Saturday, November 12, 2022

Synchronicity: Mandrakes, Herschel Walker, and the Narmer Palette

In my recent post "Election prediction assessment," I discussed links between the Fool card of the Rider-Waite Tarot and the Georgian football player turned politician Herschel Walker. The Fool card depicts a man walking and is thus linked to the name Walker. It also happens to be traditionally associated with the planet Uranus, which was discovered by William Herschel -- who had originally wanted to call the new planet "the Georgian Star" after his patron, King George III. Back in the 1980s, Herschel Walker was actually promoted as "the Georgian Star," with explicit reference to the astronomer Herschel (erroneously called "William Herschel Walker"!) and his discovery of Uranus. From an old New York Times article:

Four Atlanta businessmen have come up with a plan to make money off the fame of Herschel Walker, the University of Georgia football star, but it may not be within National Collegiate Athletic Association rules. The group has printed and plans to place on sale posters featuring a black football player in a Georgia uniform with the words ''The Georgian Star.''

To avoid violating N.C.A.A. rules, the group, Accolade Inc., has blurred out Walker's features and number. N.C.A.A. rules forbid an individual player's name, picture or number to be used in a commercial venture. The poster sells for $6 and, according to Avery McLean, the school's marketing director, the plan calls for the university to receive 6 percent of the revenue from every poster sold. But it appears that the N.C.A.A. will not permit Georgia to be involved in the promotion. ''We have not approved the poster in question,'' said Dave Berst, the N.C.A.A.'s director of enforcement. ''It appears that the poster is contrary to N.C.A.A. regulations.'' The poster tells the story of Sir William Herschel Walker, the Briton who discovered the planet Uranus in 1781. Wanting to honor his king, George III, Sir William named his discovery ''The Georgian Star.'' In time, scientists changed the name to Uranus.

So that's a pretty direct link between the Fool card and the names Herschel, Walker, and Georgia. Furthermore, the Fool's white rose resembles the white Cherokee rose which is Georgia's state flower, and the white dog calls to mind the white bulldog that is the mascot of the University of Georgia football team.

In a comment on my own post, I added:

The Phantom, the comic strip character and proto-superhero created by Lee Falk, often goes by "Mr. Walker" (always with a footnote explaining that this is "for 'The Ghost Who Walks'"). Like the Fool, the Phantom is always accompanied by his faithful dog. I thought of the Phantom recently when mandrakes came up in the sync stream, since Lee Falk was also the creator of Mandrake the Magician.

https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2022/10/synchronicity-mandrakes-and-el-kanah.html

That post linked mandrakes to El Kanah. A later post linked El Kanah to a black celebrity and a Georgia football team. (See the comments for the football reference.)

https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2022/11/kanye-and-el-kanah.html

Today, preparing to write a follow-up post on the Fool's links to both George Walker Bush and Herschel Walker, and the implications for 2024, I decided to look up fool in the Online Etymology Dictionary, even though I basically already knew the etymology. Now what I normally do is type et, let autocomplete give me etymonline.com/, type w and get etymonline.com/word/, and then manually type in the word I'm looking up. I do this all in the address bar, without ever visiting the OED home page. This time, though, for whatever reason, I did go to the homepage -- and right there under "Latest Stories" was an article with the title "MANDRAKE ROOTS." Of course I clicked on it.

I have no idea how it got that title, since it makes no reference to mandrakes at all -- but guess who it does make reference to!

How did the moons of the planets get classical names? It can't have been a relic of classical times, because the satellites weren't known before telescope technology, in the 17th century. Their discoverers tended to name them after patrons, real or hoped-for, which led to an embarrassing lot of petty European tyrants honored with celestial bodies. . . . William Herschel proposed giving the multiplying moons suitable proper names out of mythology, a proposal readily accepted by the other astronomers and in use by 1848.

Not only a reference to Herschel, but to astronomers' naming new heavenly bodies after their patrons -- just as Herschel himself had originally wanted to name Uranus after George III.

The comment quoted above mentions "El Kanah" in connection with mandrakes. This name entered the sync stream via Joseph Smith's Book of Abraham, which lists "Elkenah" among the gods worshiped by the pagan Egyptians -- or that's what I had originally written. Rereading the Book of Abraham, I find that Elkenah and the other Egyptian-looking gods, including "the god of Pharaoh, king of Egypt," are actually said to have been worshiped by the pagan Mesopotamians! This extremely bizarre idea led me to the Wikipedia article on "Egypt–Mesopotamia relations." As I skimmed it, I noticed that a particular illustration kept being repeated.

The Narmer Palette didn't mean anything in particular to me at the time, but the repetition, together with the distinctive iconography, made it memorable.

