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.

White under the Red

A central theme of Red Tree, White Tree by Wendy Berg is that the color red represents the Human race, while white represents the Elven or Faery race. As noted in my June 13 post "Themes of interest in Red Tree, White Tree," the book also references "the idea of Elf-like beings putting on coats of skins to become human." Given the symbolism of red and white, and of a "coat" as a physical body, I thought that an Elf incarnate in a Human body might be represented by a person wearing a red coat over a white inner garment. I realized that the Magician card of the Rider-Waite Tarot features this imagery.

A bit later, I was browsing 4chan and ran across Del Parson's painting Jesus the Christ, one of the few pieces of Mormon art to have broken out of its religious ghetto to become iconic in the broader culture. It depicts Jesus wearing a red coat over a white inner garment.

This was not a one-time design choice on Mr. Parson's part. We see Jesus in the same outfit in Knocking at the Door (where the foliage above Jesus' head also parallels the Magician card) and In His Glory, among others.

The imagery of an immortal Being incarnating in a mortal "coat of skins" is obviously appropriate, but of course I don't think anyone would classify Jesus as an Elf or Faery.

After making the above observation, I read more in Red Tree, White Tree and found that Wendy Berg connects the blood and "water" that flowed from Jesus' side with red Human blood and white Faery blood.

The two streams of blood that flow from the living Christ are equally relevant to the human and Faery races. It suggests that whatever was achieved by Christ's death and redeeming blood was as true for the Faery race as for the human race, and the relevance of Christ is equal both to humans and Faeries/

This is a closer connection between Christ and Faerie than is usually made. The more usual position in Medieval times, as I understand it, was that fairies were akin to demons or fallen angels and were barred from Christian redemption. It is consonant with Tolkien, though, for whom Elves and Men are alike Eruhini, children of the same God.

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Note added (6:30 p.m.): Scrolling through this blog's homepage, I found that the next image below this post's series is another one of a man in a red "coat" (waistcoat) over a white inner garment, from the post "A severed head underwater" (June 14).

The gesture he is making is also extremely similar to that of Jesus in Del Parson's In His Glory above.

When I got that screenshot from a video to include in that post, my main concern was to get the caption that mentioned the "floating head." That caption stays on the screen for long enough that I had my choice of a picture of Leno himself or the valet. I went with the valet for no particular reason, with no idea that his clothing and gesture would later become relevant.

I've also read a little more in Red Tree, White Tree since publishing the original version of this post. Wendy Berg does indeed suggest that Jesus is in some sense a Faery:

Does this mean that Christ is a "Faery"? When we remember that the Elven/Faery race are not tiny grotesque creatures lurking under toadstools but tall, shining beings of great beauty and grace who possess immense wisdom, knowledge and understanding and who inspire and bring light and love to all who come into contact with them, then we are halfway there, but the whole truth is that Christ was both human and Faery. He is of the original root race from which both human and Faery evolved, and it is this which makes him the avatar for the future of both races.

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Second note added (10:00 p.m.): This post was about images of men dressed in red and white, the first example being the Rider-Waite Magician, shown against a bright yellow background. The first note above added Jay Leno to the mix.

Hours later, I checked /x/ and found a new Roy Jay thread, even though Roy Jay is pretty much played out. The lead image showed him not in his usual prison uniform but dressed in red and white (stripes, not a red coat over a white tunic) against a yellow background.

That's the name Jay again, as in Leno. The /x/ post begins thus:

A couple of years ago, the singer/comedian Roy Jay didn't exist. If you were here on the board when it happened, anons literally saw Google searches about Roy Jay change in an instant, the more we looked into him. His death is uncertain, photos of the man popped out of thin air, new footage magically appeared across YouTube, the people commenting on Roy Jay videos are clearly all bots, etc.

This ties Roy Jay to magic (like the Magician), and his photos popping "out of thin air" is somewhat similar to the "floating head" theme.

The stripes may seem at first to be rather different from the "white under red" theme of this post, but there's a connection. This morning, going through an unfamiliar part of the city, I saw a shop displaying what I at first thought was a Polish flag but soon realized was actually Indonesian -- the difference being that the Indonesian flag has white under red, while Poland has the reverse.

