Desert scenes

My recent post "Half under the sea" began with this image, an adaptation of an existing meme:

Commenter NLR determined that the background image in the meme was originally a 2016 photo by Kate Ferguson of a salt flat in a Bolivian desert, as viewed from a rocky outcropping.

To this has been added a moon or planet in the upper left and the central figure, who is dressed in yellow robes and has a sun for a head. Of this figure, Bill commented, "Yes, the golden clothing is going to point right to Pharazon, of course (standing in a desert, no less)!" I suppose he emphasized the desert because he identifies me with Pharazon, and this blog is called From the Narrow Desert.

Later, I made another connection, since at the time I posted the meme I was reading Hugh Nibley's Lehi in the Desert. This, combined with the yellow-robed sun-man, made me think of my old post "Red Sun, Yellow Sun," in which I ran across this image in a children's book about flags:

I wrote:

Apparently, the man in yellow with his yellow sun is leaving the larger country represented by the red sun and becoming independent. Can a Mormon see this and not be reminded of a certain prophet, often depicted in yellow robes, leaving his country and heading east under the guidance of a yellow ball?

Yes, that's Lehi, whose time "in the desert" is the subject of Hugh Nibley's book. I posted this back in 2020, well before I had "met" Bill  and learned of his theory that the Liahona (Lehi's magical ball) is the same as Tolkien's Anor-stone, which takes its name from the Sun.

My post with the sun-man meme also included this image of an obscure "post-hardcare" album:

In a comment, Jacob G. correctly pointed out that the album art "is pretty clearly based on the Romantic painting, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog" by Caspar David Friedrich.

At first, my only reaction was to note that that particular painting has appeared on this blog before, in "Another light-and-dark butterfly pair" and "Flammarion," both from December 2024. Later, though, I realized that it ties the album cover to the title of my post (a line from a dream): "Half under the sea." If we follow Friedrich in calling the fog a "sea" (Nebelmeer), then both his painting and the album cover show rocky crags that are "half under the sea."

The sun-man meme is also somewhat similar in composition to these two images, with rocky land in the foreground overlooking what appears to be a white "sea." A desert seems entirely different from a foggy landscape, but as it happens Lehi in the Desert asserts the opposite:

[T]he culminating horror [in Arab desert poetry] is almost always a "mist of darkness," a depressing mixture of dust, and clammy fog, which, added to the night, completes the confusion of any who wander in the waste. Quite contrary to what one would expect, these dank mists are described by travelers in all parts of Arabia, and al-Ajajj, one of the greatest of early desert poets, tells how a "mist of darkness" makes it impossible for him to continue a journey to Damascus.

I do not vouch for Nibley's meteorological accuracy here, but this passage placing mist and fog in the desert is synchronistically relevant regardless of how correct it may or may not be.

Today I saw on Synlogos a new post by Laura Wood, "The Desert and Temptation," which caught my eye because of the desert theme and prompted me to click. It's about the temptation of Christ, with particular focus on the importance of his being in the desert when he was tempted. Accompanying the post is one of Gustave Doré's Bible illustrations:

Although Mrs. Wood's post only discusses the first temptation -- to turn stones to bread -- the illustration clearly represents a different temptation, the second in Luke's version of the story:

And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, "All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine" (Luke 4:5-7).

"All the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time" clearly corresponds to the title of that album: Everything All at Once. The general layout of Doré's engraving also matches that of the other images we have been considering: someone standing on high rocky ground in the foreground, with a panoramic scene in the background.

On the album cover and in the Friedrich painting, the person has his back to us, looking out at the view. Doré's Jesus turns away from the view and toward the viewer, and there is a halo of radiant lines around his head. In this, the Son of Man bears a certain resemblance to the sun-man:

Bill has connected the sun-man with Pharazon, who seems pretty far removed from Jesus Christ. However the temptation -- to worship the devil in exchange for power -- is the same. The question is whether or not one succumbs.

Finally, I should mention that the album cover, with the astronaut looking at the Earth, reminds me of another popular meme format: