Squaring the circle, and more red and blue eyes

Last night, after posting "More Urim and Thummim syncs," I went into my study and saw on one of my desks a small stack of books which I had bought secondhand last month and hadn't gotten around to shelving yet. I had a sudden hunch that one of those books would contain an illustration relevant to imagery of the red-and-blue spectacles. Since only one of the books had any illustrations at all, I naturally went for that one: The Secret Language of Birthdays (1994) by Gary Goldschneider and Joost Elffers. I had bought this book not for its own sake but because of one of the bookmarks that came with it: a clipping from the April 5, 1996, Times of London introducing the public to Uncle Ted:

When I bought the book, I of course checked what it had to say about my own birthday, but it really didn't fit me very well at all -- it described some sort of social climber, when in fact I have never had the slightest scintilla of interest in social status or leadership and find the whole subject profoundly boring (truth be told, I'm a bit more of the "loner fits Unabomber profile" type) -- so I just put it on the desk and didn't look at it again until last night.

In the book, each day of the year has a two-page entry that begins with a picture and a title. The Ides of March, for example, is "the Day of the Heights," illustrated with a ladder.

Last night, pursuing my hunch, I decided to flip through the book a bit and check the birthdays of people I know. The third or fourth date I checked was March 8:

My hunch had been that I would find something relevant to the red-and-blue spectacles. My last post dealt at some length with connections between the two lenses of the spectacles and the Masonic square (red right lens) and compass (blue left lens). The March 8 illustration is a "square and compass" in a somewhat different sense: It shows a compass being used to draw not a circle but a square. The perspective makes the square appear as a rhombus, like the suit of Diamonds -- and so, although the picture is black-and-white, the notional color of the square is red.

While looking through the book, I discovered that near the beginning, before all the birthdays, it had brief articles on each of the 36 decans of the zodiac. I have some passing familiarity with astrology but have never really learned anything about decans. I read about my own decan (Pisces III) and thought the description fit me much better than the one for March 15 did.

This morning, I went into the study again to take photos for inclusion in this post. This time I noticed the red-and-blue specs imagery that I had missed last night even though it had been hiding in plain sight. The Secret Language of Birthdays, being large and bulky, was at the bottom of my little stack of books. At the top of the stack was a small paperback: Poker d'Âmes, the French translation of Last Call by Tim Powers. I posted the cover of this novel in "The water is blue, and the birds are awake," but until this morning I didn't notice how the cover art links to the specs:

That's Scott Crane, the main character. He is portrayed with a blue left eye and a red right eye. My last post, which begins with two examples of similar imagery, ends with Dean Radin's book Real Magic. In the context of the "secret language of birthdays," it is surely worth noting that Dean Radin was born in New York City on February 29, 1952. Tim Powers was born in Buffalo, New York, on February 29, 1952. Dean Radin's book is called Real Magic. According to one commentator, Tim "Powers has a little sub-genre of his own: his books are about magic intruding into the real world."

This afternoon, I checked the comments on this blog and found that there were several new ones, mostly from Bill. The most recent, though, was from Debbie:

William,

I googled Dean Radin and noted his birthdate Feb 29.

Him and I ( Feb 19 ) are both first decan Pisces.

Check out the decans. You are a 3rd decan Pisces.

Check out the article ( link below )

[. . .]

Does this sound like you???

Last night, I read a description of people born in the third decan of Pisces, having never read anything about decans before. This morning, before reading Debbie's comment, I noted that Dean Radin and Tim Powers were born on the same day.

Bill had posted a series of long comments on the symbolism of the Urim and Thummim. Although his method is obviously unorthodox -- reading the Hebrew words as Elvish and tying them in with various movies -- the conclusion he arrives at is remarkably similar to the consensus of normie biblical scholars: that the two stones represent light and darkness, respectively. This gets combined with the Mormon view of the Urim and Thummim as a pair of spectacles.

Bill associates Urim and Thummim with David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel, from Spinal Tap. This is based on the scene where Derek Smalls calls them "fire and ice" -- a scene in which Smalls also compares his bandmates to Shelley and Byron. This made me think of these lines from a minor but well-known poem of Byron's:

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that's best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes

One etymological meaning of aspect is "seeing, looking at," so the third and fourth lines fit with the idea of the Urim and Thummim as a pair of spectacles with one "dark" lens and one "bright" one.

Bill's comments also mentioned the movie The Quick and the Dead (1995). He notes that one of the characters is called Cort, and he connects that with the word court and thus judgment.  I've been rereading the Book of Mormon, and last night I finished all but the last three chapters. Today I finished those last three. The closing words of the book are ". . . the Eternal Judge of both quick and dead. Amen."