Today's Stichomancy for Eric Bana

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson:

But, quiet and steady and cruel, his eyes shone ruby-red. In the earliest rays of the sun the chief rose up content; Braves were summoned, and drummers; messengers came and went; Braves ran to their lodges, weapons were snatched from the wall; The commons herded together, and fear was over them all. Festival dresses they wore, but the tongue was dry in their mouth, And the blinking eyes in their faces skirted from north to south.

Now to the sacred enclosure gathered the greatest and least, And from under the shade of the banyan arose the voice of the feast, The frenzied roll of the drum, and a swift, monotonous song. Higher the sun swam up; the trade wind level and strong

Ballads

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton:

picture. It means nothing--it means all things. It may represent the period which saw its creation; it may represent all ages past and to come. There are volumes of meaning in the tiniest emblem on the lady's cloak; the blossoms of its border are rooted in the deepest soil of myth and tradition. Don't ask what it means, young man, but bow your head in thankfulness for having seen it!"

Miss Lombard laid her hand on his arm.

"Don't excite yourself, father," she said in the detached tone of a professional nurse.

He answered with a despairing gesture. "Ah, it's easy for you to

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe:

had supposed did me good the day before - the tobacco steeped in rum; only I did not take so much as before, nor did I chew any of the leaf, or hold my head over the smoke; however, I was not so well the next day, which was the first of July, as I hoped I should have been; for I had a little spice of the cold fit, but it was not much.

JULY 2. - I renewed the medicine all the three ways; and dosed myself with it as at first, and doubled the quantity which I drank.

JULY 3. - I missed the fit for good and all, though I did not recover my full strength for some weeks after. While I was thus gathering strength, my thoughts ran exceedingly upon this

Robinson Crusoe

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 Proposed Roads To Freedom by Bertrand Russell:

Nationalism, so far from diminishing, has increased, and has failed to be conquered by the cosmopolitan tendencies which Marx rightly discerned in finance. Although big businesses have grown bigger and have over a great area reached the stage of monopoly, yet the number of shareholders in such enterprises is so large that the actual number of individuals interested in the capitalist system has continually increased. Moreover, though large firms have grown larger, there has been a simultaneous increase in firms of medium size. Meanwhile the wage-earners,