I tried the "Reading with my eyes shut" experiment again, again with suggestive but unsatisfying results. As before, I put a Rider-Waite Tarot card under my pillow without looking at it and then took a nap. This time I got plenty of dream imagery. I first fell asleep for just a few minutes, then woke up, and then slept again for a about 40 minutes -- so the dream material is divided into two segments.
In the first period of sleep, I saw someone using tools that resembled those of a locksmith. He was sticking these into a water dispenser at odd angles and jiggling them around, and I thought he was "trying to jimmy hot water out of it" -- meaning trying to force hot water out of a machine designed to dispense only cold. In fact, though, this dispenser had both hot and cold taps, and all he had to do was press the little red lever to get what he wanted; no "jimmying" was required. He was going through a lot of unnecessary trouble and ignoring the easy way.
After this scene, I heard a woman's voice speak the single word eucalypsis -- the Australian tree genus, so modified as to sound more like some sort of medical condition.
At this point I woke up, wrote "cups" on my bedside notepad, thinking the water theme probably indicated that suit, and went back to sleep.
In the next dream, I was entering a very large Mormon-style chapel while sitting on a wheeled office chair. I used my feet to walk the chair forward while remaining seated, and thus moved through the aisle between pews as if I were in a wheelchair. At first I was moving pretty fast, but then I decided it would be more respectful to slow down. I was holding a cordless microphone. I wheeled myself up to one of the pews, under which was a little shelf in which to stow hymnals. I put the microphone in there, with the head sticking out.
At that point, I realized that wheeling around the chapel in a swivel chair was actually disrespectful at any speed, so I picked up the chair and started to carry it out of the chapel. At first I held it in my hands in front of me, but then I realized that this chair was actually designed to be carried on one's head, leaving the hands free. You just turned the chair upside down and placed the seat on your head, with the chair back going down your own back. It was molded to fit the body in this position. I thought it made me look rather like one of those Mesopotamian fish-men, with the seat corresponding to the fish's head and the chair back to the rest of the fish.
I came to a harbor where a large sailing ship was moored, and I decided to put the office chair on the ship. I had to climb up a ladder on the side of the ship to reach the deck, and I found this somewhat difficult with the chair on my head. This chair is designed to be carried on your head, I thought, but this ladder is designed to be climbed without carrying anything on your head!
After considerable struggle, I got up the ladder and onto the deck, where I left the swivel chair. A cast net was lying on the deck, and I threw it down onto the shore. Then instead of climbing back down the ladder, I decided to swing down on a rope "like a pirate."
When I reached the shore, I found one of my students, a high school girl.
"Look," I said, "I've got a cast net."
"Yeah, but nobody fishes here," she said. "I've never even seen a fishing license around here. Hey, can you save those shrimp?"
She indicated some large shrimp that were walking around in the grass near the shore. Each was about the size of a cat, with coloration similar to that of a Maryland blue crab, and had very long legs. Around the base of the cephalothorax was a frilly feathery "beard" that could be extended as a display.
"They don't need saving," I said. "Look, they're only semi-aquatic. They're just fine on dry land."
As we watched the shrimp, they began to take on a stranger and stranger appearance, until eventually they appeared as little "shrimp-centaurs," with a human-like torso rising up from the cephalothorax, with arms and a head. The faces were not at all human, but each was recognizably male or female, and the shrimp had started to pair off, dancing together in male-female couples.
"What are they doing?" the girl asked.
"They're mating," I said, "or rather, they're doing a mating dance. See, they're pairing up."
I woke up, with much more material to record than I had anticipated and not much time to do it before I had to go to work. I hurriedly scribbled everything down, with no real time to analyze or think about it, and then took the card out from under my pillow. It was the Six of Cups.
So I correctly called it as Cups, but that's not particularly impressive, as that suit comprises a full 18% of the deck. Could I have narrowed it down to the Six if I'd given it some more thought? Well, we'll never know now. I kicked myself for being in such a hurry to turn the card over, when really there's no reason I couldn't have just left it there under the pillow for as long as necessary -- all day if need be -- and only checked it after I had thoroughly analyzed the dream content and made a specific prediction.
The Six would have been a reasonable guess. It shows a diminutive male-female pair, like the shrimp, and in the past I've associated them with arthropods (see "The White Saint Valentine, pi, 11, and the bees of Thérèse"). On balance, though, I think I probably would have put my money on the King:
He's sitting on a chair, and his short scepter looks a bit like a microphone. His headdress could, with a bit of imagination, bear some resemblance to an upside-down chair. There's a sailing ship in the background. Maybe this would have been my guess -- but, as I've said, I can't be sure now, because my analysis is contaminated by knowledge of the correct answer.
Next time I do this, I'm going to write out my analysis and prediction and publish it here before turning over the card.
20 comments:
It looks like eucalyptus comes from greek words meaning 'well covered/ hidden', referring to the covering on their buds, I guess. Changing that word into something like a disease in your dream, and potentially tying it to the man you saw might indicate why he was unable to see the red lever in that situation, as a guess.
As you seemed to note, the word "Jimmy" is probably relevant here for that man, as in James/ Jacob. The name has had positive and negative connotations, with one of those meanings referring to a Usurper. Tying that imagery of someone who wants to get water out of a faucet but is unable to would also seem as a possible correlation with Dry Jack. Jack is a nickname for Jacob/ James/ Jimmy.
In any case, a lot of water in these dreams. I had a pretty water-filled dream last night as well, so will leave it in a follow up comment.
In the dream, I was at my parent's house with my kids, or at least my oldest son was there. As we were on the 2nd floor of the house, he suddenly screamed out as he saw a very large rat or mouse coming down the wall in the stairwell - it was crawling down the wall face first, and it was massive. It proceeded on down to the first floor of the home, out of sight (the house is a split level home). I went down the stairs to investigate and found many mice, rats, rodents, whatever they were all over the place. All different sizes. It was a major infestation.
I called up for help, and somehow managed to corral all of the rodents under my legs, temporarily trapping them there. Suddenly, whether it was the help I asked for or something else, the area of the floor I was in filled with water up to below my waist - sufficiently high enough to apparently drown the mice and rats. This was rather surprising.
The water receded, however, in a short enough time where I was worried they hadn't drowned but were merely passed out, lying in shallow puddles and alI around the wet floor. I suddenly noticed my father with me, and expressed my concern to him and that we needed to do something before the mice came to. As I was saying this, a massive rat began to stir. I don't know if it was the original one we saw crawling down the wall, but it was the largest one down there. I was then aware that I carried a level in my hand, and I proceeded to take it and stab the rat right through with it, which was pretty gory given the end of the level was blunt. I then woke up.
After waking up, I looked up "level", thinking that it must have been symbolically important why that was in my hand and why it was used to stab the rat.
It turns out level comes from the Latin "Libella", which means "a balance", and is the diminutive of Libra, which of course means "balance, scale, unit of weight". The astrological symbol for Libra are the Scales, or what could be termed a Level, just in a different form. So, I think that could have been it - the rat was stabbed with something representing the Scales of Justice.
This actually brought to mind those zodiac signs you shared a little while ago (in your post on the viper dragon). In that artwork, the Caduceus, which I have tied to the Rose and Ithil Stones, was prominent in the Gemini image. But it also made an appearance in Libra. I went back to find the comment I left - here is the part where I mention it:
"It was also interesting to see the Caduceus then make a cameo in the form of Thoth over on Libra and the scales of justice (Thoth has two snakes twisted around him). Thoth was the God of Writing, and the "keeper of records". In my collection of symbols, the Caduceus represents The Record (Book of the Lamb), and the two "Twins" involved are the Recorders or Secretaries, and they have been represented by the Sun and Moon, just like the Libra image.
This also ties into your own take on El-even, which you said called to your mind balance scales."
It is a pretty strong tie to a few things, and I think could make sense of the dream imagery. Libra is also another word for "Weight", or represents a unit of weight, and the Rose Stone has been called more than once a Weight. In that Libra artwork, the Rose is prominently displayed under the Scales, or even interpreted as the Scale imagery coming from the Rose.
Again, just mentioning this due to the proliferation of water everywhere in my dream as it incapacitated the rodents.
A level is a pretty unusual murder weapon, but it figures in the Masonic legend of the assassination of Hiram Abiff. Each of the Three Ruffians who killed him was armed with a different masonic implement: a plumb rule, a level, and a maul.
