Finally, I just decided to put the books back where they belonged. That was on a high shelf, and so I had to get a large aluminum stepladder. While up there, I noticed what I thought at first was "a coffee-table edition of Communion" by Whitley Strieber. Only part of the cover was visible, but the title began with Com-, and there was what looked like part of a slanted almond shape suggesting a gray-alien eye as seen in the iconic Ted Jacobs painting on the cover of the first edition of Communion.
I soon found that I had been mistaken. The title of the book was actually Communication or Computation or something, and the shape was part of a larger illustration of something entirely different, resembling an alien eye only by coincidence.
Then I noticed that shelved just above this Communion impostor was a book on the subject of birds in the sacred iconography of all religions. Now this was a really extraordinary coincidence, and I decided I'd better take a photo. Fortunately, I had a small digital camera in my hip pocket (not a smartphone, as I would have had in real life). Unfortunately, as I was trying to get it out of my pocket, not-Communion and some other books on that shelf slipped out of position, ruining the shot. I couldn't reach them from where I was. Rather, I would have to take the ladder outside and get at them from the opposite direction. (Dream logic for you.)
The reason I thought this such a remarkable coincidence was that (in the dream) Whitley Strieber had written extensively about a certain bas-relief carving that was thought to be the oldest surviving depiction of a phoenix. In my own research on this carving, I had discovered that it was housed in a museum, and that just below it in the museum display was another book that might be mistaken at first glance for a coffee-table edition of Communion. I had a theory -- I should probably post about it on my Strieber blog, I thought -- that this was what had drawn Strieber's attention to that particular carving in the first place. Yes, the post would be called "What made Strieber notice that ancient phoenix carving?"
Since I was up there already, I decided to page through the bird iconography book and see if it had a photo of the carving in question. It did, though the caption identified it not as a phoenix but as "an early Tibetan dhier" or something like that -- some exotic spelling that looked as if it would be pronounced deer. The facing page was a plate with several pictures showing various cartoon characters that were birds. I didn't recognize any of them. One of the pictures showed a group of four anthropomorphic animal characters: a cat, a fox, a bird, and what the caption called "a voidoid." I guessed this must be some sort of mascot invented by the punk band Richard Hell and the Voidoids, which was later picked up by whoever made the cartoon.
When I went outside with the ladder, I somehow ended up inside a museum, where I got completely lost. One of the exhibits was a series of "moving paintings" (as in Harry Potter) depicting great alchemists smoking, surrounded by big clouds of smoke. I gathered that what they were smoking was the elixir of life, the great secret being that it was something you smoked rather than drank. I also passed a scientific exhibit with a big sign that said "Is Mars like heaven?"
I woke up before I had managed to find my way out of the museum.
21 comments:
Richard Hell was also in Television, which may be a link to the television earlier in the dream. His role corresponds to Gary Lachman's in Blondie: the founding bass player, who left before the band's best work.
One aspect of this dream proved to be mildly precognitive. The day after the dream, my wife asked me to put a big aluminum stepladder in front of one of our living room bookcases -- not in order to reach anything, but just to get it out of her way while she was cleaning the storage room.
An ancient 'Phoenix' carving came up for me last night, at least via connections I began making.
For reasons not entirely clear to me, I wanted to watch a movie called "Manhunter", a movie I was not even aware existed until I decided to watch it. It is from the mid-1980's, and is based on the book Red Dragon, which is in turn the prequel to the more well known Silence of the Lambs.
The protagonist, Will Graham, is trying to catch a serial killer, continuing with the theme of Murder, I guess, in my own thinking. Maybe that is why I was drawn to it. Not sure.
The original book gets its name from the ancient Chinese character that is on a Mahjong tile. In the West, we call the tile, and thus the symbol, the Red Dragon, but it seems (you would know better than I do) that the character on the tile itself means something like "center, middle".
Anyway, the killer's calling card is that symbol, and he takes his name from the WIlliam Blake painting "The Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun", giving us another reference to individual clothed in light. In the story, Graham basically has to adopt or take on the killer's persona and mind in order to catch him, a method which previously left him insane after he caught Hannibal Lecter, and he starts to get sick again as he enters the mind of this new killer (named Dolarhyde) and think like him.
In the movie, the only time the Red Dragon symbol is actually shown (that I remember) is in a scene in which Graham climbs a tree and finds the symbol carved there. The only reason he climbs the tree is because he finds a Mars candy bar the killer had been eating that he had dropped from the tree when he had been watching the family. Here is the scene - the relevant part starts at the 0:45 mark when he finds the Mars wrapper.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA85XWLD8TU
So, I thought of that when I read your title of the Phoenix carving and having to climb to see it. In my dreams, the Phoenix has taken on Dragon symbolism, for instance breathing fire to envelope the world, something a standard mythical Phoenix does not do but dragons obviously do.
The Mars theme is further played out in Dolarhyde's house. Dominating the center of the room is a large poster/ hanging of the Mars landscape, which was interesting to see. Here is the final confrontation clip (so spoilers, obviously) and at the 2:30 mark you see Dolarhyde walk right through the Mars image, splitting it in half.
