Say it loud -- I'm [inaudible] and I'm proud!

I find it highly entertaining that a certain advocacy movement currently brands itself as Pride, with no modifier. They're so proud they don't want to say what it is they're proud of. The pride that dare not speak its name. Quite the paradox.

October 3 and 4, and white crows

It is well known that reading about synchronicities induces them. It is also well known that I already experience more than my share of them. Nevertheless, here I am reading Stories from the Messengers, Mike Clelland's second book about owls, UFOs, and sync.

Some of the stories Clelland relates come from an elderly lady (b. 1943) who was at the time blogging under the pseudonym Gypsy Woman. He includes several long quotes from her, and her writing style reminded me of our own paranormal-experiencing Boomer lady, Debbie. One of her stories is of a near-death experience involving levitation: "I began to rise out of my body . . . I continued to move upward toward the ceiling."

Then I read this:

It was because of her essay about seeing that white owl out her bedroom window that I [Clelland] was introduced to Gypsy Woman. This was a sighting that foreshadowed the death of a close relative. This owl story takes place over two consecutive days, October 3 and 4 of 2013.

I have my own owl story which takes place over the very same consecutive days, October 3 and 4, but of 2009.

On May 30, I posted "Levitation, October 3, Ed Sullivan, and that scene in Communion." (Communion here refers to the film adaptation of the book by Whitley Strieber, who wrote the foreword for Clelland's book.) In that post, I write about finding a (fake) photo of a levitating woman that had been posted to /x/ on October 3, 2013 -- the same date as Gypsy Woman's experience. Here is Gypsy Woman, as quoted by Clelland (brackets and ellipsis in Clelland:

Yesterday morning [Oct. 3], I woke with a start -- didn't know why -- just woke as if someone had shaken my shoulder or something. I sat up in bed and looked around trying to figure out what was going on... I was sitting on the edge of the bed and something out the window of my sun room door caught my eye.

The property is covered in trees, but there's one tree at the end of the driveway that is, for all intents and purposes, dead. The limbs are always bare. I saw something in this tree, and whatever it was seemed really large. At first, I thought it was a helium balloon stuck on a limb, but it was probably as large as two or three of those balloons.

I walked over to the window and saw that it was an owl, a very large white owl.

In a comment posted earlier this morning, on "The red waistcoat again," Debbie reminds us that her "property is almost completely wooded." Helium balloon imagery obviously ties in with levitation.

In my May 30 post, I noted that Debbie's first email to me was dated October 3, 2021, in her time zone, but October 4 in mine. It was the next day (October 4 for her) that she first mentioned levitation.

These syncs made me curious about this Gypsy Woman, so I checked Clelland's footnotes and found her blog, which was clearly designed by someone who grew up before the rule of tincture was invented, and which hasn't been updated since 2013. Scrolling down, I found a post titled "ufo's in the desert and guns at area 51...my childhood travels," which I clicked since Area 51 has been in the sync stream.

The first comment there was by someone called Trish, who turned out to be Trish MacGregor, with a link to http://qqq.synchrosecrets.com/synchrosecrets. Clelland had mentioned a website called Synchro-Secrets a couple of times, but I hadn't been able to find it. Correcting Trish's typo, I found that www.synchrosecrets.com redirects to a website that is now called The Mystical Underground. In the sidebar there, I found a link to this book:

In "I will follow you into the dark" (June 19), I had posted about white owls and black crows. Clelland's book has a black owl on the cover, so now we have the reverse: a black owl and a white crow.

My post also mentioned non-black crows (the Red Crow of the Sun in Chinese tradition), as well as Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven," noting that the titular bird had originally been an owl. All this was enough for me to acquire a digital copy of White Crows. I don't intend to read it just yet, but I looked at the first few pages.

The first sentence of the first page -- a "Meet the Author" bio -- mentions that Trish MacGregor "in 2003 won the Edgar Allan Poe award for Out of Sight." The first page of the novel proper is an epigraph showing that the book's title comes from my philosophical namesake:

"If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you mustn't seek to show that no crows are; it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white."

- William James

It's also perhaps revelant that in Boster vs. Boster the Pig, the former Boster keeps an albino crow as a pet.

The red waistcoat again

I've just been listening to one of Jason Preston's interviews with satanic ritual abuse victims, which was released on June 17. Here is Jason in the very first frame of the video:

And here are some images I posted on the same day, June 17, in "White under the Red":

Update (11:00 p.m.): I wanted to search for images of Jason Preston to see if he often wears a red waistcoat. Since it's a common name, I added utah to the search string. The first result was for a different Jason Preston, a basketball player who briefly played for the Utah Jazz. His photo on Wikipedia matches one of the photos I saw in my dream about "The Kelly-Strawberry family" -- a light-skinned but not Caucasian basketball player with a Malcolm Gladwell hairstyle:

His jersey says "Ohio 0," which may be relevant since I grew up in Ohio and Bill has connected me with zero/cipher symbolism.

