Wounded Rahab

I checked my comments this afternoon and found a new one from Bill on "Turn around, bright eyes," a post from several days ago which prominently featured an octopus. Bill wrote:

There is another potentially interesting connection to the symbol of an Octopus I stumbled across in looking at some old LDS endowment history.

The pre-1990 endowment had the role of a minister or preacher who was aligned with Satan in trying to lead Adam astray. At one point, the minister asks Satan if there will ever be apostles or prophets again on the earth. Satan says no, but that some will claim to be, and that the minister should give them a test:

"... just test them by asking that they perform a great miracle, such as cutting off an arm or some other member of the body and restoring it, so that the people may know that they have come with power."

What a random way to show power. But then I thought of our symbol of the Octopus, which is one of the relatively rare animals that can indeed have its arm cut off and restore it. Meaning, it is the kind of test an Octopus might set up.

The storylines of James Bond and Marvel have had the symbol of an Octopus represent the bad guys, with Spectre and Hydra, respectively, as mentioned in other comments. Hydra is a strange name for a many legged animal as it was originally used for a many headed monster, but its etymology supports the water link (Hydra from Hydro, i.e., "water"), which I had used in the past as one support to Ungoliant or the Great Whore who sat upon the many waters.

Thinking of the link between many heads and many arms, and treating them as synonymous given the name, then brought the satanic test given in the temple back to Revelation, and it didn't seem so random. In Revelation 13, the Beast is introduced, who has many heads (like the Hydra), and one of these heads is fatally wounded, but then healed, which causes the people to worship him and the dragon, because it was evidence of divine power, just as Satan told the minister cutting off an arm and restoring it would be.

I think he's on to something with this line of symbolic interpretation. As I mentioned in comments of my own there, being able to regenerate lost heads is the defining feature of the Hydra, and spiders (like Ungoliant) are also able to regenerate limbs.

Less than an hour after reading and replying to Bill's comment, I was reading Dean Radin's book The Science of Magic and came across this passage:

While panpsychism was once dismissed as a throwback to the ancient idea of animism (everything is alive), there is a growing consensus among biologists and philosophers that all living systems are indeed conscious, including octopuses, crustaceans, fish, insects, and even plants.

The mention of octopuses jumped out at me, partly because I had just read Bill's long comment about octopuses, but also because it seems like the odd man out on Radin's list. All the other items on the list -- crustaceans, fish, insects, plants -- are very broad taxa, making the octopus seem like an oddly specific inclusion. Also, Radin's point is that consciousness may exist even in the least brainy forms of life, but the octopus is well known for its extremely high intelligence and doesn't seem like a good example of consciousness being found in the least likely of places. You would expect to see the octopus listed together with animals like dolphins and ravens, not insects and plants.

The fact that I found this reference in a book about magic -- paranormal magic, not stage magic -- also syncs with Bill's comment in a general way, since he was talking about octopuses in connection with the ability to work great miracles.

Bill mentions the wounded beast in Revelation. When I read that part of his comment, a line from Isaiah popped into my head: "Art thou not he that hath cut Rahab and wounded the dragon?" I read Jacob's quotation of that line in the Book of Mormon just three days ago, which I guess is why it came to mind so readily.

Awake, awake! Put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake as in the ancient days. Art thou not he that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon? (2 Ne. 8:9)

Rahab is a sea monster. The wounded beast of Revelation rises up out of the sea. The fact that the arm of the Lord is only said to have "wounded" the monster instead of killing it is curious, and the fact that he is being called to awake as in ancient days and do it again suggests that the monster has recovered from the wound.

I remembered that about a year ago, Corbin had done a commentary on Jacob's sermon and "The Monster in the Book of Mormon," so I looked it up on YouTube. I hadn't noticed the thumbnail at the time, but now it seems relevant:

Rahab is typically imagined as a dragon or sea-serpent, but Corbin went with an octopus.

Bill connected the octopus to the miracle of "cutting off an arm or some other member of the body and restoring it." In the same sermon that quotes Isaiah on Rahab, Jacob talks repeatedly about "restoration," including the resurrection in which "the spirit and the body is restored to itself again" (2 Ne. 9:13). He also speaks of his own people has having been "broken off" from the House of Israel, eventually to be restored:

For behold, the Lord God has led away from time to time from the house of Israel, according to his will and pleasure. And now behold, the Lord remembereth all them who have been broken off, wherefore he remembereth us also (2 Ne. 10:22).

Bill's comment also brought up the Hydra. My earliest dream I can remember was about a hydra. It was when we were living in New Hampshire, so I would have been six or seven years old. We had shrubs planted all along the front of our house, and in the dream, I was crawling through the space between the shrubs and the house. As I went, this space became more like a tunnel, and eventually it led into a huge room like a vault. In the center was the Hydra: an enormous serpent with its many heads fanned out like a peacock's tail, something like certain representations of the naga gods of India:

I would say that it stood about nine feet tall. Its skin was a translucent white like that of a termite, with blue veins visible beneath. It stood in proud silence and was being venerated by stunted misshapen dwarfs. These were beardless and mostly hairless, with very large eyes and noses, and they smiled in a strange wry manner. The closest image I can find to what their faces looked like is actually Michael the Glove Puppet from the 2022 syncs.

These dwarfs were bent over, and it seemed to me both that they were bowing to the Hydra and that they were hunchbacked and always looked like that. I had the feeling that they were "showing" me the Hydra, and that I was meant to see this as a great honor. I felt no fear during this dream, only a sense of being in an entirely alien world that I could in no way understand. For me, the Hydra was just a nasty monster dispatched by Hercules, and seeing it in such a different atmosphere and context was disorienting.

I don't know what to make of the dream now any more than I did then, but I include it here as possibly relevant.