Today's Stichomancy for Wassily Kandinsky

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

I said to God, "How will he rise?"

God said, "He will not rise."

And I saw their eyes gleam from behind the bushes.

I said to God, "Are these men sane?"

God said, "They are not sane; there is no sane man in Hell."

And he told me to come further.

And I looked where I trod.

And we came where Hell opened into a plain, and a great house stood there. Marble pillars upheld the roof, and white marble steps let up to it. The wind of heaven blew through it. Only at the back hung a thick curtain. Fair men and women there feasted at long tables. They danced, and I saw

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy:

appearance, he was always worrying about his ugliness, while Uncle Seryózha was considered, and really was, a very handsome man. This is what my father says about Uncle Seryózha in his fragmentary reminiscences: "I and Nítenka¹ were chums, Nikólenka I revered, but Seryózha I admired enthusiastically and imitated; I loved him and wished to be he. "I admired his handsome exterior, his singing,--he was always a singer,--his drawing, his gaiety, and above all, however strange a thing it may seem to say, the directness of his egoism.²

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson:

all the muscles of the leg. And yet I had to keep close at hand and measure my advance exactly upon hers; for if I dropped a few yards into the rear, or went on a few yards ahead, Modestine came instantly to a halt and began to browse. The thought that this was to last from here to Alais nearly broke my heart. Of all conceivable journeys, this promised to be the most tedious. I tried to tell myself it was a lovely day; I tried to charm my foreboding spirit with tobacco; but I had a vision ever present to me of the long, long roads, up hill and down dale, and a pair of figures ever infinitesimally moving, foot by foot, a yard to the minute, and, like things enchanted in a nightmare, approaching no

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 Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley:

bloodthirsty humor. She has it--I have seen it in her again and again. I have told you, have I not? Can I forget the look of her eyes as she stood over that galleon's captain, with the smoking knife in her hand.--Ugh! And she is not tamed yet, as you can see, and never will be:--not that I care, except for her own sake, poor thing!"

"Cruel boy! to impute as a blame to the poor child, not only the errors of her training, but the very madness of her love!"

"Of her love?"

"Of what else, blind buzzard? From the moment that you told me the story of that captain's death, I knew what was in her heart--and