Today's Stichomancy for Madonna

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy:

joyous and unforeseeing past, before the necessity of taking thought had made the heavens gray. He concluded that he had beheld her before; where he could not tell. A casual encounter during some country ramble it certainly had been, and he was not greatly curious about it. But the circumstance was sufficient to lead him to select Tess in preference to the other pretty milkmaids when he wished to contemplate contiguous womankind.

XIX

In general the cows were milked as they presented

Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James:

remembered. The greatest blank in the shining page was the memory of Acton Hague, of which he inveterately tried to rid himself. For Acton Hague no flame could ever rise on any altar of his.

CHAPTER IV.

EVERY year, the day he walked back from the great graveyard, he went to church as he had done the day his idea was born. It was on this occasion, as it happened, after a year had passed, that he began to observe his altar to be haunted by a worshipper at least as frequent as himself. Others of the faithful, and in the rest of the church, came and went, appealing sometimes, when they disappeared, to a vague or to a particular recognition; but this

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin:

avarice he resumed his laborious journey.

His way now lay straight up a ridge of bare red rocks, without a blade of grass to ease the foot or a projecting angle to afford an inch of shade from the south sun. It was past noon and the rays beat intensely upon the steep path, while the whole atmosphere was motionless and penetrated with heat. Intense thirst was soon added to the bodily fatigue with which Hans was now afflicted; glance after glance he cast on the flask of water which hung at his belt. "Three drops are enough," at last thought he; "I may, at least, cool my lips with it."

He opened the flask and was raising it to his lips, when his

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 Tanach:

Judges 1: 2 And LORD said: 'Judah shall go up; behold, I have delivered the land into his hand.'

Judges 1: 3 And Judah said unto Simeon his brother: 'Come up with me into my lot, that we may fight against the Canaanites; and I likewise will go with thee into thy lot.' So Simeon went with him.

Judges 1: 4 And Judah went up; and the LORD delivered the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hand; and they smote of them in Bezek ten thousand men.

Judges 1: 5 And they found Adoni-bezek in Bezek; and they fought against him, and they smote the Canaanites and the Perizzites.

Judges 1: 6 But Adoni-bezek fled; and they pursued after him, and caught him, and cut off his thumbs and his great toes.

Judges 1: 7 And Adoni-bezek said: 'Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered food under my table; as I have done, so God hath requited me.' And they brought him to Jerusalem, and he died there.

Judges 1: 8 And the children of Judah fought Jerusalem, and took it, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and set the city on fire.

Judges 1: 9 And afterward the children of Judah went down to fight against the Canaanites that dwelt in the hill-country, and in the South, and in the Lowland.

Judges 1: 10 And Judah went against the Canaanites that dwelt in Hebron--now the name of Hebron beforetime was Kiriath-arba--and they smote Sheshai, and Ahiman, and Talmai.

Judges 1: 11 And from thence he went against the inhabitants of Debir--now the name of Debir beforetime was Kiriath-sepher.

The Tanach