Today's Stichomancy for Jim Jones

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac:

suddenly interrupting himself; "and now, twelve men, a sub-lieutenant shouting 'Carry-arms, aim, fire!' a roll of drums, and infamy! that's my future now. Oh! there must be a God, or it would all be too senseless."

Then he took me in his arms and pressed me to him with all his strength.

"You are the last man, the last friend to whom I can show my soul. You will be set at liberty, you will see your mother! I don't know whether you are rich or poor, but no matter! you are all the world to me. They won't fight always, 'ceux-ci.' Well, when there's peace, will you go to Beauvais? If my mother has survived the fatal news of my death, you

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy:

his crimson mouth, and a target-like circling of his eyes. Deliberation caused sundry attacks on the moss of adjoining walls with the end of his stick, a change of his hat from the horizontal to the less so; a sense of tediousness announced itself in a lowering of the person by spreading the knees to a lozenge-shaped aperture and contorting the arms. Chicanery, subterfuge, had hardly a place in the streets of this honest borough to all appearance; and it was said that the lawyers in the Court House hard by occasionally threw in strong arguments for the other side out of pure generosity (though apparently by mischance) when

The Mayor of Casterbridge

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

scream of fright, and he came near tumbling headlong into the gaping jaws beneath him, so precipitate was his impetuous haste to vacate the dangerous limb. It was with a deep sigh of relief that I saw him gain a higher branch in safety.

And then the brute did that which froze us both anew with horror. Grasping the tree's stem with his powerful paws he dragged down with all the great weight of his huge bulk and all the irresistible force of those mighty muscles. Slowly, but surely, the stem began to bend toward him. Inch by inch he worked his paws upward

At the Earth's Core

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 The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken:

In one room, silently, lover looks upon lover, And thinks the air is fire. The drunkard swears and touches the harlot's heartstrings With the sudden hand of desire.

And one goes late in the streets, and thinks of murder; And one lies staring, and thinks of death. And one, who has suffered, clenches her hands despairing, And holds her breath . . .

Who are all these, who flow in the veins of the city, Coil and revolve and dream, Vanish or gleam?