There's this idea of Odin sacrificing himself to himself by being nailed to a tree.From a Norse poem called Havamal:137. "I trow [think] I hung on that windy Treenine whole days and nights,stabbed with a spear, offered to Odin,myself to mine own self given,high on that Tree of which none hath heardfrom what roots it rises to heaven."138. "None refreshed me ever with food or drink,I peered right down in the deep;crying aloud I lifted the Runesthen back I fell from silence."Pretty clear this was created after Jesus.There's the identification of Hermes with Odin (I guess via Mercury). Maybe this Odin-sacrifice idea represents an association of Odin with Jesus specifically, rather than Odin being a stand-in for general God.And a synchronistic image used on this Wikipedia page:
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| The Stranger at the Door (1908) by W. G. Collingwood |
The artist, W. G. Collingwood, was born in -- where else? -- Liverpool.
I've never read the Hávamál and don't know the story behind this "stranger at the door" image, but one assumes the one knocking at the door is Odin. It's a "synchronistic image" because in "The Wizard at the green door" (August 6, 2022), I posted images of Jesus and Gandalf knocking at green doors. The figure of Gandalf was very obviously largely inspired by Odin, and in the Hávamál Odin is portrayed as a Jesus-like figure, hanging on a tree for nine days (cf. Jesus' nine hours) and being pierced with a spear.
As I read the above email, I realized that I was mentally pronouncing the name Odin as Russian: один, "one." (That happens sometimes; more than once I've made a similar mistake with the final word in Et in Arcadia ego, mentally pronouncing it as его, "him, his.") Then when I looked up my "Wizard at the green door" post so I could link it here, I found that it includes this image:
The vesica piscis (associated with Jesus) is labeled "One or two" -- один или два. Just as один suggests Odin, два suggests Sanskrit deva and the various related Indo-European words meaning "god." My correspondent mentioned "Odin being a stand-in for general God."
In my March 23 post "Aladdin's three elder brothers," I told a Chinese joke about Aladdin and noted how the Chinese transliteration of that name includes the divine name Allah. Then in the comments I mentioned the Sacha Baron Cohen character Aladeen -- obviously based on Aladdin, but stressed on the final syllable so that it sounds like al-Один. (Though spelled as Odin, the Russian word is pronounced "ah-DEEN.")
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Yesterday I posted "Liverpool and the double-D lemniscate." The first appearance of the latter theme in the sync stream was a place called Cafe D&D -- stylized as D-lemniscate-D. Today, having been reminded of the place, I lunched at D&D. I noticed for the first time the synchronistic significance of the high-end car wash that is right next to it, owned by the same people and sharing the same 666 street address.
Doesn't that SJ logo also strongly suggest the double-D lemniscate?
Just after noticing this, I saw this on the road, on the back of someone's jacket:
This is conceptually similar to the SJ logo, and it features a circle inside a vesica piscis inside a circle -- like an eye, but rotated 90 degrees. My "Wizard at the green door post" included the following images:
The teardrop shape in which the whole is contained is similar to the paisley shape featured in the "Liverpool and the double-D lemniscate" post:
4 comments:
STGT turns out to be a local company called Shin Tai Spurt Water of the Garden Tools Co., Ltd. (sic), which makes sprinklers, spray heads for garden hoses, etc. No idea why their logo would feature an eye.
The DD lemniscate can instead be split into an S-curve and a straight line, which suggest the Latin letters S and I. That's not quite a match with the car wash logo, although since we're talking about Jesus recall the reminder from Dr. Henry Jones, Sr.: "But in the Latin alphabet, 'Jehovah' begins with an 'I.'"
SI/SJ in this context brings to mind the Society of Jesus.
Various decorations on and in the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini, Italy apparently feature an SI monogram, though it's explicitly the Latin letters S and I.
So the two doors, DD, are kinda like DevaDeva - two gods.
That SI symbol is a bit like a caduceus, associated with Hermes. But I think it's even more like the Rod of Asclepius (which features in the Star of Life, which features a six-pointed symbol). And Asclepius is associated with Apollo.
Is Asclepius the Hermes character not fully detached from Apollo? The Apollo character has healing and oracular (messenger?) functions that he would share with a Hermes-Asclepius being.
This also reminds me of another certain character (from the Rod of Asclepius wikipedia page, Theologiae Graecae Compendium, by Cornutus, supposedly written 1st century):
"Asclepius derived his name from healing soothingly and from deferring the withering that comes with death. For this reason, therefore, they gave him a serpent as an attribute, indicating that those who avail themselves of medical science undergo a process similar to the serpent in that they, as it were, grow young again (!) after illnesses and slough off old age..."
And apparently there are early depictions of a youthful-looking Jesus with a 'wand'.
Apparently that's not Odin at the door. I think it's an illustration of the opening lines of the Hávamál:
At every door-way,
ere one enters,
one should spy round,
one should pry round
for uncertain is the witting
that there be no foeman sitting,
within, before one on the floor.
The picture shows a man looking around warily, his hand on the hilt of his sword, as he knocks on the door.
It certainly looks like Odin, though, and perhaps Odin's advice about entering doors cautiously comes from his own experience wandering Midgard disguised as a cloaked traveler.
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