Today's Stichomancy for Dick Cheney

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot:

196. Cf. Marvell, _To His Coy Mistress_.

197. Cf. Day, _Parliament of Bees_:

When of the sudden, listening, you shall hear, A noise of horns and hunting, which shall bring Actaeon to Diana in the spring, Where all shall see her naked skin . . .

199. I do not know the origin of the ballad from which these lines are taken: it was reported to me from Sydney, Australia.

202. _V._ Verlaine, PARSIFAL.

210. The currants were quoted at a price 'carriage and insurance free to London'; and the Bill of Lading, etc., were to be handed

The Waste Land

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche:

is much more of an artist than one is aware of.--In an animated conversation, I often see the face of the person with whom I am speaking so clearly and sharply defined before me, according to the thought he expresses, or which I believe to be evoked in his mind, that the degree of distinctness far exceeds the STRENGTH of my visual faculty--the delicacy of the play of the muscles and of the expression of the eyes MUST therefore be imagined by me. Probably the person put on quite a different expression, or none at all.

193. Quidquid luce fuit, tenebris agit: but also contrariwise. What we experience in dreams, provided we experience it often,

Beyond Good and Evil

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells:

and eyes with a visual range not very different from ours except that, according to Philips, blue and violet were as black to them. It is commonly supposed that they com- municated by sounds and tentacular gesticulations; this is asserted, for instance, in the able but hastily compiled pamphlet (written evidently by someone not an eye-witness of Martian actions) to which I have already alluded, and which, so far, has been the chief source of information con- cerning them. Now no surviving human being saw so much of the Martians in action as I did. I take no credit to myself for an accident, but the fact is so. And I assert that I watched

War of the Worlds

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 Agesilaus by Xenophon:

he made as if the city of Corinth were about to capitulate, and immediately after the morning meal shifted his ground and encamped against the capital. Under cover of night there was a rush from Peiraeum to protect the city, which he was well aware of, and with break of day he turned right about and took Peiraeum, defenceless as it lay, capturing all that it contained, with the various fortresses within; and having so done retired homewards.

After these exploits[16] the Achaeans were urgent for an alliance, and begged him to join them in an expedition against Acarnania. In the course of this the Acarnanians attacked him in a defile. Storming the heights above his head with his light troops,[17] he gave them battle,