Today I checked the Junior Ganymede blog, where the most recent post was titled "Today" and had no text, just a photo of some flowers. There was a single comment, implying that Kent Budge had died and leaving a link.

I clicked the link, and it was indeed an announcement of the death of Kent Budge --  but it began with this image:

10 comments:

ben said...

Serpopard = giraffe? Kind of like camelopard.

So maybe an elephant-fish or whatever it was, would be a whale.

Poppop said...

Glad you saw the etymonline mandrakery -- I saw it too last week and almost dropped you a line. I had probably gone 30 years without encountering the word and then boom it was there online twice.

Perhaps in an alternate universe, there is an anthropomorphic duck superhero, Man-Drake, who fights crime since witnessing his parents' murder at the hands of mean hunters? Quel canard.

Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

@ben

One of the captions calls it a “sauropod.” I’m not sure if that’s a mistake or a proposed interpretation. And yes, I agree that the Makara is likely a whale.

@Poppop

You’re not going to believe this, but about six hours ago I was going through a folder of very old papers, and one of the things I found was a cartoon drawn by my brother as a child, featuring an anthropomorphic goose who outwits a hunter.

Ra1119bee said...



William,

The 64-thousand-dollar Question is WHY?

The phrase: 64 thousand dollar question, in case you didn't know, is old school
and means (at least my opinion of what it means) is this: we have been presented a challenge (IMO, orchestrated by our Soul and a Higher Power) to see through
the veil/ illusion so as to solve the puzzle/truth.

IMO, synchronicity events are puzzle pieces answering the Whats, Whos, Whens and Hows.

The WHYS is the Big Picture i.e., the Destination,
as the WHYS explains (and makes sense of) the chaos of the Whats, Whos, Whens and Hows

All investigators quest is to solve the puzzle, and many investigators become
obsessed until they do.

IMO, we are challenged (which I believe are lessons we must learn) to connect the puzzle
pieces so as to see The Big Picture.

All roads eventually must lead to a destination.

Everything is connected.

Ask yourself: WHY have you been given your puzzle pieces?
and WHY NOW?


All IMHO of course.








https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_$64,000_Question

ben said...

Where I'm staying there are coasters of animals doing human-type things including a duck:

https://i.ibb.co/KmyHCSZ/20221113-230209.jpg

https://i.ibb.co/WVDGXDg/20221113-230214.jpg

https://i.ibb.co/C2Lnsx5/20221113-230159.jpg

https://i.ibb.co/LZ0MC8p/20221113-230223.jpg

https://i.ibb.co/k3VVbZL/20221113-230227.jpg


Also someone noticed that this elephant toy looks like some kind of fish creature when upside down:

https://i.ibb.co/gDdFvhR/20221113-230318.jpg

https://i.ibb.co/r6v2sWz/20221113-230241.jpg

ben said...

A goose coaster too!

Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

Dave Chappelle on Herschel Walker:

"The most ominous sign of the midterms I believe would be Herschel Walker, who I don't want to speak badly of because he's black, but I have to admit, he's, um -- [pause] -- He's observably stupid. Even when he's not talking, his mouth be open a little bit like: [imitates it]. He's the kind of guy that looks like he thinks before he makes a move on tic-tac-toe."

In other words, he's calling him a FOOL.

Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

@ben

That's weird, why is "Lawrence of 'Hooray Beer'" a goose? And in what dialect does "Hooray Beer" sound even remotely like "Arabia"?

According to this site, the scene in Mad Max in which the character Goose has a motorcycle accident was inspired by Lawrence of Arabia.

https://seri-z.blogspot.com/2020/06/lawrence-of-arabia-mad-max.html

Poppop said...

Sorry gang I was feeling poorly and sleeping the sleep of the dead since my last post. Glad to see it resonated a bit.

The elephant transmutes into a fish with an integrated phrygian cap, no less. Very fishy, that...

Of course, in 2022's devalued currency, a $64k question is really equal to what in my youth would have been a $25 question which I used to overhear the grown ups ask each other frequently.

WanderingGondola said...

Interesting, Debbie -- I'd never heard of that phrase or the quiz show (I was surprised to learn my country ran its own version), but 64 has been a semi-important number for me for a while. And sheesh, if I had $64k for every "why" I've asked recently...

William, dunno if you saw this small sync in that Mad Max/Lawrence of Arabia comparison page: "Lawrence gets a new outfit from the tribes. Max gets a hat being now called „Cpt Walker” (Essentially giving the main character a new identity of a hero by outsiders)."

Annunciation rescheduled to coincide with eclipse

I just saw this on Ann Barnhardt's blog : March 25th is the fixed date of the great Feast of the Annunciation… BUT since March 25th fall...