Tam multa, ut puta genera linguarum sunt in hoc mundo: et nihil sine voce est.
Thursday, November 30, 2023
Thin, strange, secret frogs
Mushroom Planet = Little Skinny Planet = Narrow Desert
This morning I was wondering about this possible identification but hesitated because the Mushroom Planet is (as it would have to be) damp and humid and very much the opposite of a desert. They couldn't be symbolically identical -- could they?
I very rarely use public restrooms, but this morning I had occasion to do so. On a wooden shelf above the urinal was this odd little tchotchke:
In what seems like a pretty direct answer to my question, here we have mushrooms growing alongside cacti in a "desert" environment. Furthermore, the part where the mushrooms are growing is blue. In my January 21 post "The strait and wide gates, ripe and green figs, abundant life, red and white doves," I posted an image of the Three Wise Men riding through a blue desert. The image was a tall and narrow one, leading Wandering Gondola to leave the following comment:
Hee, the recent appearance of both strait/narrow and desert... You could even call the desert on that decoration narrow (albeit blue -- hm, would the moon's surface be classified as desert?).
WG was alluding to the expression blue moon and more specifically to the Blue Moon Valley from the novel Lost Horizon. Oddly enough, there is a passing reference to this very valley in one of the Mushroom Planet novels. David and Chuck are on a tiny satellite (not the Mushroom Planet) and are scanning the Earth with a telescope:
And they beheld a sight they had dreamed of ever since Mrs. Topman had read them Lost Horizon: a green and lovely valley high in the Himalayas between India and Tibet.
This valley plays no role in the plot -- it's just one of several amazing sights they see while looking for something else -- but there it is nevertheless.
Only three of the inhabitants of the Mushroom Planet of Basidium are important enough to have names, and two of them, Mebe and Oru, bear the title of Wise Men. These two are mainly comic-relief characters, not wise at all, and it is clear that the only truly wise Basidiumite is the third: Ta, the king.
Mushrooms in a blue desert. Wise Men in a blue desert. Wise Men on the Mushroom Planet. It all fits together. There's also the consistent Moon motif. The Mushroom Planet is not technically a planet but a second moon of Earth; WG's comment links the Narrow Desert with the Moon; and I did a whole post called "The Little Skinny Planet and the Moon."
The same restroom had this on the wall:
There obviously used to be a d there, but now it says "Have a nice ay." I assume that last word would be pronounced the same as ayy, Internet slang for an extraterrestrial. It also syncs up with two comments I left on my own post "Giraffe on the 'big fat planet'":
In Russian, the backwards R is the pronoun I, and is pronounced "ya."
Some Egyptologists identify the left wedjat eye (which looks like R) with the Eye of Horus and its mirror image with the Eye of Ra.
If "ya" = Я = Eye of Ra, then it follows that "ay" = R = Eye of Horus. According to one common interpretation, the right wedjat eye ("of Ra") is the Sun, and the left ("of Horus") is, you guessed it, the Moon. (William Wright had asked where I was going with the Russian comment, and I'd said I didn't know yet. Now I know.)
Also in this restroom -- I think this is the most photos I've ever taken in a toilet! -- was this:
The caption for this wouldn't be "No smoking"; it'd be "Gravity: It's the law. Maximum fine $10,000." Cigarettes and cigars have recently entered the sync-stream, and the defiance of gravity is a link to the translation of Tyco Bass.
Tyco Mycetes Bass as a translated being
Near the end of The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, David Topman, realizing that his mother doesn't really believe he has been to Basidium but is just humoring him, he determines to take her to see Mr. Bass and go to the Mushroom Planet herself. Just then they are interrupted by a voice from the radio:
"-- and here's a little item that's been giving us a great deal of amusement in the newsroom. A small boy phoned in a few minutes ago to tell us that this morning, very early, before the storm had gotten well under way, but after the big wind had already begun, he looked out of his window and saw a neighbor of his swooped up by the gale and whipped right off into the sky. Up and up he went -- so the little boy said -- turning this way and that, his coat flapping about his ears, until he finally vanished altogether, a mere speck in the clouds." Over the radio came the deep, hearty, jolly voice of the newscaster, relishing to the fullest this ridiculous story. "Well," he finished, still chuckling, "I guess there's just no telling what's going to happen around here. Some storm!"
