Priests and rills

I thought I had posted about this before, but a search for rill comes up empty, so here it is again. This is an anonymous poem that was anthologized in one of the McGuffey Eclectic Readers:

Run, run, thou tiny rill;

Run, and turn the village mill;

Run, and fill the deep, clear pool

In the woodland's shade so cool,

Where the sheep love best to stray

In the sultry summer day;

Where the wild birds bathe and drink,

And the wild flowers fringe the brink.

Run, run, thou tiny rill,

Round the rocks, and down the hill;

Sing to every child like me;

The birds will join you, full of glee:

And we will listen to the song

You sing, your rippling course along.

One of my younger siblings (I don't remember which), reading this, didn't understand the key word and asked what a rill was. Whatever the answer, he or she somehow misheard it as "a clergyman." Thus this became a poem about a tiny clergyman running round the rocks and down the hill, in search of straying sheep. This singing rill also became associated with the singing clergyman played by Bing Crosby in the 1944 film Going My Way. We had never seen this movie but thought the poster was amusing. At one point, someone made a handmade Going My Way poster that advertised the film as "positively packed with clergymen!" (Clergyman is one of those inherently funny words.)

Wade has recently been suggesting that I'm going to take on some kind of priestly role. This has mostly been in connection with Levites, but the original comment, on "Levitation, October 3, Ed Sullivan, and that scene in Communion," was this:

Your use of "cleromancy" intrigues me. It has such affinity with the word "cleric" that it could almost mean "divination by a cleric". And aren't you a sort of cleric?

Cleromancy is quite similar to clergyman, and here Wade linked the word to the synonym cleric (an Islamic or D&D word not nearly as inherently funny as clergyman), which brought the poem about the singing rill back to mind. Subsequent comments by Wade twice used the phrase "cleric or priest," singling out a particular sort of clergyman.

To virtually no one else on earth does the word rill have any connection with priests or clergymen, so I thought it was quite a coincidence to run into this in my reading today -- from Dion Fortune's The Sea Priestess, as quoted by Wendy Berg in Red Tree, White Tree (ellipsis in Berg):

Now the Priest of the Moon ... had seen that the seership had fallen on evil days, and had gone back, as men must, to an older and purer faith, tracing the river to the rill till he came to the pure source

A house made entirely of doors

En route to archive.org, I got a random /x/ thread featuring a "house that is made completely out of doors."

In "Further Doors-related syncs" (January 2023), I posted my own photo of "a building that not only has a green door but appears to be constructed entirely of green doors!"

Here are some of the comments on the /x/ thread:

The Cheshire Cat has been in the sync stream recently, and the "hole in time" reference syncs with yesterday's "A white hart and a portal to a parallel world," which mentions "a time/space warp that sucks the objects around it into a parallel universe."

A colorful tree-dwelling civilization

I had an extremely detailed dream of which I can unfortunately only remember the general idea. I was looking through a coffee-table book about an imagined civilization whose exact name I can't remember, but it was a four-syllable name beginning with A- and ending in -onhi, and I thought it was clearly intended to sound like something out of the Book of Mormon. The book was full of full-page paintings of this civilization, showing their architecture, mode of dress, etc., together with detailed written descriptions. I took in quite a lot of this detail but again have forgotten most of it. They made extensive use of "flets" -- platforms built high in trees, like those of  Lothlórien in The Lord of the Rings -- but the people did not look at all like Tolkienian Elves. They wore very complicated clothing in bright reds, yellows, and greens, and the overall effect reminded me somewhat of Aztec images such as this one:

The resemblance was only very superficial, though. Overall, I was struck by how original their costumes were. The author had not copied the style of any real-world civilization but had imagined a completely new culture in a level of detail that made it fully convincing. Looking through the book reminded me of how I felt decades ago when I read a list of titles of works by one of Robert Lindner's mental patients:

. . . "The Religious Beliefs of the Valley Dwellers," "Manufacturing Processes and Dye Chemistry," "Fire Worship and Sacrifice on Srom Sodrat II," "Food Distribution in Seranen," "Sex Habits and Practices of the Crystopeds, "Plant Biology and Genetic Science of Srom Olma I," and so on . . .

I wanted to read them all, and I resented Dr. Lindner for just giving us the titles and nothing else. I felt the same way in the dream. I was absolutely fascinated by this imagined civilization and wanted to read all about it.