It’s strange you termed it murder, but I guess from the rat’s perspective that could be. I hadn’t thought of it in that way. From my perspective, it was just like killing the various rodents on our farm. Something that needed to be done.
Your mention of an unusual murder weapon brought to mind the strangest weapon I used to murder a rodent in real life, which was rolled up junk mail. I was returning from the mail box at night and saw a pocket gopher running across the ground toward my garden. He and I had a face off, and I rolled up the junk mail in my hand and bludgeoned the gopher to death. I guess another example of the written word at work, though in a non traditional way. Anyway, very different than in the dream, in which the level was used like a sword.
A lot of gophers in Minnesota. The University of Minnesota’s mascot is a gopher. His name is Goldy, a name that means Golden. As an interesting little observation, translating that name into Adunaic gives us Pharazon.
In looking up gopher on Etymonline, I noted that the word can refer to an ‘errand runner’ and that it used to be used as slang for a thief
That last comment from anonymous was me.
Speaking of levels and the written word, I had a sync a while back in which I encountered two entirely different books titled The Spirit Level in quick succession. One was Seamus Heaney, and I can’t remember the other; non-fiction of some sort, I think. I think it was during a non-blogging period, so I’ll have to look through my offline records.
Are you drawing these cards with anything specific in mind, or no? Curious to see how round three goes in any case.
Bill's additional highlighting of "Jimmy" is interesting because someone I knew by that name -- a classmate in primary school -- featured in a dream I had last week. While I think my recall is gradually improving, this dream was sprawling in nature so I've forgotten far more than I recorded.
I was roaming a dungeon in an unspecified fantasy video game, presumably one with many randomised elements. Not long after Jimmy joined me, he found a dungeon feature I hadn't encountered before. However the feature was represented in the game world, it opened a dialogue box offering a major alteration to Jimmy's character class and main quest; I guess he was playing as a magic-caster, for the two given choices were wizard-oriented. He picked one that was an obvious homage to Gandalf -- the option might even have been called "Grey Pilgrim" -- and as a result, one section of the dungeon, very dark and demonic-looking, undertook a sweeping transformation into a dirt road with various sights and obstacles along it. Owing to Jimmy's altered quest, we left the dungeon and ventured down the road.
From there, things got weird, and I could only write down very brief details of two separate scenes. All I could retain of the first was -- I must apologise for this, among other things it makes me out to be a far bigger anime fan than I actually am -- the involvement of someone's monster-girl "waifu", most likely a dragon, though from her stomach down she was serpentine which evokes nagas and lamias for me. I can no longer be sure whether she was being fought over, needed assistance, or if something else went on. In the other scene, we encountered a building containing people I figured were mathematicians (or mathemagicians?), because some of them wore white suits covered in numbers. Jimmy had to speak with an important person there, and I think one of the dialogue options mentioned a "Joseph" for whatever reason.
The talk of gophers is funny as I watched Caddyshack for the first time last week.
I had a “Jimmy” dream in my early teens. The dream was of a comic strip called “Calvin and Jimmy.” The Jimmy character looked exactly like Calvin from “Calvin and Hobbes,” while the Calvin character was an anthropomorphic cockroach about the size of alive-Hobbes, drawn in Watterson’s style.
In the first panel, Jimmy (the boy) and Calvin (the roach) were sitting side by side at a table, each writing on a piece of paper.
In the second panel, Jimmy showed Calvin what he had written: “Faster than a water plug / Is the cockroach, Mr. Bug.”
In the third panel, Calvin showed Jimmy what he had written: “Jimmy jimpy jug.”
WG, these aren’t divinations. I’m not posing a question or anything. At this point, it’s just an experiment to see if my dreams pick up on anything from the card. If I determine that they do, then the next step would be a sleeping divination: pose a question, lay out a spread face down on the bed, put a pillow on it, and sleep. Record and analyze any dream material, and then turn over and read the cards. If dreams and cards can be made to serve as commentary on each other, that could be potentially very helpful.
No idea if it’ll work, but there’s only one way to find out.
That said, the cards I’ve gotten so far, Temperance and the Six of Cups, are highly significant. I’m not “reading” them, but I definitely note them with interest.