Mrs. Topman turned, laughing.
"Isn't that funny?" she said. "Imagine!"
"No," said David. "I don't really think it's funny," and he turned and went off to his room to think . . . (p. 148).
Later they go to Mr. Bass's house and meet the boy who made the report:
"I saw him this morning," said he, "but he blew away."
There was a moment of stunned silence.
"Blew away!" burst out Cap'n Tom at last. "Great jumpin' Jehosaphat! What was that ye said -- blew away?"
"Yes, sir," said the little boy respectfully, but in a perfectly matter-of-fact voice. "My mom let me phone the radio station and I told 'em he blew away. I saw him. I looked out of my window when the wind was really getting strong, and I saw Mr. Bass go up in the air like a leaf in the sky --" here the little boy made an upward, fluttering movement of his hand -- "and that was the last of him. After it stopped raining, I came over here to look for him. I looked in his planta . . . in his observatory, and in the closets, and under the bed, and behind the curtains, and down in the cellar, and everywhere, but he's gone. He just blew away" (pp. 157-58).
Mr. Bass reappears in later books in the series, but he is different after blowing away. Most notably, he now has the power to travel by thought -- to think of a place and instantly appear there. The spaceship is no longer necessary. In Time and Mr. Bass, Chuck Masterson asks him what exactly happened that morning when he "blew away," and he explains:
You will recall I told you at the time that I knew I was about to have the most important appointment of my life. I knew somehow that the Ancient Ones had work for me to do, but I did not know what work, nor where. And so when, moved by some strange impulse, I went out into the wind and looked up into the sky, I had a feeling that I was about to leave earth and I was happy and peaceful that I had left my affairs in good order. Then -- away I went, lifted up, up, as if by the wind, but I knew it was a greater power than the wind trying to teach me something I had never experienced before.
At first I was hollow with loneliness, for it seemed to me that surely I had been cast adrift forever in the vast reaches of space. And even after I found myself in my new home on a little planet in a solar system in the galaxy of M 81 in Ursa Major, it was is if I were a blurred picture of Tyco Bass trying to become clear again. I couldn't get focused -- I couldn't get my "me" focused. And when I first used to travel by thought, it exhausted me because I was trying so hard to help my mind and my imagination (because they work together) do something they can do quite easily by themselves. But no longer -- no longer. Now I am focused very clearly and I can do whatever I have to do (p. 24-25).
The parallel to the prophet Elijah, who "went up by a whirlwind into heaven" (2 Kgs. 2:11), is clear. As with Tyco, everyone understands that Elijah was in fact taken up by "a greater power than the wind" and that the experience changed him into something other than an ordinary mortal. In Joseph Smith's terminology, Elijah was "translated" -- a state distinct both from mortality and from the full immortality that comes with resurrection.
Tyco Bass didn't "go to heaven" in the religious sense but rather to a planet in a distant galaxy,among whose people he has some unspecified work to do for the Ancient Ones. He also makes frequent visits to Earth and to Basidium. This fits remarkably well with what Joseph Smith said of translated beings like Elijah:
Many have supposed that the doctrine of translation was a doctrine whereby men were taken immediately into the presence of God, and into an eternal fullness, but this is a mistaken idea. Their place of habitation is that of the terrestrial order, and a place prepared for such characters He held in reserve to be ministering angels unto many planets, and who as yet have not entered into so great a fullness as those who are resurrected from the dead (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 170).
The Mushroom Planet series is full of little surprises like this. Another impressive one is the invention of a "hole in space" several years before the term black hole was coined.
Wednesday, November 29, 2023
Giraffe on the "big fat planet"
I've been thinking about my 2021 dream of spindle-legged giraffes walking across farmland -- a dream which was recently brought back to mind because of its connection to the Little Skinny Planet, where "skinny" giraffes are livestock. I noted that in the dream "the giraffes looked somewhat less real than the surrounding countryside, as if they might have been some sort of holographic projection."
