Update: Some additional pebbles have been seen

First, some comments by others on "All the pebbles I have seen," pasted here for searchability and ease of reference.

William Wright (WW) said...

When I read the line about "precious stones for Colleen", the image that actually came to my mind was Ungoliant. Specifically, the scene in which, after she and Melkor kill the Two Trees, Melkor is forced to give Ungoliant all of the Elvish gems and precious stones he stole from Formenos. It was based on an agreement Melkor was forced to make in order to recruit Ungoliant's help. She made him give her all of his stones, except the Silmarils, which he refused and almost was destroyed by her over it.

Anyway, so I associated this Colleen with Ungoliant, and I then tried to see if there was a name connection that could help explain the instant association. Colleen simply means "woman, young girl", so not super specific or helpful. However, I then remembered a word game I had done with Ungoliant some time ago, and it seemed to make sense.

As you know, both roots of Ungoliant's name - Ungol and Liante means "Spider", which seems strange to have Spider-Spider as the name. Ungol, however, can refer to something else. I actually tied it to Uncle Jay (my Ungol - Unkle game), and thus also Ahab at the time (which means Uncle).

Ungol, in one Elvish language, can mean "Darkness", primarily from Ung- but we can get after it from a different angle looking at the root "Gol". We see this root in Thingol, and it means a "Cloak", which is an apt part of Ungoliant's name meaning in that she is specifically mentioned as being able to cloak herself and others in a cloud of darkness that allowed them to evade detection. So, Ungol (Ung-gol) literally means "dark cloak", and thus Ungoliant "Dark Cloak Spider". At least that is what one version of her name I've arrived at.

In any case, it is interesting because a form of Gol is Coll/ Kol, meaning the same thing (which also gets back to the Unkle-Unkol word game). And Coll- is obviously right there as a root in Colleen

Seemed to fit, at least backing into it.

February 12, 2026 at 9:02 AM

William Wright (WW) said...

The Dark Cloak Spider also fits well with the Octopus symbolism. The Octopus evades detection by use of its dark cloud of "ink".

The ink, to me, is also highly symbolic since Ungoliant has and will use "ink" - as in the things that are written - to take away light and truth, as in with the Book of the Lamb.

February 12, 2026 at 9:06 AM

William Wright (WW) said...

The singer/songwriter of the song you feature here "The Summer Day Reflections", also seems to tie into this theme.

Donovan Leitch.

Donovan means "Dark/ Black".

Leitch is an interesting pairing. At first, it looked like it simply meant "Doctor", but even that is more complicated as it can refer to sorcery, per Etymonline, with words like "Enchanter, Conjurer" or "one who speaks magic words". So, something like a Wizard, perhaps. The Dark Wizard.

But, it turns out the name has a folk etymology that connects this name with Leeches, which seems natural. Some argue it came about because doctors use to be the ones who would apply leeches to suck people's blood, and thus the bloodsuckers got the name Leech/ Leitch from the doctors themselves. Who knows.

But it is interesting to have this reference to a Leech, or "Bloodsucking aquatic worm". Ungoliant has been directly compared to a Vampire in other interesting symbols and songs (e.g., Vampire Weekend), the most famous kind of bloodsuckers.

So, an aquatic Dark Bloodsucker is what Donovan Leitch can give us.

Which then makes the title of the song also interesting in looking up various meanings of "reflections".

February 12, 2026 at 11:49 AM

William Wright (WW) said...

And I have a good solve for the full name Colleen now looking at the back half of the name, so this is looking pretty solid.

As mentioned, Coll- in Elvish is "Cloak".

"Line" (the "Lin" would be said just like the Leen in Colleen, then add the "a" sound at the end thanks to the e), can mean "Cobweb", it turns out. In the discussion on Eldamo for this word, it was said to derive from the earlier, primitive "sligne", which meant "spider, spider’s web, cobweb".

So, Colleen understood in the form of the Elvish Coll-Line can mean "Cloak Spider". I should have seen it earlier, actually, because if you take off the "Ung" part of Ung-Gol, which gives you the "Dark/ Black" definition, you are left with Goliante for her name, or Koliante. You can hear Colleen in that name, particularly as you leave off the -te, which gets you back to something similar to that original "Line" form.