Seamus Heaney is a link to Beowulf, or the Bee Wolf, which you had highlighted in your hypothesis that the Big Bad Wolf was actually a Bear.
Heaney's name is interesting since Heaney refers to a Horseman, and with Seamus we have yet another Jacob/ James/ Jimmy/ Jack name.
Interestingly, my kids and I went to go see Bad Guys 2 in the theater over Labor Day weekend. The primary protagonist of that movie is the Big Bad Wolf who was once a 'bad guy' in the form of a thief, but has reformed and now is a good guy.
Here’s the Spirit Level entry in my sync log:
2015 Jul 11 (Sat) — Reading the Anti-Reactionary FAQ at Slate Star Codex. There was a link to Alexander’s review (at Jackdaws Love My Big Sphinx of Quartz) of a book called “The Spirit Level” by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson (about good results associated with income equality).
2015 Jul 12 (Sun) — At Mollie [used bookstore] ran across an entirely different book called “The Spirit Level” — a book of poems by Seamus Heaney. Bought it because I figured the sync was a sign or something.
Also, the mention of Jimmy and its use in your dream potentially further supports the robber/ thief theme. I looked up Jimmy right now on Etymonline, and one of its references is to a "burglar's crowbar".
Huh, somehow I never knew of Heaney’s work as a translator. A Heaney Beowulf sounds very promising. Apparently he’s done bits of Virgil as well.
Just recording a reaction/ thought that may or may not have any relevance:
Reading you explain your process to WG, and the potential steps you would take to see if divination could ultimately be achieved through placing cards under your bed while sleeping did remind me a little of the dream that you recorded here.
In the story I have been exploring, it is Seer Stones that provide the means for true divinations. Seers are described as those who can see the future and access hidden information, and it is stones that enable them to do this. No Stone, no Seer or true Divination.
You are potentially attempting to replicate or achieve similar results, however - in some form - via the use of cards combined with your dreams. You could imagine that as one interpretation of the man trying to use locksmith tools to access the water. Both a locksmith and a burglar would use similar tools, I would guess, to bypass locks.
The Stones seem to be the actual Key, since that is a word that keeps being brought up to describe them. Any attempt at the type of knowledge we are talking about with respect to Divination in another way might be perceived or symbolized as picking the lock. The basis of Seer is the word that means "to see", so even the title of your posts and experiments may further support that 'reading with your eyes shut' may be something else and akin to doing things a different way.
Based on that, there may be a tie to that chapter we've used a lot, 2 Nephi 27 (Isaiah 29), in which people have been described as closing their eyes and rejecting the prophets. That chapter pertains specifically to the words of a book that need to be read coming forth, so could be something there. It also might help explain the symbolism of the red lever that should be easy for the man to notice or be aware of, but for some reason isn't.
In my book, and I think at our stage, true and reliable divination can only be obtained through the use of tools created for that purpose, which would be Seer Stones.
Also, I'll note this here just as another strange reaction that may not mean anything, though I should put it on your pea post. But since your experiment was partially caused by those syncs, I think here is OK.
I was thinking more on your syncs regarding, as you concluded that pea post, "your head in a container of liquid" , and this being part of a divination process. I wondered why placing a head into liquid was such an interesting part of this. My wondering led me to the question of why, in general, would a head be placed in a liquid. "Preservation" was one reason that came to me, strangely, as in putting a head in a preservation liquid like formaldehyde.
Formaldehyde is made of ethyl alcohol and water. Ethyl alcohol is derived from plants, with corn the most well knowns, but with other plants, including pea - particularly the starchy component of the pea - noted as a corn alternative. Meaning, although a potentially a big stretch, a head mentioned in both pea soup and water could be a preservation reference.
So what, was my next question. And then I thought of a specific story in which a preserved, divining head served as a main story plot: C.S. Lewis' "That Hideous Strength". In that story, N.I.C.E preserves the head of Francois Alcasan. The Head in turn serves as the means through which the will of evil spirits are communicated, which essentially serves as a symbolic alternative to the Palantir/ Seer Stones of my story, which are also used as communication devices.
Perhaps a stretch, but I also noted in both examples of a head in either water or pea soup, the head would be upside down (specifically so in the pea soup example, and implied in the bowl of water due to gravity and just how someone would need to position their head to immerse it). We've seen the imagery of upside down heads before, specifically in The Thing. And that topic ties to both events on Numenor, as well as Alcasan's Head.