I can't seem to find the post anywhere on his blog, but some years ago (in or around 2009, the heydey of Internet synchromysticism), Richard Arrowsmith starting connecting giraffes with the star Sirius. One of these links was the Toys"R"Us logo, which used to feature a hidden Sirius (if each quotation mark is seen as a tiny lowercase i) and a blue star, and of course their mascot of Geoffrey the Giraffe.
Another of Arrowsmith's giraffe-Sirius syncs was from one of the Harry Potter films. I remembered this as someone having a vision of Sirius Black with a giraffe walking past in the background, and because it was a magical vision the giraffe looked slightly "unreal," just like the ones in my dream.
After a bit of searching, I found the scene, from The Prisoner of Azkaban. It's actually a magically animated painting, not a vision, but the effect is the same: The giraffe walks like a real giraffe but has a slightly unreal quality because it is a painting. Sirius Black himself is not on screen, but the Fat Lady says his name just after the giraffe walks past:
I don't think I ever saw this film, and I only read the novel once, in 2005. Apparently, the Fat Lady (an animate painting) is a sort of gatekeeper who asks people for a password. When she refuses to give Sirius the password, he slashes her painting with a knife, and she flees for safety to a different painting. In the novel, she ends up in a map of Argyllshire (lots of little skinny islands there!), but in the film she tries to hide in a painting of several hippopotamuses grazing on the African savanna, and it is in the background of this painting that the giraffe walks past.
This scene is pretty much the opposite of a planet where all the animals are little and skinny. The Fat Lady (that's what she's called) is obviously big and fat, and I assume hippos were chosen because it would be natural for her to try to hide among animals that are also big and fat. I suppose the giraffe was added just to make the painting look more dynamic, since the hippos aren't really moving around much.
Tuesday, November 28, 2023
Sometimes a banana is just a banana -- right?
Mortimer produced an expert witness, Professor James Kinsley, Head of the School of English at the University of Nottingham, who argued that the word "bollocks" was not obscene, and was actually a legitimate Old English term formerly used to refer to a priest, and which, in the context of the title, meant "nonsense." Lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, who appeared with Mortimer, recalled the professor saying that early English translations of the Bible used "bollocks" to refer to testicles, this being replaced by the word "stones" in the King James Version of the Bible, at which point Rotten handed Robertson a note saying, "Don't worry. If we lose the case, we'll retitle the album Never Mind the Stones, Here's the Sex Pistols."
Hmmm - that [Sex Pistols reference] went over my head. I've never listened to them and don't know a thing about them, until I looked them up just now.A seeming reference to your latest post on raising eyebrows? Seems like that group raised a few back in the day, from what I've just read.A group referencing themselves as Dicks (using this slang here on purpose for reasons below) that asks folks to not mind (pay attention to) the Stones is interesting, in a bad way I guess, if one is willing to interpret Stones in a different way than intended.Your Banana group that charged after the Civil War nuts seemed to be also a reference to dicks, if I understood you correctly?Dick is a nickname based on Richard, which also has Rick as a nickname. You wrote about a picture of someone who likes to "rick", meaning swinging a massive morningstar, which you mentioned was badass and pretty cool. We see a similar weapon (a flail, technically) in the Iron video held by a person that could probably be described as a badass.In your post announcing you were sync posting again, you actually did the same thing that the Sex Pistols are telling people to do in their album title, in a way. You changed "Let's rock and roll" to "Let's rick and roll", replacing the rock (Stone) with a rick (dick)....as in, never mind the Rock-Stone, here is the Rick-Dick.
R-V!Remember the other word: dea-con!Indestructible workerLet him without stone cast the first cigarette
This here is my longer gun;I've also got a shorter one.Long's for killing spies (Red China's).Short's for sticking in . . .
Monday, November 27, 2023
Now that the eyebrows have settled . . .
"Would this be the Topman residence?" inquired the little man in soft, musical tones, his thick, standing-out eyebrows going right up. At the same time all the other pairs of eyebrows went up.Now Annabelle Topman came forward."I am Mrs. Topman," she said. "Is there something I can do for you?""Mistress Topman," he returned politely, and his eyebrows came down again, . . .
