Plates among the dead leaves

On the night of August 26, 2023, as documented in "Phoenix syncs," I dreamed that I was with my brother (I'm not sure which brother it was) in "a long-abandoned building where everything was covered with dead leaves," and that we were searching the place, "trying to find 'plates' -- meaning further records like the Golden Plates from which the Book of Mormon was produced."

On Holy Saturday night, March 30, 2024, as recorded in "Chips, clips, and the eclipse," I dreamed that I was again in "an indoor area full of dead leaves" on Annunciation Day and that I found there "a flat disc some 10 inches in diameter . . . made of some light-colored metal (color perception in this dream was poor) and . . . covered with engravings."

At the time of the dreams, I connected this place full of dead leaves with the abandoned restaurant I began exploring in July 2022 ("Owl time and cold noodles"), since that was the only such place I knew in waking life. In neither case did I say the place was that restaurant, though, only that it suggested or resembled it. Nevertheless, the dreams did leave me with a vague sense that I should keep going back to the restaurant and that I might find something of value there. Since January 22 of this year, the restaurant has been locked up ("The Green Door finally closes"), and I haven't been back inside. Such is the influence of the dreams, though, that I keep having a nagging feeling that I should go back in, even if it means picking the lock or climbing the wall.

I've been there many times, though, and explored it pretty thoroughly. The only "plates" there are ceramic and melamine dishware, and the only "discs" are some scratched-up CDs of run-of-the-mill pop music and for some reason a lot of blank CDs as well. (I brought them home and confirmed that they're all blank.) The chance of finding anything new there -- let alone some kind of ancient engravings -- is obviously exceedingly remote.

When I acquired some new Tarot cards this past May 30, I received a strong impression from Claire that I needed to get an "ark" -- her word -- to keep them in. (Readers may have noticed a passing reference to this in "More on Joan and Claire.") I know some Tarotists are finicky about where they store their cards -- they have to be wrapped in back silk or whatever -- but I've never really cared about that and generally just keep them in the box they came in. With this deck, though, Claire insisted on an "ark" and flashed me a helpful illustration, somewhat reminiscent of IKEA-style assembly instructions, showing how the cards should be placed on a bed of dried rosemary leaves in a small stone box with a lid. (This was before Simon and Garfunkel had entered the chat; now I wonder if I should add some parsley, sage, and thyme!) When I wondered where on earth I was going to get a stone box of the appropriate size, my first thought, however ridiculous, was to look for one in the abandoned restaurant! In the end I settled on a stainless steel "ark" instead (paper and plastic were definitely out of the question, and I couldn't find anything suitable in ceramic), on the understanding that this was only a temporary home for the cards until I could get something in stone.

Not until I started writing this post did it occur to me that I now had, symbolically, some "plates" in a "room" full of dead leaves.

The Golden Plates used by Joseph Smith were found in a stone box, which Don Bradley and others have compared to the Ark of the Covenant -- instead of Moses' stone scripture in a gold box, gold scripture in a stone box.

Today it finally clicked that maybe the "dead leaves" in my dreams have nothing to do with the restaurant but may be yet another "plates" reference. "Leaves of gold" -- both tree leaves and leaves of a book -- have been very much in the sync-stream recently. This started with my January 4 post "Leaves of gold unnumbered," in which golden tree-leaves in two different Tolkien poems were connected with the leaves of the Golden Plates. In the second of these poems, "Namárië," the golden leaves are also dead leaves, falling from the trees in autumn. I also included this imagery of "gold" autumnal leaves in my May 15 poem "Humpty Dumpty revisited"; this was just some whimsical punning on Humpty's "great fall," with no conscious reference to my earlier "leaves of gold" post. Then on June 10, as recorded the next day in "Feuilles-oh, sauvez la vie moi," I tried to translate a passage from Rimbaud for myself because I was unhappy with Louise Varèse's failure to translate feuilles d'or literally as leaves of gold. Rimbaud's "leaves" are closer to the Golden Plates, something to write on. Then that very night, I happened to read in Richard Cavendish's The Tarot about Etteilla's claim that the original Book of Thoth had been written "on leaves of gold" near Memphis. William Wright picked up on this theme in "The Brass Leafy Plates and all roads lead to France," proposing that my "leaves of gold" syncs have to do with the Brass Plates and that these are currently in France. (If anyone wants to follow up that lead, the first place I'd look is behind the altar in the Basilique Saint-Sernin de Toulouse; let me know if you find anything.) He also brings up the idea of an "ark" (and connects it with Joan of Arc, which I had somehow failed to do!), though for him it is the plates themselves that constitute the ark.

The place to which all roads proverbially lead is of course not France but Rome, and that makes me think of Book VI of the Aeneid. There our hero visits the cave of the Cumaean Sybil, a prophetess whose usual practice is to write the word of bright Phoebus on literal leaves -- oak leaves -- and leave them at the mouth of her cave, where they soon blow away in the wind. Aeneas specifically asks her not to do this with the oracle he has requested: "Only do not write your verses on the leaves, lest they fly, disordered playthings of the rushing winds: chant them from your own mouth." The seeress obliges -- and goes on to speak of leaves of gold!

Hidden in a dark tree is a golden bough, golden in leaves and pliant stem, sacred to Persephone, the underworld’s Juno, all the groves shroud it, and shadows enclose the secret valleys. But only one who’s taken a gold-leaved fruit from the tree is allowed to enter earth’s hidden places.

Aeneas finds this fabled golden bough hidden among the leaves of an otherwise ordinary oak tree:

Just as mistletoe, that does not form a tree of its own, grows in the woods in the cold of winter, with a foreign leaf, and surrounds a smooth trunk with yellow berries: such was the vision of this leafy gold in the dark oak-tree, so the foil tinkled in the light breeze.

(I'm away from my study at the moment and don't have access to any of my preferred translations of Virgil. The above are A. S. Kline's, taken from this site.)

With this context -- and the Aeneid, which I have read more times and in more translations than any other book outside the Bible, is very much a part of the furniture of my subconscious, likely to influence my dreams -- the dream image of golden plates hidden in an enclosed space full of dead leaves takes on another possible meaning. It's as if some devotee of far-darting Phoebus, anxious that nothing be lost, had assiduously gathered as many of the wind-scattered leaves as could be recovered and shut them up in a room lest they blow away again. Alas, leaves are but leaves, and it is not the wind that keeps them from lasting forever. They may be bright when they fall from the oak, but nothing gold can stay. Hidden among those brittle husks of desiccated prophecy, though, may be found, like mistletoe in the shadows, a few leaves from the genuine Golden Bough, enabling passage to other worlds. These at least are not ephemeral: "these plates of brass should never perish; neither should they be dimmed any more by time."

So maybe the Sybil's way of doing things was right all along: Let blow away whatever can blow away; true gold will remain.

Working out what that means is going to take some time, but at least it's nice to have found a different interpretive angle and to get away from the stupid literalness of focusing on that restaurant!

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One little postscript: In "What shall we do with the drunken Railer?" I mention the very unsatisfactory nature of the French translation of the Sinbad bit in Ulysses, where Joyce's tailor and jailer and whaler become the meaningless tarin and jarin and wharin. Couldn't they have found some actual French words that rhyme with marin as the English words rhyme with sailor? Well, I've been on a DIY translation kick recently, so if no one else is going to do it . . . .

I found a French rhyming dictionary online and looked up words that rhyme with marin. Pretty slim pickings, it turns out:

Pinbad le Parrain, the godfather? Not too many other possibilities here. But the very first result, after marin itself, is romarin. I looked it up, and it's the French word for rosemary, the herb. Weird coincidence.