Since I'm adding this note, I'll also mention that the "White under the Red" post was occasioned by Wendy Berg's book Red Tree, White Tree, in which the White Tree is the Tree of Life, as in the Book of Mormon. One of the "chapters" in the Jason Preston video, beginning at 1:57:01, is called "The Tree of Life Programming System" and discusses the use of imagery from Lehi's Tree of Life Vision in organized abuse.

The Kelly-Strawberry family

I dreamt that we were preparing for a ritual in which we would symbolically burn (in effigy) the person who had burned Abinadi. In the Book of Mormon, of course, that person was King Noah, or someone acting under Noah's direction, but we never said that name. Instead, "the person who had burned Abinadi" was someone alive today, whose surname was Kelly-Strawberry. I couldn't remember the first name, and when I tried to find more information online, I found a Wikipedia article titled "Kelly-Strawberry family" listing dozens of notable members, mostly in the entertainment world, including one of the human actors in Sesame Street and a member of the Harlem Globetrotters. They were light-skinned but ethnically ambiguous, with several having an Afro/Jewfro hairstyle similar to that of Malcolm Gladwell or Art Garfunkel. My reaction to most of the names and faces was that I thought I might have heard of them before but couldn't be sure. This feeling persisted after I woke up, leading me to search the Web for the Kelly-Strawberry family just in case they really existed.

Let thy feet be shod also

This afternoon, I bought a new pair of leather shoes and, while I was removing the branding from them with a craft knife, I was listening to an audio recording of the Doctrine and Covenants. When I'd finished, I put the shoes on for the first time -- and as it happened, this action synchronized perfectly with the recording saying, "Let thy feet be shod also" (D&C 112:7).

Just a little coincidence, but shoes have been a major running sync theme, as has Thomas B. Marsh, the person to whom that section of the D&C is addressed.

I will follow you into the dark

This morning I was in a cafe reading Stories from the Messengers, Mike Clelland's second book about owls, UFOs, and synchronicity. I read this:

A white owl glided gracefully into their headlight beams and flew right in front of their car, just a few feet off the road. They both got the sense that it was guiding them somewhere. Caught up in the thrill of following this majestic bird throughout the night, Bert accelerated to keep up with the white owl.

At that moment, I became curious about the background music and googled the lyrics. It was "Here to Forever" by Death Cab for Cutie.

I remembered that years ago I'd posted one of that band's album covers, with a crow on it. I thought the black crow made a nice complement to the white owl. I remembered that Edgar Allan Poe's famous Raven had originally been an owl, and that the bust of Pallas in the published poem is a holdover from that earlier imagery.

Given the Chinese tradition of the Red Crow of the Sun, there could even be a tie-in with recent red-and-white posts. Maolsheachlann recently listed his favorite animal as the crow and his favorite color combination as red and white. And didn't that Death Cab album cover show the crow tangled in red thread?

I looked up that old post, "Corvids singing in the dead of night" (July 2021). It had attracted two comments, not counting my own reply to one of them. The first quotes extensively from Poe's "The Raven" and draws especial attention to -- what else? -- the bust of Pallas:

Is the Bust of Pallas the TV? Looks like Edger Allen Poe prophecied that the corvid will nevermore leave the TV.

The second comment was from someone going by A. That got my attention because someone using the same handle recently commented on "The white blood of Jesus." A writes, referencing Death Cab for Cutie:

The first result for me was "I Will Follow You Into The Dark", which is about death.

This brings us back to what I had just read when I took a break to look up a Death Cab for Cutie song: "following this majestic bird throughout the night."

We may have some Elijah symbolism here, too. The prophet was fed by ravens, and as Hinbad the Hailer he ascended to heaven "in a yellow car," or cab.

Update (1:40 p.m.): Hours after publishing the above, ending with the reference to Elijah's supernatural chariot of fire as a "cab," I read this quote from a self-styled shaman in Stories from the Messengers:

Everything happens simultaneously everywhere. It’s like a dream where you get in a taxi in Paris, and at exactly the same time you get out of that same taxi in New York.

Another reference to a taxi providing transportation of a supernatural sort. 

Second update (1:45 p.m.): Shortly after the above quote, I read this:

Was Gwenhyfar, the white owl, one of the messengers that brought the knowledge of the cauldron of Annwn or the Holy Grail, to Arthur?

