About an hour later, I found this juxtaposition in Laeth's latest batch of aphorisms:
have it all figured out of my mind
dear death experience. near life expedience
"Out of my mind" and "out of my head" are variants of the same expression. A near-death experience is a type of out-of-body experience.
7 comments:
An out of head reference would tie fairly directly back to that "Poker of Souls" cover you mentioned a couple posts back, with the image of the Jack of Hearts emerging out of the head of Scott Crane.
I had linked the "Poker of Souls" phrase to the Holy Ghost, and that would seem to be supported by your misread phrase being about a person named "Hughes".
Hughes, or more specifically, Hugh and its Germanic form Hugo, has come up before, very specifically in relation to the Holy Ghost given its meaning of "mind, spirit", etc - a definition I had played with in going back to earlier definitions of the Holy Ghost in the Lectures on Faith, for example, which called the Holy Ghost the Mind of the Godhead.
Hugh was also traditionally the anglicized form of the Irish name Aodh, which means "Fire", and another link to the Holy Ghost/ Phoenix symbolism.
The story of Abinadi and Noah also comes to mind. My guess is that Abinadi is one incarnation of the Holy Ghost and a very direct representation of the Phoenix, having been burned to ash by Noah and his priests.
During his inquisition of Abinadi, Noah ends up declaring Abinadi "mad". Etymology begins with this definition of the word: "disordered in intellect, demented, crazy, insane", which is how Noah used it, of course. It follows, though, with a specific reference that is pretty relevant given your misreading of the foundation Hughes belonged to. Apparently, Mad is from the Old English word "gamaedde", which means "out of one's mind".
And as you highlighted in this post, out of one's mind is synonymous with out of one's head, meaning out of head = out of mind = mad.
Since Hughes = Abinadi in my interpretation, your misreading echoes Noah's statement.
Interesting links, Bill, but it's not clear to me how this Holy Ghost imagery fits with the symbolism of Scott Crane and the Jack of Hearts.
I don't know anything about Scott Crane, so can't speak specifically to anything about him as a character. It was the image and the associated symbols that caught my attention.
"Gargoyle" was the original theme, as in the Flight of the Gargoyle, and I had linked the Gargoyle with the Holy Ghost, and the imagery of the servant Jesus quotes Isaiah in describing an abhorrent appearance. And then you had this French book with the Poker of Souls translation, which I linked to Fire and the Holy Ghost, above an image of a monstrous looking man who appears to be made out of stone. Gargoyles, particularly the ones at Notre Dame de Paris, are grotesque monsters made out of stone. Seemed like a direct hit ... at least I didn't have any issues with the symbols making sense and being consistent and straightforward, seemingly. Added on to that, was this new reference to a Hugh/ Hughes having an 'out of head' experience, which quite literally the stone monster-man is having in that image, further linking the man with the Holy Ghost, since Hugh was a name that I had already tied to him.
Though with the Jack of Hearts you could definitely take it a different way. Looking back at your Jack guesses right now, you had associated the Jack of Hearts with the "Dry Jack". You could see if that line of thinking is worth exploring.
Could just be the Holy Ghost and that story is top of mind. Yesterday, a dream involved a character with the rather obvious name of "Michael Redstone". Today, one scene involved a newspaper headline simply reading "Michael Come Home".
Scott Crane is an interesting name, however. Scot refers to Ireland: " an inhabitant of Ireland". Ireland has had significant, repeated symbolic presence (for example, remember that Terry-John was Irish).
A Crane can refer to a bird, obviously, but is also used to a long arm that moves heavy objects around. Given that my story involves the movement of worlds, a crane would come in pretty handy. A crane uses principles of leverage, and as Archimedes is attributed to saying (very relevantly in this case): "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world."
So, I think the name at least of Scott Crane is pretty good. Even Archimedes' name ties into this story, since I cited him above about moving worlds with a long arm/ lever. His name means "Master Thinker/ Planner", with one translation even giving us Cunning Master. You had a dream once about a Cunning One, I recall.
As another fun continuation of this thinking, after bringing up Archimedes, I thought of the Disney version of Sword in the Stone. The Arthurian legend, and the Sword/ Stone specifically, is one I've leveraged in a big way in the past.
In the Disney cartoon movie, Merlin's owl is named Archimedes. I had written about the Owl symbol before, specifically in reference to Minerva since it is her symbol and who I had used as a type/ symbol of the Holy Ghost, in that case the female Twin (i.e., Asenath).
Minerva is a name that means "Mind", just like Hugh/ Hugo.
Funny you went from Crane to Archimedes. In the novel, Scott Crane's best friend is named Archimedes Mavranos.
The connection also reminds me of the great, almost sci-fi-like scene from Plutarch's Life of Marcellus where Archimedes uses all his wild contraptions, including big machines with "beaks like the beaks of cranes" to defend Syracuse from the Roman assault.
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