One and forty-four
Disappearing tools and double frogs
Behold, we lay a tool here and on the morrow it is gone; and behold, our swords are taken from us in the day we have sought them for battle. Yea, we have hid up our treasures and they have slipped away from us, because of the curse of the land. O that we had repented in the day that the word of the Lord came unto us; for behold the land is cursed, and all things are become slippery, and we cannot hold them (Hel. 13:34-36).
Never mind the Pollux
Saturday, November 25, 2023
Likeness in anything is likeness to him.
Thursday, November 23, 2023
The Drink of Forgetfulness and illegible notes: The Key, Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet, and Tim
"You see," went on Mebe, "that was The Drink of Forgetfulness. Only once or twice in a lifetime is it necessary to give some misguided person this drink, usually someone very conceited . . . . The Ancient Ones have decreed that The Drink is never to be forced on the guilty person. But it is never necessary to force him to drink. Out of vanity and pride, he always takes it eagerly and drinks it all -- every drop" (p. 137).
"All gone," he whispered. "All gone. Hen-tracks -- that's what it is, just hen-tracks."Now Chuck darted over and picked up the book and opened it. Then he turned and held it out, his eyes wide with wonder."Sure," he breathed. "That's it. It's all in Basidiumite, of course. So now he can't read it. It's just scratchings, just gibberish. He can't remember the language, so now he can't remember how to read it. Poor old Horatio!" (p. 160).
As I rose from the bed, I saw my yellow notepad on the floor, covered with scrawls. It had been in my briefcase when I went to bed, so I must have pulled it out and taken notes. I grabbed it and looked at them.They were pretty much just squiggles. They didn't seem to relate to any sort of a conversation.Had he been real, or a dream? If you took nots in your sleep, they might look like this.Then I remembered that, as he left, he'd asked me to drink a white liquid that he'd had in one of the glasses from the bathroom. But hadn't I refused? Surely I had.Then I thought of the Milk of Nepenthe, the drug that was mythically given to people who had visited the gods, in order that they would not suffer the anguish of remembering the pleasures of heaven when they had to return to mortal life.I had not wanted to drink it, but I hadn't refused.
I was left with the impression that the man had been speaking Latin, but I don't think he actually was, and I have no memory of any Latin words he used.
Wednesday, November 22, 2023
They shall take up serpents
And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, "When Pharaoh shall speak unto you, saying, Shew a miracle for you: then thou shalt say unto Aaron, Take thy rod, and cast it before Pharaoh, and it shall become a serpent."And Moses and Aaron went in unto Pharaoh, and they did so as the Lord had commanded: and Aaron cast down his rod before Pharaoh, and before his servants, and it became a serpent.Then Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers: now the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their enchantments. For they cast down every man his rod, and they became serpents: but Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods (Ex. 7:8-12).
And Moses answered and said, "But, behold, they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice: for they will say, The Lord hath not appeared unto thee."And the Lord said unto him, "What is that in thine hand?"And he said, "A rod."And he said, "Cast it on the ground."And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it.And the Lord said unto Moses, "Put forth thine hand, and take it by the tail" -- and he put forth his hand, and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand -- "that they may believe that the Lord God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath appeared unto thee" (Ex. 4:1-5).
And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover (Mark 16:17-18).
Behold, we lay a tool here and on the morrow it is gone; and behold, our swords are taken from us in the day we have sought them for battle. Yea, we have hid up our treasures and they have slipped away from us, because of the curse of the land. O that we had repented in the day that the word of the Lord came unto us; for behold the land is cursed, and all things are become slippery, and we cannot hold them (Hel. 13:34-36).
And now, to the boys' amazement, Ta drew from around his neck the beautiful necklace of stones and flung it up to them -- and as it came slithering and swerving upward through the green air, it seemed almost like something alive. "You must divide the stones between you," said Ta, "and because of them, you will always remember me . . . . Those stones were taken from our Sacred Hall in the depths of the mountains, and are given only to the kings of our people" (p. 117).
