Today's Stichomancy for Martin Scorsese
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: to Australia. He had that natural love for the tropics which lies
so often latent in persons of a northern birth; difficulty and
danger attracted him; and when he was picked out for secret duty,
to be the hand of Germany in Samoa, there is no doubt but he
accepted the post with exhilaration. It is doubtful if a better
choice could have been made. He had courage, integrity, ideas of
his own, and loved the employment, the people, and the place. Yet
there was a fly in the ointment. The double error of unnecessary
stealth and of the immixture of a trading company in political
affairs, has vitiated, and in the end defeated, much German policy.
And Brandeis was introduced to the islands as a clerk, and sent
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: such a principle of life. The Bohemian of the novel, who
drinks more than is good for him and prefers anything to
work, and wears strange clothes, is for the most part a
respectable Bohemian, respectable in disrespectability,
living for the outside, and an adventurer. But the man I
mean lives wholly to himself, does what he wishes, and not
what is thought proper, buys what he wants for himself, and
not what is thought proper, works at what he believes he can
do well and not what will bring him in money or favour. You
may be the most respectable of men, and yet a true Bohemian.
And the test is this: a Bohemian, for as poor as he may be,
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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 First Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: and have, with equal wisdom, provided for the return of that little
to their own hands at very short intervals. While the people retain
their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of
wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government
in the short space of four years.
My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and WELL upon this
whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.
If there be an object to HURRY any of you in hot haste to a step
which you would never take DELIBERATELY, that object will be
frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated
by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied, still have the
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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 Barlaam and Ioasaph by St. John of Damascus: salvation of our race, aware of the exceeding frailty and misery
of our nature, hath not even here suffered our sickness to be
without remedy. But, like a skilful leech, he hath mixed for our
unsteady and sin-loving heart the potion of repentance,
prescribing this for the remission of sins. For after that we
have received the knowledge of the truth, and have been
sanctified by water and the Spirit, and cleansed without effort
from all sin and all defilement, if we should fortune to fall
into any transgression, there is, it is true, no second
regeneration made within us by the spirit through baptism in the
water of the font, and wholly re-creating us (that gift is given
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