Later in the dream, an archaeologist was showing me some recently discovered stone tablets, and he said that all the information in the book I had been looking through came from these tablets. I was astonished: "Wait, you mean it's real?"

Hundreds of these tablets had been found. Each was about a foot and a half square and two or three inches thick and was engraved on one side only. They had been used as roofing tiles on several ancient buildings, and only recently had archaeologists discovered that there was text engraved on the undersides of these tiles, which could only be seen by removing them from the roof. The text had been deciphered, and it surprisingly turned out not to deal with historical or mythological events but rather to give a very detailed description of every aspect of the culture that had created them. Again, I wanted to read it all, but unfortunately I soon woke up and found my memory of the details rapidly evaporating.

Quotable quotes from my commenters

Following links from old posts I had linked in my last post, "A white hart and a portal to a parallel world," led me to these two quotes (from this post and this video, respectively), each attributed to someone who comments here:

A white hart and a portal to a parallel world

This afternoon, I read this in Wendy Berg's Red Tree, White Tree, just one page after a statement that the race of Faerie "now exists in parallel with, but mostly invisible to, the human race."

The appearance of a white hart, or a black dog, or a raven, will often indicate the opening of the ways between the human and Green World [of Faerie], and those whose awareness is drawn to these creatures are alerted to the fact that the veil between the worlds is about to be lifted and may allow the seeker to pass through.

A few hours later, I was looking for something on archive.org and, as usual, clicked for a randomly selected /x/ thread en route. I got a 2020 Divination General thread with this as the lead image:

It's the Hermit card from a deck called the Tarot of the Divine, the main departure from the usual iconography being the addition of a white hart. That coincidence piqued my curiosity, so I immediately clicked for a second random thread and got this one from 2023, with this as the lead image:

As the original filename makes clear, this is meant to be a depiction of the Bermuda Triangle -- reputed to be a portal by which people may "pass through" into another world. As Wikipedia summarizes it:

Some hypothesize that a parallel universe exists in the Bermuda Triangle region, causing a time/space warp that sucks the objects around it into a parallel universe.

An airplane flying into a "time/space warp" reminded me of this image, which I posted in "Love pop, baby, love pop" (September 2024).

The band is named after an aircraft, and the concentric circles in the background are juxtaposed in the post with several similar designs suggesting portals or time warps, such as this one:

I've also posted a similar design featuring a white hart, as in this image from "Follow-up on antlers, crosses, and the Liahona" (February 2024):

Farley Fee Fratt and Peanut Butter Lewis

This nonsense dredged up from the past is Wade's fault.

In a June 7 comment on "The closest calendrical approximations of pi," he wrote:

What's more, we recently discussed the significance of "P" (as in black-eyed p).

Now, pi (rhymes with "pie") in classical Greek, is customarily pronounced pi (rhymes with "pea").

In order for P to resonate with "Pharazôn", it would by rights have to be phi (rhymes with "fee").

One of my younger brothers, when he was very young, used to make up nonsense variants of names found in the Doctrine and Covenants. I don't know why I have such a photographic memory for this gibberish, but I do. One of his creations was this set of names:

Parley P. Pratt

Barley B. Bratt

Farley Fee Fratt

Marley Mee Mratt

In order to preserve the alliteration, Messrs. Fratt and Mratt got middle "initials" that were not pronounced in the standard way, and their "etymology" is that they are variants of Mr. Pratt's middle initial of P. So, as in Wade's comment, we have Fee as a variant of P.

The other thing Wade has been commenting about is his idea that I'm supposed to be some sort of priest or something, and that recent syncs related to levitation are actually meant to draw my attention to the similar-looking word Levite. This led me to write, in a June 7 comment on "It is impossible for people to fly -- but they did":

There's some French joke about being a Marxist of the Groucho variety. If I were a Levite, it would be of the Eliphas variety.

Éliphas Lévi, the 19th-century French priest-turned-magician, whose influence on all subsequent "magical" thought cannot be overstated, was born Alphonse-Louis Constant and created his nom de guerre by choosing Hebrew names that were superficially similar to his given names. Thus, in his case, Lévi was derived from Louis. He is not the only one to have made the connection. The surname Lewis can be a variant either of Louis or of various Jewish surnames deriving from Levi. If these names are considered interchangeable, that makes me a "son of Levi" by virtue of the fact that my father's name is Louis.

