Today's Stichomancy for George Harrison
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: was now the influence of something upon somebody--they were walking on and
Mrs Ramsay did not quite catch the meaning, only the words, here and
there ... dissertation ... fellowship ... readership ... lectureship. She
could not follow the ugly academic jargon, that rattled itself off so
glibly, but said to herself that she saw now why going to the circus had
knocked him off his perch, poor little man, and why he came out,
instantly, with all that about his father and mother and brothers and
sisters, and she would see to it that they didn't laugh at him any more;
she would tell Prue about it. What he would have liked, she supposed,
would have been to say how he had gone not to the circus but to Ibsen with
the Ramsays. He was an awful prig--oh yes, an insufferable bore. For,
To the Lighthouse |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells: and once he asked Ann Veronica, almost furtively,
"How's Alice getting on, Vee?" Finally, on the Day, he appeared
like his old professional self transfigured, in the most
beautiful light gray trousers Ann Veronica had ever seen and a
new shiny silk hat with a most becoming roll. . . .
It was not simply that all the rooms were rearranged and
everybody dressed in unusual fashions, and all the routines of
life abolished and put away: people's tempers and emotions also
seemed strangely disturbed and shifted about. Her father was
distinctly irascible, and disposed more than ever to hide away
among the petrological things--the study was turned out. At
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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 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: I was prepared to salute Captain Nemo, but it was his second
(whom I had already seen on the Captain's first visit) who appeared.
He advanced on the platform, not seeming to see me.
With his powerful glass to his eye, he scanned every point
of the horizon with great attention. This examination over,
he approached the panel and pronounced a sentence in exactly
these terms. I have remembered it, for every morning
it was repeated under exactly the same conditions.
It was thus worded:
"Nautron respoc lorni virch."
What it meant I could not say.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea |
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 Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: needs explain all things in heaven and earth by his own formulae, and
his entelechies and energies, and the rest of the notions which he has
made for himself out of his own brain, and then pack each thing away in
its proper niche in his great cloud-universe of conceptions? Is it that
God hides things from such men many a time, and reveals them to babes,
to gentle, affectionate, simple-hearted men, such as we know Archimedes
to have been, who do not try to give an explanation for a fact, but feel
how awful and divine it is, and wrestle reverently and stedfastly with
it, as Jacob with the Angel, and will not let it go, until it bless
them? Sure I am, from what I have seen of scientific men, that there is
an intimate connection between the health of the moral faculties and the
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