Today's Stichomancy for Richard Wilhelm
The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: every one was a personality, from Hen Cody, the drayman, in
blue overalls (magically transformed on Sunday mornings into
a suave black-broadcloth usher at the Congregational
Church), to A. J. Dawes, who owned the waterworks before the
city bought it. Mrs. Brandeis was a super-personality.
Winnebago did not know it. Winnebago, buying its dolls, and
china, and Battenberg braid and tinware and toys of Mrs.
Brandeis, of Brandeis' Bazaar, realized vaguely that here
was some one different.
When you entered the long, cool, narrow store on Elm Street,
Mrs. Brandeis herself came forward to serve you, unless she
 Fanny Herself |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: this kingdom, whose whole subsistence put into a common stock,
would leave them in debt two million of pounds sterling, adding
those who are beggars by profession, to the bulk of farmers,
cottagers and labourers, with their wives and children, who are
beggars in effect; I desire those politicians who dislike my
overture, and may perhaps be so bold to attempt an answer, that
they will first ask the parents of these mortals, whether they
would not at this day think it a great happiness to have been
sold for food at a year old, in the manner I prescribe, and
thereby have avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortunes, as
they have since gone through, by the oppression of landlords, the
 A Modest Proposal |
The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: reflective. Juana became profoundly sad as she saw the nature and the
extent of the life before her. Often she turned her eyes, brimming
with tears proudly repressed, upon Perez and Dona Lagounia, who fully
comprehended, both of them, the bitter thoughts those tears contained.
But they were silent: of what good were reproaches now; why look for
consolations? The deeper they were, the more they enlarged the wound.
One evening, Juana, stupid with grief, heard through the open door of
her little room, which the old couple had thought shut, a pitying moan
from her adopted mother.
"The child will die of grief."
"Yes," said Perez, in a shaking voice, "but what can we do? I cannot
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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 Charmides by Plato: its way to prove the inutility of that which we admitted only by a sort of
supposition and fiction to be the true definition of temperance or wisdom:
which result, as far as I am concerned, is not so much to be lamented, I
said. But for your sake, Charmides, I am very sorry--that you, having such
beauty and such wisdom and temperance of soul, should have no profit or
good in life from your wisdom and temperance. And still more am I grieved
about the charm which I learned with so much pain, and to so little profit,
from the Thracian, for the sake of a thing which is nothing worth. I think
indeed that there is a mistake, and that I must be a bad enquirer, for
wisdom or temperance I believe to be really a great good; and happy are
you, Charmides, if you certainly possess it. Wherefore examine yourself,
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