"Precious stones for Coll-line"

February 12, 2026 at 12:03 PM

WanderingGondola said...

As this post makes connections to a passage involving Joseph of Dreams, and those song lines came about through the Three of Pentacles -- its meanings including learning, growth and collaboration -- I'm inclined to think there's a much more positive connotation to "Colleen" than Ungoliant, of all entities.

February 12, 2026 at 12:30 PM

William Wright (WW) said...

I've been thinking more on the Three of Pentacles/ Coins here and its role in that phrase the came to William's mind and the tie in to my hypothesis regarding Ungoliant.

The card features a Stonemason, which is interesting given some of the recent LDS temple endowment symbolism (the endowment is said to be based on Freemasonry rites, which trace back to the stonemasons guilds).

This could be a tipoff to what the Book of Mormon calls Secret Combinations. When the Book of Mormon was first published, that term was so tied to Freemasonry in the US, many assumed the book itself was anti-Masonic and thus a product of its day, particularly given how the book's Combinations had secret signs and oaths they gave.

William, you recently brought up Cain again, interestingly, citing Moses 5, which has some interesting things to say about Secret Combinations, and that Cain first instituted them among men. In that chapter, the author speaks of those combinations working in the dark:

"For, from the days of Cain, there was a secret combination, and their works were in the dark, and they knew every man his brother."

The Three of Pentacles shows these men working literally in the dark - the men are juxtaposed against a completely black background and environment while they discuss their plans. As WG notes, the card can refer to collaboration, which is a synonym for or same meaning as combination, in that you have a group of people united and working toward some end. In the case of the Secret Combination, this collaboration was held together via oaths and signs, and with the ultimate objective to "get gain".

The LDS endowment prior to 1990 had penalties associated with breaking the oaths, which involved hand motions where recipients would slit their own throats and disembowel themselves, in that they would die in those ways if they broke the oath. This gets right at how Satan first sets up the Secret Combinations with Cain, who is forced to promise "by his throat" and die if he revealed Satan's secret:

"And Satan said unto Cain: Swear unto me by thy throat, and if thou tell it thou shalt die; and swear thy brethren by their heads, and by the living God, that they tell it not; for if they tell it, they shall surely die"

Again, these types of penalties are found both in Freemasonry and in earlier versions of the LDS endowment, so the presence of a Stone Mason in the Three of Pentacles, and them all working in the dark, at least teases at the possibility that this 'collaboration' is not necessarily ultimately good.

And Secret Combinations bring us right back to The Great and Abominable Church, and its Mother Ungoliant, who is also called the "Mother of Abominations". In that story in Moses 5, Cain's works were specifically called abominations. And on the Three of Pentacles, the men are working on/ in a Cathedral or Church.

February 13, 2026 at 12:32 AM

I think Bill's dot-connecting is quite solid here, and I'm inclined to think he's on the right track. WG says that the synching passage I read in The Words of the Faithful seems to suggest a more positive meaning (and she has a point; more on that below), but as I kept reading in that book, just a few pages later I found this:

While [Miriam and Doral were] thus contemplating the ends of each choice, and the fruits of wise decisions thus far received, a hawk or phantom of one, flown over high up, descended in a swoon, and landed, wrestling a many tentacled sea-creature. When come upon by the women, curious to discover such an odd thing (as one) from the sky fallen, to vapor they turned, being blown away west upon a breeze, as if running to the falling sun thither. Of the eight tentacles, but seven were seen to remain, and the wing of the bird was broken, clipped and tangled in a mesh.

As always, the writing is confusing (the creature turned to vapor and blew away but left behind seven of its tentacles?), but eight tentacles makes the thing definitionally an octopus, a symbol that has been closely associated with Ungoliant. The hawk is closely related to the kite, a bird which was mentioned in my post and will come up again in what follows.

After this strange augury of a hawk wrestling an octopus, "much was said of the sign, or omen . . . It was decided that all things were now entangled, good and evil . . . ." Colleen seems like a positive symbol but also seems to represent Ungoliant. The kite (Garuda) is connected to Flight of the Gargoyle, the movie that gave "abomination "new meaning, but Bill has also proposed a positive take on the gargoyle symbol.

