This past March 14, Bill left a comment bringing up my posts about Christina Rossetti’s poem “Goblin Market,” and I followed up the same day with a post of my own, “When only the goblins are out.”
Today I checked The Higherside Chats, which I haven’t done for several months. I found an episode released on March 17, three days after Bill’s comment and my post, called “Hollywood trickster imps, goblin markets, & the psychometabolism.” I’m listening to it now; so far no mention of the Rossetti poem.
Goblin market isn’t a phrase you hear every day. Every three days, maybe.
On Tuesday night (April 1-2), I had a dream in which Claire was giving some sort of presentation in English. She was explaining a general principle, which I can no longer remember, and used the specific example of "records" symbolized by long sticks to illustrate the concept. These sticks were about two meters long, made of very white wood, and somewhat wider at one end than the other. They reminded me of the suit of Batons from the Sola Busca Tarot (engraved on metal plates in the 15th century) and also of the quarterstaves used by Robin Hood and his Merry Men.
"For example," said Claire, "let's take records. We have the Two Bibles --"
At this point, two men came forward, each with a white staff. They faced each other and held their staves out in front of them, angled downward, so that they met the tips.
"-- the Book of Mormon --"
A third man came forward. The three arranged themselves at equal angles and again put out their staves so that they met in the center.
"-- and the Revelations."
A fourth man joined the group, and there were now four staves. The overall effect reminded me of the "Swords United" meme:
Since there were only four men and no Round Table, it reminded me even more of certain depictions of the Three Musketeers (who are actually four, including d'Artagnan). Usually the Musketeers are shown with raised swords, but some artists show them with their swords lowered, as in the meme:
Given that I was searching for images like the above because of a dream about Mormon scripture, I was surprised to see that one of the image search results for my prompt (all for one and one for all three musketeers) was from "The Church of Jesus Christ" -- which is currently the only shorter name used by the Great and Unabbreviable Church.
I noticed that the picture had a "depositphotos" watermark on it, which seemed impossible. The CJCLDS is nothing if not professional and certainly wouldn't be using stolen watermarked images on their official website. Clicking through confirmed that the image was not from churchofjesuschrist.org (the CJCLDS) but rather thechurchofjesuschrist.org (the much smaller Bickertonite branch of Mormonism).
I wasn't sure what to make of the "Two Bibles" reference. At first I thought it might mean the Old and New Testaments, but I think it's more likely a reference to the prophesied "words [that] shall hiss forth," which will be perceived as a second Bible in competition with the Bible we have (see 2 Nephi 29). That chapter mentions scriptures coming from the four points of the compass, matching the imagery of the four men and their staves:
Wherefore, because that ye have a Bible ye need not suppose that it contains all my words; neither need ye suppose that I have not caused more to be written. For I command all men, both in the east and in the west, and in the north, and in the south, and in the islands of the sea, that they shall write the words which I speak unto them (2 Ne. 29:10-11).
The use of sticks to represent sacred books is quite conventional in Mormonism, where the "stick of Joseph" and "stick of Judah" mentioned in Ezekiel, which "shall be one in mine hand" (Ezek. 37:16-20) are almost universally understood to be the Bible and the Book of Mormon.
Ezekiel even has a hint of the Musketeers' motto:
Moreover, thou son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it, For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions: then take another stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel his companions (Ezek. 37:16).
"One" stick is made to stand "for all" the house of Israel.
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The laziness vs. work theme is still going in the syncs. Last night I put on YouTube Music, letting the algorithm choose the songs. First of all, though, it served up this ad:
This made me kek. People who don't let a computer do their thinking and writing and drawing for them are the lazy ones? (Yes, I realize I just confessed to lazily letting an algorithm choose music for me, so I guess I can't throw stones.)
As soon as I'd skipped the ad, the first song came on -- one of Leonard Cohen's that I'd never heard before:
The opening lines of the lyrics are:
I was always workin' steady but I never called it art
I got my shit together meeting Christ and reading Marx
Right after the question -- "Still too lazy?" -- the answer: "I was always workin' steady."
I heard that last bit not as a reference to the Jewish economist but as "reading marks" -- as in reading the marks on a cicada's back, making the toothpicks sing.
I had actually thought of Leonard Cohen before in connection with the "lazy lions." In "Going Home" (discussed previously in "Inspiration as bondage, inspiration as freedom"), Cohen, speaking in the voice of God, calls himself -- Leonard, "strong as a lion" -- a "lazy bastard":
I love to speak with Leonard
He's a sportsman and a shepherd
He's a lazy bastard
Living in a suit
Interestingly, the music video for "Happens to the Heart" begins with a man in a suit and trilby (Cohen's trademark outfit) walking through the woods. As the song progresses, he takes off his suit, is clothed in the robes of a monk, and meditates. In the final shot, we see that he is levitating. (Cohen spent five years as a Buddhist monk in real life.) In "Going Home," too, Cohen takes off the suit, "going home without the costume that I wore." If the suit is the uniform of the "lazy bastard," the life of a contemplative if lazier still -- so lazy it's hard work.
That phrase "so boring it's stimulating" crossed my mind this morning as I was meditating on the Miracle at Cana, in which Jesus made water more intoxicating than wine.
