Tam multa, ut puta genera linguarum sunt in hoc mundo: et nihil sine voce est.
Sunday, March 31, 2024
Death’s icy chains are bursting! ‘Tis the Resurrection day!
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Annunciation rescheduled to coincide with eclipse
March 25th is the fixed date of the great Feast of the Annunciation… BUT since March 25th falls inside Holy Week this year, Holy Mother Church defers the Great Feast to the first day outside of Eastertide, which is Monday, April 8th this year.
The threefold terror of love; a fallen flareThrough the hollow of an ear;Wings beating about the room;The terror of all terrors that I boreThe Heavens in my womb.Had I not found content among the showsEvery common woman knows,Chimney corner, garden walk,Or rocky cistern where we tread the clothesAnd gather all the talk?What is this flesh I purchased with my pains,This fallen star my milk sustains,This love that makes my heart's blood stopOr strikes a Sudden chill into my bonesAnd bids my hair stand up?
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Rationalized whim
On March 24, I posted "Turning suns into black holes," about syncs that had drawn my attention to The Peyote Dance, Helen Weaver's English translation of Antonin Artaud's Au pays des Tarahumaras (1947). That night, I dreamed of seeing a blog post with a particular title, and the next day (yesterday, March 25) I created a post with that title, "I am the wizard Lion." I proposed several possible interpretations of that phrase, but the one I ended up running with was that it was an anagram of rationalized whim.
Today, having been influenced by the syncs of two days ago, I picked up The Peyote Dance and started reading. When I got to the section called "The Mountain of Signs," which begins on p. 12, I was astonished to find that it dealt with the idea of rational whims. I quote the first few paragraphs (italics are the author's; bold is mine):
The land of the Tarahumara is full of signs, forms, and natural effigies which in no way seem the result of chance -- as if the gods themselves, whom one feels everywhere here, had chosen to express their powers by means of these strange signatures in which the figure of man is hunted down from all sides.
Of course, there are places on the earth where Nature, moved by a kind of intelligent whim, has sculptured human forms. But here the case is different, for it is over the whole geographic expanse of a race that Nature has chosen to speak.
And the strange thing is that those who travel through the region, as if seized by an unconscious paralysis, close their senses in order to remain ignorant of everything. When Nature, by a strange whim, suddenly shows the body of a man being tortured on a rock, one can think at first that this is merely a whim and that this whim signifies nothing. But when in the course of many days on horseback the same intelligent charm is repeated, and when Nature obstinately manifests the same idea; when the same pathetic forms recur; when the heads of familiar gods appear on the rocks, and when the theme of death emanates from them, a death for which man obstinately bears the expense -- when the dismembered form of man is answered by the forms of the gods who have always tortured him, become less obscure, more separate from a petrifying matter -- when a whole area of the earth develops a philosophy parallel to that of its inhabitants; when one knows that the first men utilized a language of signs, and when one finds this language formidably expanded on the rocks, then one surely cannot continue to think that this is a whim, and that this whim signifies nothing.
He doesn't actually use the word rationalized, but whim is repeated again and again -- and again and again is expressed the idea that these whims are "intelligent," that they signify something, that they constitute a "language" and express a "philosophy." Clearly the idea of rationality is implied in all this.
For Artaud, it is the repetition of the same patterns that makes the whims begin to appear rational -- that rationalizes them. This is essentially the idea of synchronicity: that any sufficiently striking coincidence implies meaning.
And so this post's title turns out to be as self-referential as that of "I am the wizard Lion." Deciding to read that phrase as an anagram of rationalized whim was nothing if not whimsical, but now, reinforced by this coincidence, the whim seems to have been at least partially rationalized.
Her prophets are light
Monday, March 25, 2024
I am the wizard Lion
Last night I dreamed that I saw a blog post with that title (including the odd capitalization), though I wasn't sure whether it was on my own blog or someone else's. I didn't read the post; I only saw the title.
By posting this, I am making my dream come true.