When I opened my browser to compose the present post, I saw that I had the latest Duckstack, "Irrigation Regardless," open in a tab and still unread. Should I read it first or do the post first? In order to help me decide, I scrolled down to the bottom of the Duckstack to get a feel for how long it was. At the bottom of the page, I found this juxtaposition:

The last link on the page is to a post called "Spite Kite." The reference appears to be the toy ("We're flying our emotions today. The sky is blue"), while the kite I am interested in is a bird, specifically Garuda. Take a look at the accompanying illustration, though. It shows birds, one of which is attacking a snake -- a snake which unexpectedly has a hand instead of a head.

The fingers give impression of a many-headed snake, or hydra. See also my 2022 Tarot post "Lightning from the Sun?", which concludes with, "That's an extremely specific coincidence! The same thing can resemble either a hand or an eight-tentacled 'octopus' depending on how you look at it." See also the hand-octopus-Sun link in "The power of the Sun in the palm of my hand."

More to the point, though, the bird-snake-hand combination is a direct link to the Garuda image I included in "Flight of the Gargoyle," though in that image it is the bird rather than the snake that unexpectedly has hands.

Just above the "Spite Kite" link is one to "Intermission - Grit Grave," with this illustration:

Prior to reading Bill's "secret combination" comment, I had just been listening to the early chapters of Helaman, where the Gadianton robbers are introduced. Since Bill had been talking about ungol as an element in Ungoliant, I wondered whether there could be any connection between Ungol-iant and Gad-iant-on. The name Ungoliant is etymologically complicated. Apparently, Tolkien first analyzed it as Ungo-liant, with the second element meaning "spider," but later decided that ungol meant "spider," implying that the name was actually Ungol-iant. The second element in this latter analysis was never defined but would presumably mean something related to gloom and darkness. That works well for Gadianton, since gad- can mean "to join, connect, unite," and -on is just a masculine suffix. So interpreted as Elvish, Gadianton could literally mean "the secret combination guy."

Coming back to WG's point that the connection to Joseph should give "Colleen" a more positive meaning, in the passage I quoted, Joseph sees a vision of Taurin, who we are told is "called by the records, Katumin," that being the name of a princess mentioned in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, where she is also called Kah-tou-mun. The name Colleen just means "girl, maiden" in Gaelic. What would be the equivalent in GAEL-ic? Maybe Zi-oop-hah, which means "young virgin, unmarried woman" or "virgin princess." Closely related to this is Ho-oop-hah, which can mean either generically "princess, queen" or specifically "Queen Kah-tou-mun." A bit roundabout, maybe, but I think there's a link between Colleen and Katumin.

Another name which means "girl" and, while not Gaelic, is thought of as distinctively Scottish, is Lassie. See, among other posts, "Lassie Come Home" and "Lassie and Uncle Balty."

Sometimes they still surprise me

In 1964 a hospital in the United States carried out a series of experiments on dream telepathy. While one person slept, another person would attempt to transmit telepathically a randomly selected image. The sleeper would then report his dreams, and a panel of judges would decide which of eight possible target images best matched the dream imagery described. They conducted 450 such trials with a hit rate of 65%, for odds against chance of 10 billion to one. As Dean Radin recounts in The Science of Magic, one of the target images used was the painting Descent from the Cross by Max Beckmann, and . . .

The telepathic sender was given this randomly selected image, and to further motivate him to get emotionally involved with the task, he was also given a small wooden crucifix [sic], a Jesus doll, some nails, and a red marker. He was invited to nail the Jesus doll to the crucifix, then use the red marker to color his body with blood.

Wait, what? What kind of sicko designs a telepathy experiment that involves crucifying a voodoo doll of Jesus Christ? I flipped back a few pages to check.

Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York.

"Jewish physics" may not be a real thing, but Jewish parapsychology apparently is.

All the pebbles I have seen

As I was contemplating the Three of Pentacles, two lines of an otherwise forgotten song began playing in my mind:

All the pebbles I have seen

Precious stones for Colleen

I began to hear it in my head as a round, with two voices repeating the two lines endlessly, but staggered, so that one voice sang "All the pebbles I have seen" while the other sang "Precious stones for Colleen." The effect was quite hypnotic.

