Today's Stichomancy for Friedrich Nietzsche

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift:

the same time, so abstracted and involved in speculation, that I never met with such disagreeable companions. I conversed only with women, tradesmen, flappers, and court-pages, during two months of my abode there; by which, at last, I rendered myself extremely contemptible; yet these were the only people from whom I could ever receive a reasonable answer.

I had obtained, by hard study, a good degree of knowledge in their language: I was weary of being confined to an island where I received so little countenance, and resolved to leave it with the first opportunity.

There was a great lord at court, nearly related to the king, and

Gulliver's Travels

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte:

things, and to remind her of her mother's precepts and prohibitions. I did so to the best of my power: but she would not be amused against her will, and could not against her taste; and though I went beyond mere reminding, such gentle remonstrances as I could use were utterly ineffectual.

'DEAR Miss Grey! it is the STRANGEST thing. I suppose you can't help it, if it's not in your nature - but I WONDER you can't win the confidence of that girl, and make your society at LEAST as agreeable to her as that of Robert or Joseph!'

'They can talk the best about the things in which she is most interested,' I replied.

Agnes Grey

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

1_Kings 20: 18 And he said: 'Whether they are come out for peace, take them alive; or whether they are come out for war, take them alive.'

1_Kings 20: 19 So these went out of the city, the young men of the princes of the provinces, and the army which followed them.

1_Kings 20: 20 And they slew every one his man; and the Arameans fled, and Israel pursued them; and Ben-hadad the king of Aram escaped on a horse with horsemen.

1_Kings 20: 21 And the king of Israel went out, and smote the horses and chariots, and slew the Arameans with a great slaughter.

1_Kings 20: 22 And the prophet came near to the king of Israel, and said unto him: 'Go, strengthen thyself, and mark, and see what thou doest; for at the return of the year the king of Aram will come up against thee.'

1_Kings 20: 23 And the servants of the king of Aram said unto him: 'Their God is a God of the hills; therefore they were stronger than we; but let us fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they.

1_Kings 20: 24 And do this thing: take the kings away, every man out of his place, and put governors in their room:

1_Kings 20: 25 and number thee an army, like the army that thou hast lost, horse for horse, and chariot for chariot; and we will fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they.' And he hearkened unto their voice, and did so.

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 Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson:

when he was a great pedestrian and no enemy to good claret, he may have pointed with these minute guns his allocutions to the bench. His humour was perfectly equable, set beyond the reach of fate; gout, rheumatism, stone and gravel might have combined their forces against that frail tabernacle, but when I came round on Sunday evening, he would lay aside Jeremy Taylor's LIFE OF CHRIST and greet me with the same open brow, the same kind formality of manner. His opinions and sympathies dated the man almost to a decade. He had begun life, under his mother's influence, as an admirer of Junius, but on maturer knowledge had transferred his admiration to Burke. He cautioned me, with entire gravity, to be