In the dream, I thought it was an allusion to Jim Morrison's "The Celebration of the Lizard," with its famous lines "I am the Lizard King / I can do anything." Wizard sounds like lizard, and the lion is the king of beasts -- ergo, Wizard Lion = Lizard King.
Immediately upon waking, I thought, no, the wizard/lizard lion is the chameleon, a lizard with a lion in its name and with the "magical" ability to change color.
Not until this evening did I get around to looking up "The Celebration of the Lizard." Like most Gen-X Mormons, I am a half-assed Doors fan at best and only knew a few lines -- "Is everybody in? / The ceremony is about to begin," plus the Lizard King bit. As it turns out, the very first word of the poem is lions, which would seem to confirm my in-dream interpretation.
I was sync-posting about "The invincible Lizard King" back in January 2023.
Given Mr. Mojo Risin's penchant for anagrams, I thought "I am the wizard Lion" might be one. It's an anagram of "rationalized whim," which seems like a phrase people might use on occasion, so I tried googling it. Only four results -- but the first one was very recent: a March 1, 2024, article for The Lamp by Jude Russo, called "Whim All the Way Down" -- about, of all things, the watches owned by dictators. The key phrase occurs in the first paragraph:
Most Americans, I think, fancy themselves collectors of something or other. It is the natural consequence of our superabundant material culture; with the specter of famine having shuffled almost out of our living memory, people are free to devote a decent portion of their earnings to whim. Collecting is just rationalized whim.
I am no exception. I have my little whims -- books, guns, watches -- but . . .
Note that though the rest of the article is about watches, early on he pairs them with guns.
Scrolling down a bit, I noticed a "colonel" reference:
Col. Muammar Gaddhafi kept up a steady stream of inexpensive quartz watches bearing his likeness at every stage of his fashion sensibility . . .
This led me to the colonel's Wikipedia article, where I found this:
Colonel Gaddafi's golden gun caught my eye because, due to recent Corn Flakes syncs, I had been thinking about songs that mention that cereal: "I Am The Walrus," "Punky's Dilemma" by Simon & Garfunkel, and of course Tori Amos's "Cornflake Girl" -- which has the repeated line "And the man with the golden gun thinks he knows so much."
I hadn't listened to any of those songs or even searched for them -- I had just been thinking about them -- when I opened up the YouTube Music on my phone and found that the first song it had queued up in my "Supermix" was called "Gold Guns Girls":
After that, running into a real-life Colonel with a Golden Gun -- found by searching for an anagram of a line from a dream! -- was quite the coincidence.
Working out with Bones, and Colonel West
When I posted this, I had a vague feeling that the "bone" reference in the Pogo strip was significant. Just now I read this in Strange But True by Colin Wilson:"[French psychometrist Alexis] Didier was given a small leather case belonging to a certain Colonel Llewellyn. Didier placed the case against his stomach, and was then able to tell the owner that it contained a piece of bone — the colonel’s own bone."
One of the most important colonels in the current sync-stream has been Colonel Sanders. Guess who Cornel West supported before he decided to run for office himself?
Corn Flakes 311
Last night I checked Richard Arrowsmith's Black Dog Star blog -- which is updated very infrequently, and which I check with corresponding infrequency -- and found a new post (well, about a month old), the first in over a year and a half: "Waking from a dream." In the post, he links to an old 2009 post by Jake Kotze, the granddaddy of Internet synchromysticism: "Robin: '11:11, Time For Ascension!'" Richard highlights this image from Jake's post:
Richard's interest was in the theme of the raised fist, which he connects with the "woke" BLM salute and other things. My own interest is in the fact that it's a box of Corn Flakes. In my March 8 post "Hidden Treasures, the super cereal," I also posted a picture of a Corn Flakes box in the context of waking from a dream:
Following the link back to the Jake Kotze post, I found that it also includes this photo:
Jake's focus is on the "Crisis? 911" part, but 311 is much more prominently displayed. This number has come up a lot recently, for example in my March 21 post "Fake colonel 3:11." Debbie has repeatedly pointed out that colonel and kernel are homonyms. Kernel comes from the root of corn (German Kern, plural Kerne) plus the diminutive suffix -el. Moving the l can transform fake kernel to flake Kerne.