And like some marvelous rainbow-colored serpent the necklace of Ta poured from his fingers and hung there, swaying back and forth in the bright air (p. 168).
I looked down into one of those little rock pools, and I thought, 'What a beautiful crab.' And then I thought, 'But there's never been a crab as beautiful as that!' and I got down on my knees and put my hand in the rock pool -- and pulled out Ta's necklace (p. 168).
Two cunning wise ones, "wizards," Blue gowned
In a hypnopompic state this morning before fully waking up, I was thinking about Jay Leno and how odd that he of all people -- someone in whom I had no interest and about whom I knew virtually nothing -- should have appeared in my dreams. In my hypnopompic reverie, I latched onto the fact (discovered in my post-dream research) that Leno always dresses in blue denim when he's not on TV, and that this must shed some light on the meaning of the blue clothing worn by Tim in my dream, by Tim and Patrick in the Alizio story, and by the two wizards in the Joseph story. I started thinking about various terms for blue denim clothing. Denim itself ultimately means "of the sanctuary," while Levis comes from the tribe of Levi, the priestly lineage -- Aaron! Didn't Aaron, the high priest, wear a blue robe?
At this point I was fully awake. A quick word search on a Bible app confirmed that, yes, the only "blue robe" mentioned in the Bible is the one worn by Aaron (Ex. 28:31, 39:22). But Aaron is just one person, and the Blue Wizards are a pair. I had a hunch that I should look up the etymology of jeans. I already knew it -- it comes from Genoa, and Genoa means "knee" -- but I looked it up anyway, and saw something that I probably wouldn't have noticed had I not just been thinking about Aaron:
Did you notice it, too? Jeans comes from the Old French name for Genoa, which was Jannes. Jannes and Jambres are the names given by tradition and in the New Testament (2 Tim. 3:8) to the "wise men" or "magicians of Egypt" (Ex. 7:11) against whom Moses and Aaron faced off in the court of Pharaoh. I had previously mentioned that in the Joseph story and Mushroom Planet we have two Wise Men, in contrast to the traditional three, but in Jannes and Jambres we have a biblical set of two Wise Men. One Midrash has it that they left the Pharaoh and followed Moses out of Egypt.
Yesterday, thinking about Jay Leno and his blue denim outfits led me to "Blue Jays," the album by Justin Hayward and John Lodge. I assume that the album title has no reference to birds except as a pun but refers to Blue J's -- Justin and John, the two Moody Blues members whose names begin with that letter. Jannes and Jambres would be another such pair of J's.
Tuesday, November 21, 2023
Yellow Light and the Mushroom Planet
I posted the lyric video for "Yellow Light" by Of Monsters and Man because it synched with my post "Golden light, and going 'overseas.'" The whole video shows the same scene: low clouds stretched out horizontally, a huge planet in the sky dwarfing the sun, and people traveling from the left side of the scene to the right on the backs of dinosaur-like creatures:
The same day, I read and posted about The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, the cover of which shows a very similar scene:
The same low clouds, the same giant planet in the sky, the same travelers from left to right. The Sun does not appear on the cover, but it is mentioned in the story that the Earth dwarfs the Sun in the sky of Basidium. As Basidium is only 50,000 miles from Earth, I think the Earth would have about 18 times the diameter of the Sun in its sky, roughly matching the proportions seen in the "Yellow Light" video.
I read The Wonderful Flight because Kevin McCall mentioned it as a story that features a very small planet. I watched the "Yellow Light" video because I heard a different Of Monsters and Men song in a restaurant a few days ago and looked it up, after which YouTube recommended other videos from the same channel. Unrelated, except by synchronicity.
Blue Jays
In a comment on "Jay Leno, Coco, and the killer rabbit," William Wright discusses the possible meanings of the name Jay. When he's not on TV, Leno apparently always wears the same outfit -- blue jeans and a blue shirt -- making him a "blue Jay," and also a possible link to Tim and to the Blue Wizards.