After I finished my contemplation, I looked up the song. It's "The Summer Day Reflection Song" (1965) by Donovan:

As I read through the lyrics, the second verse caught my eye:

Dragon kite in the sky

Wheel and turn, spin and fly

Attacked by rooks and never fails

To cry the sound of fairy tales

The cat is walkin' in the sun

The "kite" reference got my attention because Garuda is a kite, and in "Ahab at Ezion-Geber" I had just revisited "Flight of the Gargoyle," which discusses Garuda. The line about the cat "walkin' in the sun" also stood out because last night, in between Blue Öyster Cult and the Pixies, the YouTube Music algorithm had randomly served up that ridiculous "Monkey Brother" song:

The lyrics begin thus:

Monkey Brother, Monkey Brother

You are so grea-tuh

The Mountains of Five Elements can't hold you down

Popped up a Sun walker

That's the Chinese surname Sun, meaning Sun Wukong, the titular Monkey Brother, but it still seems synchronistically connected to "walkin' in the sun."

Later, I read this in Words of the Faithful:

And he cast before the boy, as in mockery, a handful of gems, and of crystals, and stones, scooped forth from a cauldron near him, until it was emptied, and about the boy the floor glittered.

This seemed relevant to "All the pebbles I have seen / Precious stones for Colleen." Here's the next paragraph:

The boy bent and reached for one resting before him, and held it; holding it to eye, and looking upon the king, raised high upon dais, and a golden bench, lain as one dead, and mourned by funeral-criers. As in vision, flames arose and consumed the halls, the pillars, the furniture, and all that sat or stood there, and being burned away, a behind-scene was revealed; wherein rested upon a bed stacked high with flowers, Taurin; wilted then the flowers crumbled, and the girl was suspended aloft, then her body dropped, and she dangled from a rope braided with golden threads.

And here's the fourth verse of the Donovan song:

Jeweled castles I have built

With freak feelings of guilt

And the words stab to the hilt

Pick the flower and it will wilt

Cat is shifting in the sun

I note also the description of a visionary experience in which "a behind-scene was revealed." As I wrote in "Visions as irruptions of dreaming consciousness into waking life":

There is a sense that the visual field "opens up," as if one is seeing behind a backdrop, and when I read Smith and Cowdery's language about a veil being taken away and the heavens opening, it seemed to me that they had to be describing the same kind of experience.

Ahab at Ezion-Geber

As I was falling asleep, I thought of a scene from Flight of the Gargoyle in which a girl had an improbably large percentage of her body eaten by a demonic creature (a razor-toothed "mermaid" with the lower body of a leech rather than a fish) while the girl herself remained alive and conscious. I thought, In real life she would have died from blood loss. There must have been something in the monster's saliva to stop the flow of blood. And with that train of thought, I segued from hypnagogic musing into dreaming proper.

I saw a large primitive amphibian -- like an Ichthyostega but much larger -- emerge from a swamp and bite off a man's right leg at the knee.

Ichthyostega

The beast immediately withdrew into the water. The man did not bleed. The stump of his leg was pink and bloodless like uncooked chicken.

I then saw this same man, supporting himself with a crutch, organizing a group of people he called "the assembled Firstborn." There were roughly a hundred of these people, all blond, all very young -- ranging from toddlers to twenty-somethings. They were sitting down in the grass near the seashore, waiting for a ship that was coming to take them to safety. The one-legged man was telling everyone where to sit. Some of those who had sat down first had to scoot over a little bit to make room for the others. The place where they were was called Ezion-Geber.

⁂

Upon waking, I asked myself who the one-legged man was and though, "Ahab, I suppose. Or Peg Leg Pete." (My thinking wasn't very clear, as I had just awoken, and I had a vague idea that Peg-Leg Pete was a character from Peter Pan who had lost his leg to the same crocodile that had eaten Hook's hand. Looking him up now, I see he's a character from old Mickey Mouse cartoons, with no backstory as to how he lost his leg.) I though about how Ahab means "uncle" and connected him with Uncle Jay in the singing and dancing telegram (see "Mr. Johnson, ho, ho, ho"). I also remembered that Ahabb means "more beloved" in Arabic and appears in the Quran referring to how Joseph and Benjamin were more beloved than their ten elder brothers.