When I looked the flag up on Wikipedia, I read that "The flag's colours are derived from the banner of the 13th century Majapahit Empire." Here is Wikipedia's reconstruction of that banner:

Further note added: Just as I post about Elves dressing in red "coats" to enter the human world, photos of Trump meeting with red-robed Vanyar (or, some are saying, the Three Nephites) go viral.

More severed heads and wells

My last post, "A severed head underwater," documented a sync between an Arthurian legend I had just read about, in which a severed head is dropped down a well, and a similar scene I had recently read in a just-published Portuguese novel.

This evening I was poking around a bit on Mormon YouTube and ran across this comment referencing the 1838 massacre of Mormons at Hawn's Mill:

I am a descendant of a man killed at Hawn's Mill. He is buried in the well. His son survived by hiding under a wagon.

It's not a severed head, but wells are sufficiently unusual places of burial that it still counts as a fairly strong sync.

The title of my last post reminded me that Iris Murdoch had written a novel called A Severed Head, but I couldn't remember anything about it. Even reading the plot summary on Wikipedia didn't jog my memory.

Then I remembered another of her titles which specifically references an Arthurian legend about decapitation: The Green Knight. This one is much more memorable. Even though I've only read it once, 23 years ago (a year before the entirely forgotten A Severed Head), I found that I could remember the opening lines verbatim. I typed the following from memory, then looked it up, and didn't have to change anything but the punctuation.

'Once upon a time there were three little girls --'

'Oh look what he’s doing now!'

'And their names were --'

'Come here, come here.'

'And they lived at the bottom of a well.'

This novel came to mind because of the Arthurian decapitation connection, and the opening references (quoting Lewis Carroll's Dormouse) people "at the bottom of a well."

The Dormouse quotation is interspersed with lines spoken by another character, addressed to a dog -- specifically, to a collie. The most famous collie, Lassie, is best known for the non-existent storyline in which Timmy falls down a well.

(A minor ancillary sync is that this morning I helped a preschooler read a book in which a girl says to a dog, "Come here, Pat, come here!")

A severed head underwater

I just read in Wendy Berg's Red Tree, White Tree an old Arthurian legend about a man who, having dishonored a woman, is killed and his severed head dropped into a well.

The book I read immediately before this one was entirely different in character: Laeth's Powerless, a realistic novel set in Portugal in 2025. But, though any more detailed explanation would constitute a "spoiler," it contains a scene that parallels the above-mentioned Arthurian story remarkably closely.

Come to think of it, "head underwater" imagery also played a central role in Laeth's first novel, Phantasia.

Note added: As mentioned by Bill in the comments:

Themes of interest in Red Tree, White Tree

I've started reading Wendy Berg's Red Tree, White Tree, a book Bruce mentioned a while back, understanding it that it would be primarily a reinterpretation of the Matter of Britain based on the assumption that Guinevere and many of the other characters are Faery rather than Human.

I'm only about a third of the way through it, but already I've found a lot that is unexpectedly relevant to what we generally refer to as This Thing.

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1. Tolkien as non-fiction

This is an approach not too many people take, but Wendy Berg is one of them:

The power of Tolkien's work lies in the fact that he has not invented a fantastic or unreal story but that he used his imagination as the means by which he could remember some of the ancient history of our world when the human and Elven/Faery races walked the land together.

Nor is it only in a general way that Tolkien's writings reveal the ancient past. Berg cites details of Tolkien as if they were at least as authoritative as Geoffrey of Monmouth or Wolfram von Eschenbach.

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2. Coat of skins

One of Bill's deleted blogs was called Coat of Skins, a phrase from the Eden story which he took to refer to the physical body. He also often explored the idea of Elves or other higher beings incarnating in a human "coat of skins," sometimes symbolized by an ape or pig.

Here is Wendy Berg's take on the phrase from Genesis:

The phrase "coats of skins" does not refer to clothes but to that moment in creation when the binding limitation of the physical body within its containing skin was first made real. It is this coat of skin which marks the essential difference between human and Faery. . . . the creation of the limiting skin marked the first moment of the physicality of Adam and Eve. Up until this moment they, and the earth, were as the Faeries

Interpreting the "coat of skins" as a physical body is not an unusual approach, but the idea of Elf-like beings putting on coats of skins to become human makes this a much specific match with Bill's thinking.