Both Richard and Jake focus on 11:11 in their respective posts. Checking my own blog comments this morning -- after reading Richard and Jake's posts but before posting this -- and found that Debbie had left this comment on "She's so rocky, shisa star":Do recall my 2003 dream/esoteric experience I shared with you titled: 11:11. 11:11 are twins, as are all master numbers.
Although now in 2024, the 11:11 experience is pervasive on the internet that wasn't the case in 2003 as the internet (at least to the public) was in its infancy. Youtube wasn't launched until 2005, and there was next to none information about 11:11 that I could find online in 2003 after I had the 11:11 dream/experience. Marshall and I only got our computer in 1998. I DID NOT KNOW about 11:11 before the dream.
The post Debbie was commenting on was about the 2000 Britney Spears song "Lucky," which begins thus:
Early morning, she wakes up
Knock, knock, knock on the door
It's time for make-up, perfect smile
These lyrics had reminded me of Rebecca Black's 2011 anti-hit "Friday," which begins this way:
Seven a.m., waking up in the morning
Gotta be fresh, gotta go downstairs
Gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereal
Sunday, March 24, 2024
Turning suns into black holes
Dedicated to the eternal glory of the sun Tutuguri is a black rite.The Rite of black night and of the eternal death of the sun.No, the sun will never come back
She’s so rocky, shisa star
Saturday, March 23, 2024
Hay fever
And Liza replies: "With straw, dear Henry."Straw is a kind of hay. Hay is the Monogrammaton, the shortest Name of God. The universe can only be made whole through divine intervention.But the straw is too long; even the shortest Name of God is too big to fit. Any dose of God would burn the universe to ashes; that’s how this whole problem started. With what shall I cut it, dear Liza, dear Liza? How can God be channeled and applied to the universe safely?
Aaron may be the divil an’ all for brains when it comes to kabbalah, but he knows nothing about fodder.Straw and hay are different (as in the old joke about the army sergeant trying to teach country recruits to march. Since they weren’t able to tell their right foot from their left, teaching them “Left, right, left, right, left!” wasn’t working. So he got them to tie a wisp of hay to one foot, and a sop of straw to the other, and then he was able to get them all to march by saying “Hay foot, straw foot, hay foot, straw foot!”)Straw is the dry stalks of cereal plants left after the grain has been thrashed out. You can feed it to animals, but it serves the same purpose as fibre in a human diet: as roughage, not as something to live on.Hay is dried grasses (or legumes, like alfalfa). It is fodder (that is, food) for animals. Though nowadays, farmers have gone to silage rather than hay as stored animal feed.So Aaron’s exegesis drops stone dead at that point where he goes “Straw is a kind of hay”. In the same fashion as a hat is a kind of a bucket, dear Aaron (ten-gallon hats, anyone?)
Another adjacent-lines error
Friday, March 22, 2024
Eye drops on 113/3/20
I got these eye drops on March 20, the same day Bruce posted about eye drops for mice and William posted about mice. I almost never have problems with my eyes and hadn't seen an ophthalmologist in well over a decade. One of my eyes has been red for several days -- no itching or discomfort, just red -- and my wife had been bugging me to see a doctor about it. March 20 just happened to be the day I finally got around to doing so.
Today (March 20) when I read that the totality will start in Wilmington at 3:11, again, that sparked my interest because of information I found in 2015 including info about the company Pixar and the number 113 (see link)
Equilibrium marshes
Especially with social science topics in which change is slow, differential equation systems often do not have a chance to evolve to the point where the system trajectories actually arrive at an equilibrium. In reality, the trajectories "bog down" when they pass anywhere near the equilibrium in what is called an "equilibrium marsh." Placing the equilibrium marshes in the phase diagram is a useful way to identify those areas where trajectory velocity is so slow that the system essentially comes to a near halt even though equilibrium has not been achieved (p. 56).