I then turned my attention to Ezion-Geber. I recognized it as a biblical place name but couldn't remember anything about it. I was surprised to find that it is associated with ships, and that Ahab is mentioned in the next verse:

Jehoshaphat made ships of Tharshish to go to Ophir for gold: but they went not; for the ships were broken at Eziongeber. Then said Ahaziah the son of Ahab unto Jehoshaphat, Let my servants go with thy servants in the ships. But Jehoshaphat would not (1 Kings 22:48-49).

The Vulgate spelling of the place name is Asiongaber. I have been rereading Daymon Smith's Words of the Faithful, in which he twice renders the Tolkienian name Yozayan ("Land of Gift," i.e. Numenor) as Azoyan and connects this with the name Zion. In Mormonism, both Zion and the "assembly of the Firstborn" are associated with Enoch, so there may be some connection there.

Awake, arm of the Lord!

My last post, "Wounded Rahab," quoted this verse from the Book of Mormon, in which Jacob quotes Isaiah:

Awake, awake! Put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake as in the ancient days. Art thou not he that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon? (2 Ne. 8:9)

Today I had a nasty migraine and spent most of the day sleeping and vomiting. When I woke up around 9:30 p.m., I finally felt better and was able to tolerate light and sound again. Thus, although it was late in the evening, I had just woken up when I checked Synlogos and found a link to an Ann Barnhardt post titled "Sexagesima Sunday: Wake up! Why are you sleeping, Lord? Wake up!" Calling the Lord himself to wake up seems like a pretty unusual theme -- we associate that more with Elijah's taunts to the prophets of Baal -- so I clicked through. She quotes two passages from the Bible:

At that time, Jesus got into a boat, and His disciples followed Him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was covered by the waves; but He was asleep. So they came and woke Him, saying, Lord, save us! we are perishing! But He said to them, Why are you fearful, O you of little faith? Then He arose and rebuked the wind and the sea, and there came a great calm. And the men marvelled, saying, What manner of Man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him? (Matt 8:23-27)

and

Arise, why sleepest thou, O Lord? arise, and cast us not off to the end.

Exsurge; quare obdormis, Domine? exsurge, et ne repellas in finem.

Why turnest thou Thy face away? and forgettest our want and our trouble?

Quare faciem tuam avertis? oblivisceris inopiae nostrae et tribulationis nostrae?

For our soul is humbled down to the dust: our belly cleaveth to the earth.

Quoniam humiliata est in pulvere anima nostra; conglutinatus est in terra venter noster.

Arise, O Lord, help us and redeem us for Thy Name’s sake.

Exsurge, Domine, adjuva nos, et redime nos propter nomen tuum.

(Ps. 44:23-26, numbered Ps. 43 in the Vulgate)

The passage from Matthew seems particularly synchronistically relevant, since after Jesus wakes up he "rebuked the wind and the sea." Rahab in the Isaiah passage is generally understood to be a monster representing the chaotic sea, the Hebrew equivalent of Tiamat. Marduk's battle with Tiamat is central to the Babylonian creation story, and hints of a story of that kind can still be seen in the Genesis 1 creation story.

Bible critics have noted that the "Sea" of Galilee is in fact just a lake, comparable in size to Lake Tahoe, and that the description of the "great storm on the sea" must be an exaggeration. Or a supernatural attack.

As mentioned in "Rock my Audible," I have been listening to an audio version of the Book of Mormon. Today I started playing it where I had left off yesterday and found that, strangely, it was in the middle of a verse, so that the very first word I heard was Awake.

And the things which I shall tell you are made known unto me by an angel from God. And he said unto me: Awake; and I awoke, and behold he stood before me (Mosiah 3:2)

.

Here it is not the Lord being called to awake but a man, Mosiah. What about the Isaiah passage, though. Isaiah actually apostrophizes the arm of the Lord, which is why the King James Version says, "Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?" The Book of Mormon changes that it to he, implying that the Arm of the Lord is a person.

