I don't know if this belongs here or elsewhere, move if needed.
I have found a good book for ideas for patter and stories and how to find connections between your props and the audience. It is called "Dictionary of Symbols" by Jack Tresidder.
It is as the the title says, it is a guide and dictionary of traditional images, icons, and symbols. It talks about the symbolism of colors, animals, shapes, people types(priest, king, queen, etc), holidays and more. It is 240 pages long with index and illustrations. It also list the sybolic meenings of the items for different cultures (ie western vs native central American vs Chinese).You could look up for example an elephant and find the different meenings an elephant has with different cultures and pick one to make patter or a story about. One could find many meenings for an emeral to develop a unusal story/patter about a green stone.

Craig

You found a wonderful refererence book.

I bet combining it with information from essays by Lewis Thomas would facilitate dancing in both worlds just like Kekule's atoms.