Today's Stichomancy for Rudi Bakhtiar
The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne: that his blood flows in your veins. He has confided to me his plans,
his hopes, and why and how he hopes to attain his object. He will no
doubt succeed. My dear Axel, it is a grand thing to devote yourself
to science! What honour will fall upon Herr Liedenbrock, and so be
reflected upon his companion! When you return, Axel, you will be a
man, his equal, free to speak and to act independently, and free to
--"
The dear girl only finished this sentence by blushing. Her words
revived me. Yet I refused to believe we should start. I drew Gräuben
into the Professor's study.
"Uncle, is it true that we are to go?"
 Journey to the Center of the Earth |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: wife and children. The water, touched to gold by the early
sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down
the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift -- all
had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new
disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear
ones was sound which he could neither ignore nor understand,
a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a
blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing
quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably
distant or near by -- it seemed both. Its recurrence was
regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He
 An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft: still send their eldest sons to Harvard and Miskatonic, though
those sons seldom return to the mouldering gambrel roofs under
which they and their ancestors were born.
No one, even those
who have the facts concerning the recent horror, can say just
what is the matter with Dunwich; though old legends speak of unhallowed
rites and conclaves of the Indians, amidst which they called forbidden
shapes of shadow out of the great rounded hills, and made wild
orgiastic prayers that were answered by loud crackings and rumblings
from the ground below. In 1747 the Reverend Abijah Hoadley, newly
come to the Congregational Church at Dunwich Village, preached
 The Dunwich Horror |
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 Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: believe that, if these were true, they were dependencies on my own nature,
in so far as it possessed a certain perfection, and, if they were false,
that I held them from nothing, that is to say, that they were in me
because of a certain imperfection of my nature. But this could not be the
case with-the idea of a nature more perfect than myself; for to receive it
from nothing was a thing manifestly impossible; and, because it is not
less repugnant that the more perfect should be an effect of, and
dependence on the less perfect, than that something should proceed from
nothing, it was equally impossible that I could hold it from myself:
accordingly, it but remained that it had been placed in me by a nature
which was in reality more perfect than mine, and which even possessed
 Reason Discourse |
|
|