If the Arm of the Lord is not the Lord himself, who might he be? The most obvious guess would be Michael, who in Revelation is given the role of fighting the dragon:

And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him (Rev. 12:7-9)

Here, as in Isaiah, the dragon is not killed but "cast out" and presumably wounded.

The dragon combat alluded to by Isaiah probably has to do with the creation story, but the Mormon temple ceremony gives Michael a role in that story as well -- and also has him fall asleep and wake up:

NARRATOR: Brethren and sisters, this is Michael, who helped form the earth. When he awakens from the sleep which Elohim and Jehovah have caused to come upon him, he will be known as Adam, and having forgotten all, will have become a little child. Brethren, close your eyes as if you were asleep.

ELOHIM: Adam, awake and arise.

NARRATOR: All the brethren will please arise.

ELOHIM: Adam, here is a woman whom we have formed and whom we give unto you to be a companion and help meet for you. What will you call her?

ADAM: Eve.

The first word Michael says after awakening as Adam is, "Eve." As it happens, those names are juxtaposed in an image I included in my last post:

The ceremony says that when Michael becomes Adam, he "will have become as a little child." Mosiah 3 (the chapter with that "Awake" verse) also refers to this idea, shortly after a reference to Adam:

For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father (Mosiah 3:19).

Wounded Rahab

I checked my comments this afternoon and found a new one from Bill on "Turn around, bright eyes," a post from several days ago which prominently featured an octopus. Bill wrote:

There is another potentially interesting connection to the symbol of an Octopus I stumbled across in looking at some old LDS endowment history.

The pre-1990 endowment had the role of a minister or preacher who was aligned with Satan in trying to lead Adam astray. At one point, the minister asks Satan if there will ever be apostles or prophets again on the earth. Satan says no, but that some will claim to be, and that the minister should give them a test:

"... just test them by asking that they perform a great miracle, such as cutting off an arm or some other member of the body and restoring it, so that the people may know that they have come with power."

What a random way to show power. But then I thought of our symbol of the Octopus, which is one of the relatively rare animals that can indeed have its arm cut off and restore it. Meaning, it is the kind of test an Octopus might set up.

The storylines of James Bond and Marvel have had the symbol of an Octopus represent the bad guys, with Spectre and Hydra, respectively, as mentioned in other comments. Hydra is a strange name for a many legged animal as it was originally used for a many headed monster, but its etymology supports the water link (Hydra from Hydro, i.e., "water"), which I had used in the past as one support to Ungoliant or the Great Whore who sat upon the many waters.

Thinking of the link between many heads and many arms, and treating them as synonymous given the name, then brought the satanic test given in the temple back to Revelation, and it didn't seem so random. In Revelation 13, the Beast is introduced, who has many heads (like the Hydra), and one of these heads is fatally wounded, but then healed, which causes the people to worship him and the dragon, because it was evidence of divine power, just as Satan told the minister cutting off an arm and restoring it would be.

I think he's on to something with this line of symbolic interpretation. As I mentioned in comments of my own there, being able to regenerate lost heads is the defining feature of the Hydra, and spiders (like Ungoliant) are also able to regenerate limbs.

Less than an hour after reading and replying to Bill's comment, I was reading Dean Radin's book The Science of Magic and came across this passage:

While panpsychism was once dismissed as a throwback to the ancient idea of animism (everything is alive), there is a growing consensus among biologists and philosophers that all living systems are indeed conscious, including octopuses, crustaceans, fish, insects, and even plants.

The mention of octopuses jumped out at me, partly because I had just read Bill's long comment about octopuses, but also because it seems like the odd man out on Radin's list. All the other items on the list -- crustaceans, fish, insects, plants -- are very broad taxa, making the octopus seem like an oddly specific inclusion. Also, Radin's point is that consciousness may exist even in the least brainy forms of life, but the octopus is well known for its extremely high intelligence and doesn't seem like a good example of consciousness being found in the least likely of places. You would expect to see the octopus listed together with animals like dolphins and ravens, not insects and plants.

The fact that I found this reference in a book about magic -- paranormal magic, not stage magic -- also syncs with Bill's comment in a general way, since he was talking about octopuses in connection with the ability to work great miracles.