In any case, in That Hideous Strength, the Head is not preserved in a vat of liquid, but through other technological means.
One last note on this, though: the book you read which first mentioned having one's head in liquid was "Remote Viewing Secrets", which clearly fits with this alternative with the Palantiri. The Seer Stones in the time of LOTR were primarily used as a means to view things that were far away, as was the case with Denethor. The sync was mentioning doing something else in an attempt to achieve the same result.
Actually, sticking one's head in a bowl or bucket made me think of the imagery of Joseph Smith putting his head in his hat when using his seer stones. Of course, neither his seer stones nor his specs really match the description of the Palantiri.
I think it is implied in the statement "a seer is greater than a prophet" that seer stones may be the most powerful but cannot be the only way of obtaining true information paranormally. Your understanding is that the Liahona was a Palantir, but some of Lehi and Nephi's most important prophetic output -- the Tree of Life dream and the High Mountain Vision -- came before they had obtained the Liahona.
The man in the dream had a red lever but ignored it. The Cat had eyes but deliberately closed them. I don't think either of these cases is comparable to that of someone who doesn't have a seer stone -- unless you're implying that I somehow do have access to a seer stone but am unaware of it?
It may not be a good assumption that this dream is about the present, and not either the future or the past. Again, just thinking out loud.
Perhaps is also isn't a good assumption to make that the man in the dream doesn't know how to pull a red lever. Maybe he already had tried that, it didn't work, and he resorted to using locksmith tools to access the hot water that he couldn't access via the lever he couldn't pull.
That thought came from the King Arthur legend of the Sword in the Stone, and the inability of anyone but Arthur to pull out that sword, A "Lever", particularly a red one, isn't a bad symbol for the Rose Stone in my story. Lever is an agent noun from the same word meaning "to raise". Just a couple days ago, you had called out the play on words with Rose also applying to Rise, Raise, etc., - something ascending.
In that Big Lebowski clip I included, The Dude is seen wearing his bowling shirt with the name "Art". Short for Arthur, perhaps, and also potentially an Elvish word play. Was thinking of that when I mentioned the Arthur legend again above.
I've had some fun with the symbolism of that dumb movie. Check out this 10 year anniversary poster - it features a red bowling ball.
https://www.cinematerial.com/movies/the-big-lebowski-i118715/p/xtjcvgy4
The bowling ball is a great symbol of a Rolling Stone, clearly, including what it is intended to do with its rolling, which is smash and knock over things. A bowling ball is also, interestingly, roughly the same dimensions as the Rose Stone was said to be (8.5 inches vs. 8 inches), though the Stone would be roughly twice as heavy as the heaviest bowling ball.
But its interesting you mention the Palantiri-esque stones in context with the Spectacles (you do realize that the Spectacles were literally two Stones held together, so at their most basic and fundamental attribute, they are quite similar. We are talking about Stones here in both cases). Check out this other cover art, which features The Dude wearing his signature sunglasses, with the lenses filled up with Red (from the pattern of his rug).
https://fontsinuse.com/uses/42226/the-big-lebowski-1998-movie-posters
Both JS’s seer stones and the specs were stones — but small, non-spherical stones. Not classical Palantiri, though obviously somewhat similar in function.
By the way, Jeff Bridges is a link to military remote viewing via the film The Men Who Stare at Goats
Yeah, there are all sorts of stones involved. I personally don't get hung up on size or shape. For example, the Elessar is another stone that seems to have factored into recent events (maybe), and that is a small stone set in an eagle-shaped brooch.
Bridges is also a strong link to Tron, which I wrote about in my earlier blog. Bridges played the role of Kevin Flynn. Flynn owned an arcade, which is another nod to the Bow Man, and his name came up elsewhere (like in Tangled, with Flynn Rider) and I guessed was an Elvish word game. Flynn in Irish means "red", but in Elvish means "fleet-footed, swift", giving us a reference to the Swift Messenger.
Interestingly, when we went to go see that Bad Guys 2 movie, we passed a promo poster for another Tron coming out. It's name is Tron: Ares, which is funny given the red symbolism, Mars, etc., but check out the poster:
https://movies.disney.com/tron-ares
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