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This morning I was reading Alma and came across a reference to the people of Ammonihah having "synagogues, which were built after the manner of the Jews." I thought that this was probably an anachronism, since synagogues didn't really exist until the Hellenistic period, and I also thought it was strange that they would be described as "built after the manner of the Jews," given that this part of the Book of Mormon takes place more than 500 years after these people's ancestors left Jerusalem and lost all contact with the Jews. What concept could anyone at that time have had of Jewish architecture?
These thoughts led me to the Wikipedia article for "Synagogue." The first photo included in the article is this one:
So that's another eldritch/Eldridge sync. Incidentally, one of the things I noticed in Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice (cf. that very "icy" stained-glass window) was how his ideas about "White people" are almost entirely based on Jews. The quintessential White guy, for him, is Norman Mailer, while the White woman is typified by his Jewish lawyer Beverly Axelrod.
There's an Eldridge Cleaver link in Cohen's "Happens to the Heart," too, where he mentions "a panther in the yard."
Over in the comments at Leo's blog, Bill brings in the recent Jason Statham movie A Working Man with reference to my supposed laziness. I guess I'll take this as a bit of vindication from the sync fairies on that ridiculous charge, since Statham, who plays the titular working man, is closely associated with me. I suppose it has more to do with my hairstyle (or lack thereof!) than anything else, but I'm often told I look like Statham, and more than once people have forgotten Statham's name and said something like, "you know, that one actor who looks like you." Way back in the early 2000s, when I was a "working man" in the truest sense (wearing leather gloves and steel-toed boots and being paid to move heavy objects around), one of my nicknames was Turkish, after Statham's character in the 2000 Guy Ritchie movie Snatch. I had plenty of hair back then and didn't even look like Statham; I think the nickname began as a sort of contraction of Tychonievich.
(On the topic of baldness, last night, trying to find where my bookmark was, I opened up Kip Thorne's Black Holes and Time Warps and, by chance, got the page where he introduces the "no-hair principle.")
I was just thinking about that word snatch the other day, as I was reading this bit in the Book of Mormon:
Nevertheless, after wading through much tribulation, repenting nigh unto death, the Lord in mercy hath seen fit to snatch me out of an everlasting burning, and I am born of God.
My soul hath been redeemed from the gall of bitterness and bonds of iniquity. I was in the darkest abyss; but now I behold the marvelous light of God. My soul was racked with eternal torment; but I am snatched, and my soul is pained no more (Mosiah 27:28-29).
I noticed for the first time that this is an early instance of Joseph Smith's later doctrine that "eternal" or "endless punishment need not actually last forever -- "it is not written that there shall be no end to this torment, but it is written endless torment" (D&C 19:6). Here Alma speaks of having suffered "eternal torment" but then in the same sentence says "my soul is pained no more." Alma's reference to entering "the darkest abyss" before seeing "the marvelous light" also made me think of Darkinbad from "With?":
And last of all comes Darkinbad,
Who is Brightdayler hight,
Who'll go down in the dark abyss
And bring all things to light.
"With?" is a riff on a passage from Ulysses by James Joyce, which I have only read once -- during breaks when I was a working man called Turkish. Joyce has also played a role in the recent "laziness" kerfluffle, with his fable of the Ondt and the Gracehoper.
Yesterday, the Tarot card I drew for meditation was the Nine of Pentacles:
The card includes both the snail, which is proverbially slow, and the falcon, the fastest animal in the world. The falcon is "blind" at the moment, its eyes covered with a kip-leather hood. This is only temporary, though, and is part of the "manning" process whereby the falcon gets used to living and working with humans. Later, when it is actually working for humans, its sharp eyesight will be an essential part of its usefulness.
I hadn't planned to do a reading, but since the cards were there, and I had a question on my mind, I decided to do one anyway. "What's going on with Bill?" I asked and drew a single card: the Queen of Pentacles.
This was interesting because recently, when I drew the Five of Pentacles and tried to perceive the card psychically before turning it face up (see "Gracehopers and Ants in the library"), despite the fact that my impressions fit the Five almost perfectly, my guess was that it was going to be the Queen of Pentacles. (I had focused too much on the brown fur, thinking it might actually be a rabbit.)
This is Waite's description of the Queen of Pentacles:
The face suggests that of a dark woman, whose qualities might be summed up in the idea of greatness of soul; she has also the serious cast of intelligence; she contemplates her symbol and may see worlds therein.
Contemplating a symbol and seeing worlds therein is obviously a good fit for Bill, and previous readings have identified him with the Page of Pentacles, who also contemplates the same symbol. What jumped out at me, though, was the phrase "greatness of soul," which is very close to something Pahoran writes to Captain Moroni in the Book of Mormon:
And now, in your epistle you have censured me, but it mattereth not; I am not angry, but do rejoice in the greatness of your heart (Alma 61:9).
This is a response to an irate Moroni, who has (unjustly, due to lack of information in the fog of war) accused Pahoran and his associates of laziness, and specifically of a failure to think hard enough:
Yea, great has been your neglect towards us. And now behold, we desire to know the cause of this exceedingly great neglect; yea, we desire to know the cause of your thoughtless state. Can you think to sit upon your thrones in a state of thoughtless stupor, while your enemies are spreading the work of death around you? (Alma 60:5-7)