Anyway, Dolarhyde does what he does because he wishes to become or transform into the Red Dragon. As I was looking more into Red Dragons, I stumbled on another interesting connection: Wales. Wales/ Whales has come up a lot before. Recently with the Tirza dream you wanted to go see the Whales. The national flag of Wales has a large Red Dragon.
Anyway, it is debatable on the connection between a Red Dragon and a Phoenix (in terms of one standing in for the other), but what is most important is that I had already made that connection, and thus considered the tree carving in that light, before reading this post.
I believe both the Red Dragon and Phoenix symbols are typically paired together in Chinese imagery and symbolism, and the Red Dragon itself symbolizes luck/ good fortune. Could be something there with the Communion, Marriage, Communication theme you had come up here and elsewhere. My understanding is in Chinese symbolism that the Red Dragon is the male counterpart of the female Phoenix.
Here is the link to the other Mars scene (the ending, so obviously spoilers) that I forgot to link above. Again, just at the 2:30 mark:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAaDi759NK0
To me, to wrap up the Manhunter theme, what was most disturbing about the story was how Will Graham had to himself become insane in order to understand how an insane person would think. There is a scene in which he has to explain to his son why he had to go to a psychiatric ward for a time, because he had to take on psychotic thoughts and he couldn't get rid of them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNdd2zJUte8
This also ties to some of your recent syncs on "sympathy", for example, in that post "Sympathy and dice", and to the larger theme of God himself taking on himself the sickness of others in order to understand them.
Very interesting links, Bill. You're right that the Chinese dragon and phoenix are often paired, but the dragon is not "red." The mahjong tile you are referring to is never called a "dragon" in Chinese and has nothing to do with dragons. That must have been invented by whoever translated the game's terminology into English.
In Chinese symbolism, a red dragon is typically the Dragon King of the South, called the Vermilion Dragon. The Chinese have two different systems in which each of the cardinal directions is represented by a creature of a particular color. The Vermilion Dragon is part of a system in which all the creatures are dragons. In the other system, in which the creatures differ in kind as well as in color, the counterpart to the Vermilion Dragon is the Vermilion Bird. This is distinct from the Chinese phoenix, but it is clearly a related symbol, and it is typically depicted as covered in flames.
Prior to reading your comment and looking it up, I would have sworn that the Welsh flag had a red wyvern (two-legged dragon) rather than a dragon proper. Looking it up and discovering that you were right was a Mandela Effect moment for me.
The word wyvern derives from viper, making it one possible interpretation of the "viper dragon" mentioned in the True Song of Wandering Aengus. A two-legged winged dragon is also a link to the old pterodactyl theme.
A mahjong tile as a calling card is an interesting idea. There is another tile (the Eight of Bamboo, corresponding to the Eight of Wands or Clubs) with a design that looks like the letters WM, and at one point I considered adopting it as a personal symbol, due to my longstanding habit of using the old-fashioned abbreviation Wm for my first name.
Bill, to clarify, do you mean that you just had the random thought that you wanted to watch a movie called Manhunter, without even knowing if any such movie existed? Or did you notice the movie somewhere and decide you wanted to watch it?
No, nothing like that. I saw the link for Red Dragon on Netflix, which is the recent version of the movie with Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal, and thought I would watch it. Which was a strange thought, as I watched Silence of the Lambs when I was younger and subsequently had no desire to watch the other films (I've never read the books). But then I had the thought to look up a review to see if Red Dragon was any good, and a review highlighted that Manhunter was the original movie from the 80s, and I decided to watch that version instead. I had heard of Red Dragon, but had never heard of Manhunter.
Yeah, I saw all of that about the character- it doesn't translate into Red Dragon but for some reason it is called that in the English Mahjong when the game was introduced. Further, in the movie itself, forensics gets back to Will on the meaning of the symbol, and they incorrectly say it has something to do with luck and gambling. As I looked into it, it appears the tile was originally associated in Chinese with archery and the red bulls-eye (thus "center/middle"). A Red Bull's Eye is pretty interesting symbolism as far as I am concerned, as well I have used the Red Bull's Eye in reference to the Rose Sone.
The name Manhunter is potentially an interesting link to the play on words for Deer in your dream. In Elvish, as I brought out in my own word games, "Dir" is the word for Man, so a Manhunter, in Elvish, would be a Dir(Deer) Hunter if you just change the first word (or Farondir/ Faradir, in all Elvish). Hunting deer/ dir was a theme on my blog as I related that dream of protecting my pumpkin patch from a herd of deer.
You may also find this interesting:
In thinking of Manhunter, I obviously also thought on Silence of the Lambs and looked up that plot again.. The antagonist/ psycho in that movie is named Buffalo Bill, who literally makes himself a Coat of Skins from the women he kills. He does this because he actually believes he can become a woman by wearing their skin.
Ha! That Bill coat of skins link is funny.
That character can also mean China, the country. "Red China," I guess.
