Today's Stichomancy for Vladimir Putin
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Oedipus Trilogy by Sophocles: PRIEST
Yea, Oedipus, my sovereign lord and king,
Thou seest how both extremes of age besiege
Thy palace altars--fledglings hardly winged,
and greybeards bowed with years; priests, as am I
of Zeus, and these the flower of our youth.
Meanwhile, the common folk, with wreathed boughs
Crowd our two market-places, or before
Both shrines of Pallas congregate, or where
Ismenus gives his oracles by fire.
For, as thou seest thyself, our ship of State,
 Oedipus Trilogy |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: then sat down to the telephone to invite her friends. Mr. Oglethorpe,
the clergyman, and his wife accepted cheerfully; Harrison Miller,
resignedly. Then Mrs. Wheeler drew a long, resolute breath and
invited Mrs. Sayre. When that lady accepted with alacrity Mrs.
Wheeler hastily revised her menu, telephoned the florist for flowers,
and spent a long half-hour with Annie over plates and finger bowls.
Jim was not coming home, and Elizabeth was dining with Nina. Mrs.
Wheeler bustled about the house contentedly. Everything was going
well, after all. Before long there would be a car, and Jim would
spend more time at home. Nina and Leslie were happy again. And
Elizabeth - not a good match, perhaps, but a marriage for love, if
 The Breaking Point |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw: generally assumes them to be during their lifetime: that is, a
licentiously irregular group to be kept in order in a rough and
ready way by a magistrate who will stand no nonsense from them.
But I cannot admit that the class represented by Eschylus,
Sophocles, Aristophanes, Euripides, Shakespear, Goethe, Ibsen,
and Tolstoy, not to mention our own contemporary playwrights, is
as much in place in Mr Redford's office as a pickpocket is in Bow
Street. Further, it is not true that the Censorship, though it
certainly suppresses Ibsen and Tolstoy, and would suppress
Shakespear but for the absurd rule that a play once licensed is
always licensed (so that Wycherly is permitted and Shelley
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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 The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas: From that moment he began to dodge the steps of Rosa, not
only following her to the garden, but also to the lobbies.
Only as this time he followed her in the night, and
bare-footed, he was neither seen nor heard except once, when
Rosa thought she saw something like a shadow on the
staircase.
Her discovery, however, was made too late, as Boxtel had
heard from the mouth of the prisoner himself that a second
bulb existed.
Taken in by the stratagem of Rosa, who had feigned to put it
in the ground, and entertaining no doubt that this little
 The Black Tulip |
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