Today's Stichomancy for Spike Lee

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato:

Plato's time, were filled with notions of an under-world.

16. Yet after all the belief in the individuality of the soul after death had but a feeble hold on the Greek mind. Like the personality of God, the personality of man in a future state was not inseparably bound up with the reality of his existence. For the distinction between the personal and impersonal, and also between the divine and human, was far less marked to the Greek than to ourselves. And as Plato readily passes from the notion of the good to that of God, he also passes almost imperceptibly to himself and his reader from the future life of the individual soul to the eternal being of the absolute soul. There has been a clearer statement and a clearer denial of the belief in modern times than is found in early Greek

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy:

since Chauvelin himself was on his track. After having cautioned him, she would perforce have to see him go off upon the terrible and daring mission; she could not even with a word or look, attempt to keep him back. She would have to obey, whatever he told her to do, even perhaps have to efface herself, and wait, in indescribable agony, whilst he, perhaps, went to his death.

But even that seemed less terrible to bear than the thought that he should never know how much she loved him--that at any rate would be spared her; the squalid room itself, which seemed to be waiting for him, told her that he would be here soon.

Suddenly her over-sensitive ears caught the sound of distant

The Scarlet Pimpernel

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft:

"11:30 P.M. Attention, Dyer, Pabodie, Douglas. Matter of highest - I might say transcendent - importance. Arkham must relay to Kingsport Head Station at once. Strange barrel growth is the Archaean thing that left prints in rocks. Mills, Boudreau, and Fowler discover cluster of thirteen more at underground point forty feet from aperture. Mixed with curiously rounded and configured soapstone fragments smaller than one previously found - star-shaped, but no marks of breakage except at some of the points. "Of organic specimens, eight apparently perfect, with all appendages. Have brought all to surface, leading

At the Mountains of Madness

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 Yates Pride by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman:

said he.

"I thought from what you said that day that you would be disappointed when you found out I had only the Lancaster linen and not a real baby," said Eudora with her calm, grand air and with no trace of a smile.

"Then that means that you say yes, Eudora?"

For the first time Eudora gave a startled glance at him. "Didn't you know?" she gasped.

"How should I? You had not said yes really, dear."

"Do you think," said Eudora Yates, "that I am not too proud to allow you to ask me if my answer were not yes?"