Bill mentions the wounded beast in Revelation. When I read that part of his comment, a line from Isaiah popped into my head: "Art thou not he that hath cut Rahab and wounded the dragon?" I read Jacob's quotation of that line in the Book of Mormon just three days ago, which I guess is why it came to mind so readily.

Awake, awake! Put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake as in the ancient days. Art thou not he that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon? (2 Ne. 8:9)

Rahab is a sea monster. The wounded beast of Revelation rises up out of the sea. The fact that the arm of the Lord is only said to have "wounded" the monster instead of killing it is curious, and the fact that he is being called to awake as in ancient days and do it again suggests that the monster has recovered from the wound.

I remembered that about a year ago, Corbin had done a commentary on Jacob's sermon and "The Monster in the Book of Mormon," so I looked it up on YouTube. I hadn't noticed the thumbnail at the time, but now it seems relevant:

Rahab is typically imagined as a dragon or sea-serpent, but Corbin went with an octopus.

Bill connected the octopus to the miracle of "cutting off an arm or some other member of the body and restoring it." In the same sermon that quotes Isaiah on Rahab, Jacob talks repeatedly about "restoration," including the resurrection in which "the spirit and the body is restored to itself again" (2 Ne. 9:13). He also speaks of his own people has having been "broken off" from the House of Israel, eventually to be restored:

For behold, the Lord God has led away from time to time from the house of Israel, according to his will and pleasure. And now behold, the Lord remembereth all them who have been broken off, wherefore he remembereth us also (2 Ne. 10:22).

Bill's comment also brought up the Hydra. My earliest dream I can remember was about a hydra. It was when we were living in New Hampshire, so I would have been six or seven years old. We had shrubs planted all along the front of our house, and in the dream, I was crawling through the space between the shrubs and the house. As I went, this space became more like a tunnel, and eventually it led into a huge room like a vault. In the center was the Hydra: an enormous serpent with its many heads fanned out like a peacock's tail, something like certain representations of the naga gods of India:

I would say that it stood about nine feet tall. Its skin was a translucent white like that of a termite, with blue veins visible beneath. It stood in proud silence and was being venerated by stunted misshapen dwarfs. These were beardless and mostly hairless, with very large eyes and noses, and they smiled in a strange wry manner. The closest image I can find to what their faces looked like is actually Michael the Glove Puppet from the 2022 syncs.

These dwarfs were bent over, and it seemed to me both that they were bowing to the Hydra and that they were hunchbacked and always looked like that. I had the feeling that they were "showing" me the Hydra, and that I was meant to see this as a great honor. I felt no fear during this dream, only a sense of being in an entirely alien world that I could in no way understand. For me, the Hydra was just a nasty monster dispatched by Hercules, and seeing it in such a different atmosphere and context was disorienting.

I don't know what to make of the dream now any more than I did then, but I include it here as possibly relevant.

The "sin" at Cain's door

Today we take a break from our regular synchronicity programming for a random bit of Bible criticism. (This was going to be a parenthetical aside in a post on my Book of Mormon blog, but it grew too big for its britches.)

After Cain's offering is rejected, but before he murders Abel, the Lord speaks to him:

And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him (Gen. 4:6-7).

Virtually all of the 50-some English translations available at Bible Gateway are unanimous on how v. 7 is to be interpreted. Here, for example, is the New International Version:

If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it [sin] desires to have you, but you must rule over it [sin].

I have never studied Hebrew and hesitate to contradict all the Bible translators in the world, but -- no, scratch that, I don't hesitate at all. Rushing in where learned fools fear to tread is what we do around here, and the universally accepted reading of this verse is flatly impossible. Here's the interlinear translation from Bible Hub:

The red squares I have added are to draw attention to the fact that the noun translated as "sin" is feminine, but that the KJV is correct in using the masculine pronoun and possessive in "unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him." These words cannot possibly have "sin" as their antecedent.

I said virtually all Bible translations interpreted this verse the same way. The one exception is Young's Literal Translation -- which, as it says on the tin, goes with the literal reading even when its meaning is obscure:

Is there not, if thou dost well, acceptance? and if thou dost not well, at the opening a sin-offering is crouching, and unto thee its desire, and thou rulest over it.