Gwenhwyfar is the Welsh name of Guinevere, who was the main focus of the Wendy Berg book I just read. Turning from that to a book about owls and UFOs, I certainly didn't expect to run into Guinevere and Arthur and the Holy Grail again!

The white blood of Jesus

In Red Tree, White Tree, Wendy Berg maintains that Humans have red blood, Faeries have white blood, and Jesus had both.

The Bible makes reference to two streams of blood issuing from Christ's side: "But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came thereout blood and water. And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe."

We find it easy to accept that one of the streams of fluid that came from Christ's side was blood, but the exact nature of the other fluid is less obvious. . . . John's suggestion that it was water can also hardly be true: Christ's veins were not filled with water. Yet they contained two different, life-supporting fluids.

The only other clue to the identity of this mysterious fluid lies in the tradition that Joseph of Arimathea brought two cruets with him to Glastonbury, each containing one of the fluids which flowed from Christ's side. One of these contained red liquid and the other, a white fluid. . . .

Throughout this study we have noted the many descriptions of the white, shining appearance of the Faery race, as if the life-sustaining fluid within their bodies was white. The two streams of blood that flow from the living Christ are equally relevant to both the human and Faery races.

As its title suggests, Wendy Berg's book also has to do with two trees, one red and the other white, and these are the two trees of Eden. The red Tree of Knowledge bears the fruit "which makes you human." The white Tree of Life is the Faery tree that gives immortality.

Near the end of the book, Berg suggests that the "fruit" of the Tree of Life might actually be more like a liquid. (Coincidentally, I gave the fruit of the other tree a similar interpretation in my April 6 stanza "Garden," in which the bitter cup Jesus drank before his execution was "the juice of Eden's bitter tree," rendering him mortal.) She cites an Ophite reference to being "anointed with the white chrism which flows from the tree of life" and comments:

This suggests that the fruit of the Tree of Life is actually a substance excreted by the tree, perhaps a kind of sap which, when consumed, has an effect on the human body such that it does not age in the normal manner.

After citing several more references to the white chrism, she concludes:

The similarity between the white fire called chrism, and the white fire which is the life-sustaining substance, the blood of the Faery race, is persuasive.

In other words, the white liquid from the Tree of Life and the white liquid that issued from Christ's side may be essentially one and the same.

In speculating that immortal Beings have something other than red blood in their veins, we are on solid Mormon grounds. Joseph Smith is reported to have taught:

Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, or the kingdom that God inhabits, but the flesh without the blood, and the spirit of God flowing in the veins in the stead of the blood, for blood is the part of the body that causes corruption.

The idea of Jesus having white blood is also consistent with the many references -- mainly in the Book of Mormon but also in the Bible -- to garments being made white in the blood of the Lamb (Rev. 7:14; 1 Ne. 12:10-11; Alma 5:21, 27; 13:11; 34:36; Morm. 9:6; Ether 13:10).

In the Fourth Gospel, the second stream that flows from Jesus' side is called "water." This is interesting in connection with these other references from the same Gospel:

He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water (John 7:38).

But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life (John 4:14).

This "living water" is spoken of as flowing inside a person's body, almost as if it were a second sort of blood.

Interesting, "living waters" are referenced only once in the Book of Mormon, and the Tree of Life is their source:

And it came to pass that I beheld that the rod of iron, which my father had seen, was the word of God, which led to the fountain of living waters, or to the tree of life; which waters are a representation of the love of God; and I also beheld that the tree of life was a representation of the love of God (1 Ne. 11:25).

For Joseph Smith, the second blood is "the spirit of God flowing in the veins." This may be relevant to John 6 where, after speaking of the need for others to eat his flesh and drink his blood, Jesus says -- confusingly, after this insistence on the vital importance of eating his flesh -- "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing" (John 6:63).

The flesh and blood of Jesus seem to be interchangeable with the fruit and juice of the Tree of Life. This is consistent with 1 Nephi 11, where Nephi, wanting to know the meaning of the White Tree, is shown by way of explanation a white virgin with a child:

I beheld a virgin, and she was exceedingly fair and white. . . . And I looked and beheld the virgin again, bearing a child in her arms.

And the angel said unto me: Behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the Son of the Eternal Father! Knowest thou the meaning of the tree which thy father saw?

And I answered him, saying: Yea, it is the love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men; wherefore, it is the most desirable above all things (1 Ne 11:13, 20-22).

Some of the language -- "sheddeth," "in the hearts" -- seems to reinforce the "blood" connection.