo wo wo!
Wito hu!
I knew them all; ay, I knew them straight;
First, Anna, then Ursula, Eve, and Kate,
And Barbara, Lizzy, and Bet as well;
And forming a ring, they began to yell:
Wille wau wau wau!
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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 Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: Heaven. In short, all things have a voice for the Spirit. Spirits are
in the secret of the harmony of all creations with each other; they
comprehend the spirit of sound, the spirit of color, the spirit of
vegetable life; they can question the mineral, and the mineral makes
answer to their thoughts. What to them are sciences and the treasures
of the earth when they grasp all things by the eye at all moments,
when the worlds which absorb the minds of so many men are to them but
the last step from which they spring to God? Love of heaven, or the
Wisdom of heaven, is made manifest to them by a circle of light which
surrounds them, and is visible to the Elect. Their innocence, of which
that of children is a symbol, possesses, nevertheless, a knowledge
Seraphita |
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