In yesterday's "Jam I am," I posted this picture, which includes an anthropomorphic jar of peanut butter with the initials PB on his breast pocket. 

This -- together with my thoughts on the name Lewis in connection with Wade, who had also just reminded me of Farley Fee Fratt and company -- made me think of another of my brother's sets of names:

P. B. Lewis (Peanut Butter Lewis)

P. B. Lewis (Philip Butter Lewis)

P. I. Lewis (Peanut Butter Lewis)

P. A. Lewis (Papa Lewis)

These people all had to be referred to by both their initials and their full names in parentheses, since there were two different P. B. Lewises with different middle names and (somehow) two different Peanut Butter Lewises with different initials. This reminds me of how Bill's comments are always signed "William Wright (WW)," with both his full name and his initials.

At one point, my brother wrote a short and intentionally confusing a story about the four Lewises, but it didn't make it into the Commentarius Coccineus, and I don't remember any of the details.

Jam I am

Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am, who shares both my March 15 birthday and my given names of William James, came up in the comments on "The Byrds and Byrd, Marcellus and Marsellus" (June 3). Bill Wright wrote:

Interesting. He goes by the stage name Will.i.am, which turns William into a form of the sacred name: Will I AM.

I AM brings up two interesting links. First, it appears once in the Old Testament, at the Burning Bush. When Moses asks who it is he should tell the Children of Israel that has sint him to them, I AM is the name given. The story of the Exodus, and Moses and Pharoah I think is relevant here given the other symbols, as well as the future story of the Seer in 2 Nephi 3 and the ensuing modern-day Exodus (from this world, I believe).

Second, and directly from the first, is we have another very specific reference to 3.14 or Pi. The passage with the name I AM comes from Exodus 3:14.

I replied:

I also used to use "will.i.am," which is how I became aware of Mr. Adams's existence. Someone tried to sell me the domain name will.i.am after first offering it to the rapper, who wasn't interested.

https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2021/10/no-escape-from-coincidence.html

William James has two instances of "I AM" (since J is historically a form of the letter I), corresponding to "I AM THAT I AM."

Will.i.am also alludes to Dr. Seuss's "Sam-I-Am." Sam is short for Samuel, which, appropriately enough, means "the name of God."

So we have will.i.am and Sam-I-Am, plus a note that in more traditional spelling -- prior to the introduction of J as a distinct letter from I -- my middle name would also have included I AM.

This afternoon I suddenly remembered these pages from Take Away the A -- the alphabet book that entered the sync stream in "The Ant Money experiment: Immediate results" (May 19).

It says "Without the J, JAM I AM." This is obviously related to Sam-I-Am and will.i.am, and also to my note about the history of the alphabet: "Without the J [as a distinct letter], JAM [is written as] I AM." Note also that the key words are written in all caps, just as in Exodus 3:14.

And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

It turns out that will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas also has a "jam" connection:

Joints have appeared here before, in "Sympathy and dice" (October 2025), in connection with these lines from a Tom Petty song:

So let's get to the point, let's roll another joint

And let's head on down the road

There's somewhere I gotta go

And you don't know how it feels

You don't know how it feels to be me

The song's repeated emphasis on how it feels "to be me" is a link to "I AM." Tom Petty also has a "jam" song, again with a link to "me":

That's a black-and-white photo colorized to make the eyes blue.

In "No escape from coincidence" (October 2021), where I first discovered that I share a name and birthday with will.i.am, I wrote:

Years before learning that, I had come up with the band name (every kid comes up with band names) Blue-Eyed Bees, which was inspired by two Sugarcubes songs ("Blue Eyed Pop" and "Bee") and was supposed to be a pun on "how blue I'd be without you" or something. I think I still have some of the album cover art. Never realized the similarity to “Black Eyed Peas” until just now.

I don't still have any of the album cover art, but I remember what it looked like: a close-up black-and-white photo of a bee's face, photoshopped to make the eyes blue. Here's a quick and dirty re-creation:

That design was in part an homage to this book cover:

Transformation is a Latin calque of the Greek metamorphosis. One associates that word with butterflies, but bees do it, too.