In "William Alizio's links to other stories," I identified the Blue Wizards with the two figures standing in the background of this picture, from the cover or Iris Murdoch's The Philosopher's Pupil:
After the blue jay theme had been introduced, I realized that Blue Jays -- the 1975 album by Moody Blues members Justin Hayward and John Lodge -- features two very similar figures:
As in the Murdoch cover illustration, the two men in blue are standing side by side under an arch and looking across a chasm to the other side.
I've never been a huge fan of Blue Jays, but one of the songs has some potentially relevant lyrics:
Oh, I dreamed last night I was hearing
Hearing your voice
And the things you said, well they left me
Left me no choiceAnd you told me we had the power
And you told me this was the hour
But that you don't know how
If I could show you nowWell, I dreamed last night you were calling
Calling my name
You were locked inside of your secrets
Calling my nameAnd you told me lost was the key
And you told me how you long to be free
But that you don't know how
Oh, let me show you now
I introduced Tim (half of the Blue Wizard duo Tim and Patrick) in my post "Well, that didn't take long"; he appeared in the kind of dream where "it's just some guy talking." I later connected him with the stranger in The Key.
Many years ago, I used to entertain the idea that Justin Hayward was the reincarnation of Arnaut Daniel, though I don't remember what first suggested the connection -- probably a dream or something. Possibly relevant in connection with the white rabbit:
I am Arnaut who nets the breeze
and with an ox pursues the hare
and swims against the rising seas.
Monday, November 20, 2023
The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet
A box without hinges, key, or lid,Yet golden treasure inside is hid.
Charge! Run away!
Sunday, November 19, 2023
Golden light, and going "overseas"
In a serener brightIn a more golden lightI seeEach little doubt and fearEach little discord here Removed
I have a Bird in springWhich for myself doth sing –The spring decoys.And as the summer nears –And as the Rose appears,Robin is gone.Yet do I not repineKnowing that Bird of mineThough flown –Learneth beyond the seaMelody new for meAnd will return.Fast in safer handHeld in a truer LandAre mine –And though they now depart,Tell I my doubting heartThey're thine.In a serener Bright,In a more golden lightI seeEach little doubt and fear,Each little discord hereRemoved.Then will I not repine,Knowing that Bird of mineThough flownShall in distant treeBright melody for meReturn.
"I didn't ever see a person in this light, but to me the light was a Christ-consciousness, a oneness with all things, a perfect love," an NDEr told Moody. "I think that Jesus meant it literally when he said he was the light of the world." For another survivor, Jesus "was not in a body, but was a being of light in the brightest white, golden light, it did not hurt my eyes."
These days Alexandrit's energy appears in my mind's eye as a triangle composed of three gold bars, with a Rutilated Quartz crystal, or sometimes a pearl at its center. The gold bars are the energetic tools I used to work with in the temples of Ancient Egypt. Working with these golden instruments once again touches the depth of my soul, awakening my knowledge and the ancient memory. The Herkimer diamond, which also appears in the picture at the start of this chapter, helps me connect with Alexandrit.
Alexandrit reminded me of a significant experience I had when I was 12, following my first trip overseas (a Bat Mitzvah gift from my grandmother). I was not as excited about the flight itself as I was about the encounter awaiting me "there," overseas. At 12 I was still so innocent. There was only one channel on Israeli TV (in black-and-white, and we couldn't even imagine the Internet back then), and I was exposed to very little of the outside world, as I was dreamy and detached by nature. In my naïveté, I was certain that "overseas," (which in Hebrew literally translates into "out of Earth") actually meant a place outside of planet Earth. These days it seems utterly unrealistic for a 12-year-old girl to think that. I was supposed to know something about geography, but I was really detached.
Happy 85th birthday, Jerry Pinkney
Poking around a used bookstore this afternoon, I felt a magnetic pull to a particular book, which, when I took it down from the shelf, turne...
-
Following up on the idea that the pecked are no longer alone in their bodies , reader Ben Pratt has brought to my attention these remarks by...
-
Disclaimer: My terms are borrowed (by way of Terry Boardman and Bruce Charlton) from Rudolf Steiner, but I cannot claim to be using them in ...
-
I’ve been sailing all my life now Never harbor or port have I known The wide universe is the ocean I travel And the earth is my blue boat ho...