Today's Stichomancy for David Boreanaz
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: extension of subject-matter. The public dislike novelty because
they are afraid of it. It represents to them a mode of
Individualism, an assertion on the part of the artist that he
selects his own subject, and treats it as he chooses. The public
are quite right in their attitude. Art is Individualism, and
Individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. Therein
lies its immense value. For what it seeks to disturb is monotony
of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of
man to the level of a machine. In Art, the public accept what has
been, because they cannot alter it, not because they appreciate it.
They swallow their classics whole, and never taste them. 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 The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: decay, was once but a mushroom, and had succeeded to other
mines and other flitting cities. Twenty years ago, away down
the glen on the Lake County side there was a place, Jonestown
by name, with two thousand inhabitants dwelling under canvas,
and one roofed house for the sale of whiskey. Round on the
western side of Mount Saint Helena, there was at the same
date, a second large encampment, its name, if it ever had
one, lost for me. Both of these have perished, leaving not a
stick and scarce a memory behind them. Tide after tide of
hopeful miners have thus flowed and ebbed about the mountain,
coming and going, now by lone prospectors, now with a rush.
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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 Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift: with pedantry. For, as I take it, the word is not properly used;
because pedantry is the too front or unseasonable obtruding our own
knowledge in common discourse, and placing too great a value upon
it; by which definition men of the court or the army may be as
guilty of pedantry as a philosopher or a divine; and it is the same
vice in women when they are over copious upon the subject of their
petticoats, or their fans, or their china. For which reason,
although it be a piece of prudence, as well as good manners, to put
men upon talking on subjects they are best versed in, yet that is a
liberty a wise man could hardly take; because, beside the
imputation of pedantry, it is what he would never improve by.
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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 In Darkest England and The Way Out by General William Booth: which thousands live predisposes to a longing for stimulant.
Fresh air, with its oxygen and its ozone, being lacking, a man supplies
the want with spirit. After a time the longing for drink becomes a
mania. Life seems as insupportable without alcohol as without food.
It is a disease often inherited, always developed by indulgence, but as
clearly a disease as ophthalmia or stone.
All this should predispose us to charity and sympathy.
While recognising that the primary responsibility must always rest upon
the individual, we may fairly insist that society, which, by its
habits, its customs, and its laws, has greased the slope down which
these poor creatures slide to perdition, shall seriously take in hand
In Darkest England and The Way Out |
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