The pumpkin is called the "south melon" in Chinese and thus falls under the jurisdiction of the Vermilion Dragon/Bird.
Here's a very meta bit of dream precognition.
The "moving paintings" of smoking alchemists in my dream were not in frames but rather had been painted on the covers of large books.
Just now, I read an anecdote in which the author dreamed that one of his books had "moving pictures" in it. Then, after waking, he read in a book by Havelock Ellis that a dream is typically "a living and moving picture."
The book is Gary Lachman's Dreaming Ahead of Time, which is about precognitive dreams. Reading about them always seems to trigger them.
The Havelock Ellis book is, I see now after revisiting the reference to get the quote for this comment, called The World of Dreams. I had misread it as The End of Dreams. Pity. I would definitely have read a book with such an evocative title.
In The Shining, when Danny is scared with what he is seeing in the hotel, "Tony" reminds him that what he is seeing are like pictures in a book:
Danny: "Tony, I'm scared"
Tony [Danny speaking for him]: "Remember what Mr. Hallorann said. It's just like pictures in a book, Danny. It isn't real."
In this case, the pictures Danny was seeing were very much moving pictures.
Dreaming Ahead of Time is interesting as a reference because that is essentially what my view is that Joseph-Ausir did with the at least part of what is on the Rose Stone. It is a vision of things before they happened - out to the very end, if that is the right word.
This ties very strongly into the title of the Havelock Ellis book you reference called The World of Dreams. Joseph's other name, Lorien (being called after his garden), means "Dream Land". Since "Land" is connected directly to "World" etymologically via the word Earth, Lorien's name can very directly be translated as "World of Dreams".
The American Eagle is a Phoenix.
The Phoenix was cloaked to be an Eagle,
because the hidden hand
( who sold America as a Christian Nation) knew that
people would object to an Egyptian mythological bird
as the nation's Great Bird.
Look on the back of the US one dollar bill. The 'eagle' is standing
on its hind legs. In reality an eagle does NOT stand upright
on its hind legs. However the mythological Phoenix does.
The' eagle' also stands on its hind legs on the
American Great Seal and the E Pluribus Unum flag.
Decipher the code. The Code is the Language
of the Birds aka the Green Language.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenghuang
I forgot this link.
https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/research/programmes/making-art-in-tudor-britain/the-phoenix-and-the-pelican-two-portraits-of-elizabeth-i-c.1575
Of course eagles stand upright. They've only got two legs. How else are they going to stand? But the eagle on the Great Seal (and dollar bill, and Ramones logo) is not standing at all but is heraldically "displayed," which is the source of the term "spread-eagle." It's been the standard way of depicting eagles in heraldry for centuries.
Herodotus said a phoenix looks just like an eagle, though.
William,
But isn't a perched upright eagle a sleeping eagle? Or perhaps
an eagle ready to take flight.?
On the Mormon Eagle flag, it appears
that the eagle is lying down
on the top of the beehive, no?
A Hearld ( as in the Heraldic Eagle )
is also an official crier or messenger,
which is what birds are symbolic of
including the Phoenix . That is, in mythology
birds are messengers from the divine realm.
Which, once again, connects to the Language of the Birds.
I think Herodotus and Ovid were probably
right about the Phoenix, and I bet the farm the hidden hand
believed that too which is probably why they clocked
the Phoenix and adopted
the Bald Eagle as America's Great Bird.
Copy and paste:
"The origins of the Phoenix legend can be traced back
to several ancient civilizations.
Greek historians such as Herodotus and later writers
like Ovid referenced the Phoenix in their works.
Herodotus, in his writings, described the bird as residing
in Arabia and noted its remarkable life cycle,
which includes a spectacular death and rebirth.
Ovid further elaborated on this myth
in his poem “Metamorphoses,” contributing to the
Phoenix’s enduring legacy in literature."
~~~~~~~~
Thank you for your feedback.
https://themormoneagle.blogspot.com/2011/04/salt-lake-temple-stone-symbols.html
https://greek.mythologyworldwide.com/the-story-of-the-phoenix-rebirth-and-renewal-in-greek-lore/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_the_birds
oops sorry. I meant cloaked, not clocked.
Also, America's "rebirth Phoenix, and IMHO, was interestingly displayed
in Glendale ( outside of Phoenix ) Arizona on Sept. 21 at
the Tuning Point memorial of Charlie Kirk. It was the first
event of the America Come Back tour.
Think that was a coincidence?
William,
Just one more thought and question about the Mormon
Eagle Flag. Is the resting eagle on the beehive symbolic of :
'the eagle has landed?"
Oooops I meant to write Turning Point, not Tuning Point.
I think my old eyes are starting to fail me. ;-((((
I came across this video today (after first being recommended another video from the same channel):
https://youtube.com/watch?v=J0Vk6D-qOR8
(Moving pictures on the covers of books.)
That's wild. The imagery in that video is quite similar to the cover art of Dreaming Ahead of Time. It's also super Jewish, and I recently devoted a whole post to the question of whether or not Gary Lachman is Jewish. (He's not.)
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