Thursday, March 21, 2024
You're, like, reading that wrong.
Fake colonel 3:11
Once again speaking of the eclipse, fake colonels and Ohio . . .
I now think the odd connection of Willimington's totality timing (3:11) and the 'fake colonel in Twilight Zone's The Parallel and the Carbon Copy (Carbondale)s syncs have connections to my Number 113 dream.
I went to a young couples home. The women was youngish but her husband was a bit older. She was Asian, I think, and he was a white man with blonde hair . . . I recall I kissed him and he held his right hand out to me and I clutched his hand. For some reason as he got up to leave, his right arm came off !! and I was still holding his hand and his arm!!!!!
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Skulls, crescents, twins
Monday, March 18, 2024
Skeletor, hieroglyphic-bearing arthropods, and the Judgement
The Judgement Tablet, also called the Covenant Tablet of the Gentiles, is an advanced style tablet. It has a base and top section in addition to the usual four glyphs. It was written by Achee [i.e., the Brother of Jared] and preserved on a cicada. Written on it is the whole course of history from before creation till after the Final Judgement.
Eclipse skull and crossbones
That design looks a little too perfect to be a coincidence, and sure enough, it's not. It was introduced months after the 2017 eclipse and explicitly references the two eclipse paths:
[Carbondale Mayor Mike] Henry said the logo is an abstract crossroad, which fits with Carbondale being the "eclipse crossroads of America." In the middle of the design, it looks like a keyhole, which Henry said suggests the door is always open in the city.
Okay, so both Moon Man and Thoth:
- Are associated with the moon
- Have a crescent moon aspect to their heads
- Deal with words and vocalizing
- Are “judgement day” figures who lay down the law and establish an order
The eclipsing moon as a skull
Sunday, March 17, 2024
Russian AI, the Pokémon dragon calendar, and a game you can play in your living room with your pet gorilla
Friday, March 15, 2024
Makanda
In my last post, I quote the passage in Colin Wilson's Shadowland where Typhon tells Niall that he plans to introduce him as Colonel Niall despite the fact that he is not a colonel. A few paragraphs later, Niall's spider companion -- heretofore known only as "the captain," reveals his name for the first time:
Typhon placed his mouth close to Niall's ear. "If you don't mind, I'll introduce you as Colonel Niall. Most of the men here have military rank."
"Of course. Whatever you think best."
"And I'll describe you simply as an envoy from the spider city. Telling them the truth would make everyone ask you how it came about. Or would you prefer that?"
"Of course not." Niall was only too glad to avoid attention.
Typhon asked the captain: "Do you have a name we could use?"
"Among my own people I was known as Makanda."
"Then let it be Captain Makanda."
Today I clicked on an /x/ thread about the upcoming solar eclipse and found this:
Merry, Pippin, Mary Poppins, secret names, golden straw, square heads, and fake colonels
A recent post by William Wright, "March 12 and 13 timelines: Shelob's Lair and a change in the wind," mentions both the Tolkien characters Merry and Pippin and the P. L. Travers character Mary Poppins, but without noting the similarity of the names. I had a vague memory of having posted something about that similarity and wrongly thought that it must have been a comment on William's blog or a post on my own blog inspired by something he had written -- I mean, when else have I had occasion to write about those characters? A search of my blog turns up no mentions of Pippin, and the only Mary Poppins reference is in passing, as an example of a movie I had seen that had Dik [sic] Van Dyke in it. It was on March 14 that I ran the search and found the Dik Van Dyke post. In the comments, Debbie mentions "an episode of the Twilight Zone released on March 14, 1963 called The Parallel."
I finally found what I was looking for, not in anything connected with William Wright, but in a heretofore unpublished sync note from 2015, a time when I was not blogging. Here is the note in question:
Reluctance to reveal one’s name before the time is right (also: M-ry P-pp-n, straw is gold)
2015 Nov 18 (Wed) – I had been reading The Two Towers but took a break for a week or so to read What the Bee Knows by P. L. Travers. Today I finished the last four or five pages of Travers (I had almost finished last night) and immediately after finishing picked up Tolkien again.
