St. Christopher, Deseret, and -- bear with me, it's all connected

I was visiting in-laws yesterday and happened to notice a children's toy they had in their house: a stuffed bear that looked exactly like Winnie-the-Pooh -- the Disney version, yellow with a red T-shirt -- but written on the T-shirt were the English words Mischievous Dog. This kind of "mutant knockoff" product is common enough in Taiwan, but this one caught my attention and seemed significant somehow. I thought I should take a photo but in the end decided not to, so sorry, no illustration. 

I tried to think what possible significance Winnie-the-Mischievous-Dog could have, but all that came to mind was that in my October 25 post "Bear with Biden" I had mentioned Winnie-the-Pooh in connection with Xi Jinping, Bernie Sanders (Bernie means "bear," and Pooh lived "under the name of Sanders"), and Robin Hood ("he belongs to Christopher Robin, and his name is simply Hood written upside down").

⁂

In my November 4 post "Doves of Tarshish," I note that both Jonah and Columbus mean "dove," and that both Jonah and Columbus are associated with the Tartessos, Spain. In the post, I wrote out the full name Christopher Columbus because his Christian name seemed important, too, but I couldn't put my finger on why. I thought of the legend of St. Christopher, who was supposed to be a giant with the head of a dog, but it didn't seem to have any relevance to Columbus or to Jonah.

⁂

Last night I checked my YouTube subscriptions, which I hadn't done in a few weeks, and found a new (November 3) video from Jonathan Pageau called "Finding the Giant Dog-Headed St. Christopher in the Bible." I immediately recognized this as possibly relevant both to the "Doves of Tarshish" sync and to the "Mischievous Dog" toy. I had previously highlighted the second half of the name Christopher Robin in connection with Pooh, and this was a possible link to the first. And could the biblical connection possibly have anything to do with Jonah? I watched the whole video.

Pageau begins with a brief summary of the St. Christopher legend -- a giant monster or dog-headed man who carries people (and ultimately Christ himself) across a river -- and says that in the Bible we often find monsters and animals associated with crossing water. The first example he gives is that of Noah -- who, escaping a world of giants, crosses the floodwaters in a boat full of animals. The Noah story is also the first mention of the dove (jonah) in the Bible; and while Pageau never actually mentions Jonah, he clearly fits the pattern as well, being swallowed by a monstrous animal while crossing the water.

After the biblical examples, Pageau relates the story of St. Christopher in more detail and emphasizes the role of trickery: After tricking the king of Canaan and the devil, St. Christopher is himself tricked by Christ. What a mischievous dog!

At the end of the video, Pageau promotes a graphic novel he and his brother are writing, which is based on the legend of St. Christopher and has the palindromic title God's Dog. This made me think of my December 2020 post "God and dog at the Panama Canal" -- the Panama Canal being a place where people cross from one body of water to another.

⁂

Pageau's characterization of Noah as someone who crossed the waters in a boat full of animals made me think of a similar story from the Book of Mormon: the Jaredites. At the Tower of Babel, when everyone's language is confounded, Jared and his family have their original (the original) language preserved by the Lord. They leave Babylon and sail across the sea in "barges" (actually fully enclosed submersible vessels) full of animals. Jonah imagery is also clearly present: "For behold, ye shall be as a whale in the midst of the sea; for the mountain waves shall dash upon you. Nevertheless, I will bring you up again out of the depths of the sea" (Ether 2:24)

Of the animals the Jaredites bring with them, one in particular is singled out for emphasis: "And they did also carry with them deseret, which, by interpretation, is a honey bee; and thus they did carry with them swarms of bees" (Ether 2:3). What a weird and evocative image -- swarms of honeybees crossing the ocean as if in "a whale in the midst of the sea"! (Bees in the belly of the beast is also a link to Samson.)

The bees the Jaredites carried with them are surely an exceedingly minor plot point in the Book of Mormon, but the word deseret has taken on a life of its own and been embraced as a symbol of Mormonism. What is now the state of Utah was called Deseret when it was a quasi-independent Mormon theocracy, and the flag of Utah still prominently features a beehive. On Twitter, the hashtag #DezNat (for Desert Nation) identifies one as what passes today for a Mormon "hardliner." A phonetic "Deseret alphabet" was developed under the direction of Brigham Young, and the name is still used for such things as Deseret Industries (Mormon thrift stores) and the Deseret News. (Since deseret in the Book of Mormon refers specifically to honeybees from Babylon, I guess Deseret News has the same name as the Babylon Bee!)

⁂

Bees and honey are stereotypically associated with the bear. In "Bern, baby, bern!" (a follow-up post to "Bear with Biden"), I noted that the name Beowulf means "bear." Well, it actually means "bee wolf," but this is usually assumed to be a superstitious euphemism for the bear, along the lines of the Russian medved ("honey eater"). The dog and the wolf are the same species, and the bear -- also a member of Caniformia -- was apparently seen as a sort of super-wolf. Back in 2018, I postulated, citing beowulf and medved as evidence, that the "Big Bad Wolf" of fairy tale fame was originally a bear. (Unlike wolves, bears huff and puff, can climb onto a roof, and could more plausibly swallow a human being whole than could the much smaller wolf.) I suppose I can now add "Mischievous Dog" to this list of canine bear-euphemisms. St. Christopher, a gigantic dog-faced man whose name means "Christ-bear-er," would also seem to have ursine resonances.

This Halloween, I made a very cryptic patriotic statement by wearing what could be called a maga hat.

My maga hat is black, but capitalized MAGA hats are red. This got me thinking about red hats and how the Big Bad Wolf (i.e. bear, i.e. Biden) is the antagonist of someone named after a red hat. But, no, it gets more specific than that: I have identified the Sun card of the Tarot with Donald Trump, but I have also said that the baby on that card who is riding a horse and carrying a red flag represents Robin Hood. Little. Red. Riding. Hood.

Little Red Riding Hood is swallowed by a bear but, like Jonah, comes out again alive -- Resurgens in arc(t)a incubatus. Somewhere in the Origin, Darwin reports seeing a bear swimming around with its mouth open catching insects in the water, and speculates that this could have been the first step in the evolution of the whale. Jonah's ork, Noah's ark, Riding Hood's arktos. Jonah, as I have said, is Hebrew for "dove"; the Hebrew for "bear" is dov.