Even the YLT sacrifices strict literalness here in order to emasculate "his" and "him" so that they can refer to a feminine noun. Another feature of the YLT was a eureka moment for me, though: not "sin" but "a sin-offering." I checked the Hebrew word in question in a concordance, and it does seem to mean "sin-offering" far more often than "sin." This reading also fits better with the verb immediately following, which Strong's glosses as "to crouch (on all four legs folded, like a recumbent animal)." The noun "sin-offering" refers to the animal itself -- e.g. "he shall lay his hand upon the head of the sin offering, and slay the sin offering" (Lev. 4:29). If the noun can mean either sin or a sacrificial animal, and the verb is one associated with four-legged animals, what's more likely? That Cain's sinful tendencies are being implicitly compared to an animal lying in wait for him, or that the Lord is talking about an actual animal?

It makes perfect sense. The Lord begins by saying, "Why are you so upset?" He's not warning or threatening Cain; he's comforting him. "Why are you so upset? If you do right, you will be accepted; and if you do something wrong, you can easily obtain forgiveness through a sin-offering."

As for the masculine possessive and pronoun, I think they can only refer to Abel. It's impossible not to notice the similarity of these two passages:

Unto the woman he said, . . . thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee (Gen. 3:16).

And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him (Gen. 4:7).

The first is always understood to mean that the woman is subordinate to her husband and subject to his authority. But when the same formula is used one chapter later, it means something completely different? No. I think the meaning of the Lord's words to Cain can be paraphrased like this:

Why are you so upset about your offering not being accepted? If you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about. And if you have done something wrong, you know the way to obtain forgiveness. And why should you be jealous of Abel? He's your younger brother and will always be subordinate to you and subject to your authority.

Joseph Smith, of course, had a very different interpretation from what I am proposing here. Connecting the masculine possessive and pronoun with "sin" as most people do, he understood it to mean that Satan wanted to have Cain:

If thou doest well, thou shalt be accepted. And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door, and Satan desireth to have thee; and except thou shalt hearken unto my commandments, I will deliver thee up, and it shall be unto thee according to his desire. And thou shalt rule over him (Moses 5:23).

Adam Clarke's Bible commentary and its supposed influence on Joseph Smith is a trendy topic in Mormon studies circles these days, so I wondered if Clarke had interepreted that verse along the same lines as Smith. When I looked it up, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that, no, Clarke actually agrees with me! So now it's me and Adam Clarke against all the Bible translators in the world. Here's what Clarke has to say about v. 7:

If thou doest well - That which is right in the sight of God, shalt thou not be accepted? Does God reject any man who serves him in simplicity and godly sincerity? But if thou doest not well, can wrath and indignation against thy righteous brother save thee from the displeasure under which thou art fallen? On the contrary, have recourse to thy Maker for mercy; לפתח חטאת רבץ lappethach chattath robets, a sin-offering lieth at thy door; an animal proper to be offered as an atonement for sin is now couching at the door of thy fold.

The words חטאת chattath, and חטאת chattaah, frequently signify sin; but I have observed more than a hundred places in the Old Testament where they are used for sin-offering, and translated ἁμαρτια by the Septuagint, which is the term the apostle uses, Co2 5:21 : He hath made him to be sin (ἁμαρτιαν, A Sin-Offering) for us, who knew no sin. Cain's fault now was his not bringing a sin-offering when his brother brought one, and his neglect and contempt caused his other offering to be rejected. However, God now graciously informs him that, though he had miscarried, his case was not yet desperate, as the means of faith, from the promise, etc., were in his power, and a victim proper for a sin-offering was lying (רבץ robets, a word used to express the lying down of a quadruped) at the door of his fold. How many sinners perish, not because there is not a Savior able and willing to save them, but because they will not use that which is within their power! Of such how true is that word of our Lord, Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life!

Unto thee shall be his desire, etc. - That is, Thou shalt ever have the right of primogeniture, and in all things shall thy brother be subject unto thee. These words are not spoken of sin, as many have understood them, but of Abel's submission to Cain as his superior, and the words are spoken to remove Cain's envy.

Clarke doesn't mention the grammatical gender mismatch, but aside from that he says pretty much everything I have said in this post. Pretty smart guy, that Adam Clarke.