This passage is from page 301 of Travers’s 303-page book:
This idea of the secrecy of the name, the taboo against making it known, goes back to man’s very early days, to the time, perhaps, when he had no name. During the war I spent two summers with the Navaho Indians and when they gave me an Indian name they warned me that it would be bad luck both for me and for the tribe if I ever disclosed it to anyone. And I never have. For one thing, I do not want to receive or give bad luck, and for another I have a strong atavistic feeling –– one, I think, that is strongly shared by unlettered people all over the world –– that to disclose one’s name, or take another’s before the time is ripe –– well, it’s dangerous. I tremble inwardly and withdraw when my Christian name is seized before I have given it, and I have the same hesitancy about using that of another person. An Indian –– or a gypsy –– would understand this very well. It is a very ancient taboo and I relate it –– though I don’t suggest that anyone else relate it –– to the earliest times when men built altars ‘To the Unknown God.’ If I were ever to build an altar, I would put that inscription above it.
When I opened up Tolkien, my bookmark was between pages 606 and 607. The very first line:
Here it is with some context from pp. 605-606:
‘Nobody else calls us hobbits; we call ourselves that,’ said Pippin.
‘Hoom, hmm! Come now! Not so hasty! You call yourselves hobbits? But you should not go telling just anybody. You’ll be letting out your own right names if you’re not careful.’
‘We aren’t careful about that,’ said Merry. ‘As a matter of fact I’m a Brandybuck, Meriadoc Brandybuck, though most people call me just Merry.’
‘And I’m a Took, Peregrin Took, but I’m generally called Pippin, or even Pip.’
‘Hm, but you are hasty folk, I see,’ said Treebeard. ‘I am honoured by your confidence; but you should not be too free all at once. There are Ents and Ents, you know; or there are Ents and things that look like Ents but ain’t, as you might say. I’ll call you Merry and Pippin, if you please – nice names. For I am not going to tell you my name, not yet at any rate.’ A queer half-knowing, half-humorous look came with a green flicker into his eyes. ‘For one thing it would take a long while: my name is growing all the time, and I’ve lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to in my language, in the Old Entish as you might say. It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time to say anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to.
As a second, related sync, the next page of What the Bee Knows (i.e., page 302, the penultimate page) refers to the book Mary Poppins in the Park and the character Mary Poppins (who, of course, is P. L. Travers’s creation). The Tolkien passage features the phonetically similar “Merry and Pippin.”
As a third ancillary coincidence, the paragraph immediately before the one quoted at the beginning of this entry (beginning on page 300) tells the story of Rumpelstiltskin, beginning thus:
‘Rumpelstiltzkin’ was another of my favourites, for its meaning lay very close to me. Everyone knows the story of how the miller’s daughter, in order to become a queen, promises the little old man her first child if he will spin her straw into gold. Of course he does it. It is no problem. To him they are one and the same.
The very first words of page 622 of The Two Towers are “When straw is gold” –– from the song with the Ent and the Entwife.
The fact that two of the syncs feature the very first words of one of Tolkien’s pages is itself a noteworthy coincidence, I suppose.
Square heads and hairy bodies2015 Nov 16 (Mon) – Skype. Amber asked me about an alleged trend in Taiwan where people cut a dog’s fur so that its head will be a perfect square.2015 Nov 17 (Tue) – Read in P. L. Travers’s What the Bee Knows: “the wild women of ancient Russia with square heads and hairy bodies”
Niall . . . blinked with astonishment, suspecting that his eyes were deceiving him. The man seemed to have a square head. Niall pointed to him."Is there something wrong with him?""No. That is one of the karvasid's experiments. He thought that a man with a different-shaped head could be made more intelligent, but he proved to be wrong. They are very stupid."
Typhon placed his mouth close to Niall's ear. "If you don't mind, I'll introduce you as Colonel Niall. Most of the men here have military rank."
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