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3. Split incarnations

The idea that single soul can temporarily "split" and incarnate in two separate bodies simultaneously is something one of my correspondents has been exploring (to explain for example how I can "be" Pharazon while the actual Pharazon is still imprisoned in the Caves of the Forgotten). Wendy Berg also proposes that this is possible, but only for Faeries. Then again, Faeries can incarnate in human "coats of skins," so the distinction is a malleable one.

Leodegrance has two identical daughters both called Gwenevere, one of whom was accepted as 'real' in the sense that she was recognised to be of royal status, while the other was not. . . . The two Gweneveres are two manifestations of the same incarnatory impulse: they are indeed both Gwenevere. Humans have one single spark of spiritual identity which manifests in only one physical body at any one place and time, but this is not so for the Faery race. What in human terms might be thought of as a 'clone' is not so in Faery terms, and while the concept of the individual spark or spirit is common to both human and Faery, the latter race is much more flexible and varied in its manifestation. What would seem inconceivable to us, something we would interpret as loss of our essential, spiritual oneness, is not so to the Faeries. It is possible for one Faery spirit to manifest in one, or two, or many different places at the same time.

Berg seems to be making a sharp distinction between Human and Faery here, but later she suggests that "it was perhaps the case that the false Gwenevere" -- one of the abovementioned pair who were "indeed both Gwenevere" in a way possible only for Faeries -- "was human and not Faery." So apparently one spirit who is "really" a Faery can have two simultaneous incarnations as a Faery and a Human. Could she have incarnated as two Humans instead? The significance of these distinctions, at least in terms of a given spirit's real or ultimate identity, begins to be rather unclear. However, it parallels Bill and Leo's ideas about Elves and Dwarves incarnating as Men.

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4. The White Tree

One of the main "articulations" Daymon Smith found between the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and Joseph Smith was the image of a White Tree. The parallel seems at first to be rather superficial, however. In Tolkien, it is an actual tree -- Telperion, one of the Two Trees of Valinor, and its various descendants -- while in the Book of Mormon it is a visionary symbol, "a representation of the tree of life," which in turn "was a representation of the love of God" (1 Ne. 15:22; 11:25). By calling it "the tree of life," Nephi implicitly identifies it with one of the two trees of Eden, the other being the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Telperion is also one of a pair, but its partner, Laurelin the Golden, seems quite different in character from the tree whose forbidden fruit brought suffering and death into the world. It is interesting, though, that in both the Legendarium and the Book, it is the White Tree alone that maintains its relevance through the ages, while its partner appears only in legends about the distant past.

The Bible makes no mention of the Tree of Life being white or having white fruit. That imagery comes from the Book of Mormon. But Wendy Berg, with no apparent knowledge of the Book, draws on Arthurian legend and arrives independently at this same idea of the biblical Tree of Life being a White Tree.

The Red Tree of her title then becomes identified with "the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil which might perhaps more accurately be called the 'tree which makes you human'."

The first tree brings death, but the second tree brings immortality. The first tree symbolises the condition of humankind and the second tree symbolises the condition of Faery, There are two trees in the Garden of Eden: human, and Faery, and the symbolism is of vital importance. The problem that the Lord God was so anxious to avoid, and with good reason, was that Adam should have simultaneous access to two states of being, human and Faery. He could be one or the other, but not both at the same time.

From here, she goes on to make independently the same connection that Daymon made only with the help of the Book of Mormon: Tolkien's White Tree is the Tree of Life. She then takes the next logical step, which I believe Daymon does not: Its partner is the Tree of Knowledge.

One is the Elven or Faery tree, and the other is the human tree . . . . Telperion was the elder, just as the Elves are the elder race. . . . Laurelin was the younger, just as the race of Men is the younger. . . . Laurelin represents the Sun, the Solar Logos of the human race. Telperion represents the Moon and the stars, and was the White Tree, the Faery Tree of Immortality, the second tree of the Garden of Eden.

I haven't yet digested all of this, nor even finished reading through the book, but I thought the presence of so much This Thing-related content in one short book on the seemingly unrelated topic of Arthurian legend was remarkable.