Glorians and such

My last post, "Minor syncs: Omelette and Mormon tempest," dealt with two seemingly unrelated syncs: one about omelettes and the word tempests in the Book of Mormon and a Mormon writer named Tempest. But perhaps they are related after all, via Walt Whitman. Though the review, linked on A&L Daily, which occasioned the sync compares Terry Tempest Williams to Emerson, the publisher's page for her book compares her first to Whitman:

You know, I was almost going to read that book, just out of synchronistic curiosity, but I'm afraid that blurb has soured me on it. "Beauty, climate change, and transformative moments of hope"? That's what we in the trade call the shit sandwich technique.

Anyway, Whitman. My last post suggested that the omelette sync might have something to do with Hometo Omleto (Humpty Dumpty). Searching my blog for omleto, I found that one of the posts to use it was "Tennessee Walts, plus that dog-stealing alien in New Jersey again," which begins thus:

William Wright's May 4 post "Liberty Bell Follow-Up: The Liberty Bowl" begins with a reference to his "post earlier today on the Walts" -- meaning two different people named Walt: Walt Whitman and a TV character called Walter White.

Regarding that Terry Tempest Williams book that I'm probably not going to read, what exactly does the title refer to? According to the review:

The book was born from a pandemic-induced dream in which a professor asked Williams if she remembered the vow she had made "to create the Epic Documentation of the Glorians." When Williams awoke, the dictionary offered no clarity, leaving her to define Glorian through her own Emersonian inquiry into lived experience. Williams ultimately defines a Glorian as an encounter with élan vital ("vital momentum") -- a meeting with grace, like witnessing an ant transporting a magenta blossom across the desert floor.

She was told in a dream that she had vowed to create the Epic Documentation of the Glorians, and so she went ahead and gave it the old college try in her waking life. I respect that. (I think Bruce should have written Oh Colonel Flastratus!, too.) If I had been the one to have that dream, I would have gone a completely different direction with it. Instead of ants and magenta blossoms, my mind immediately went to Spenser and assumed "the Glorians" referred to a dynasty named after the Faerie Queene herself. Specifically, I thought of this little verse that begins Book 2 Canto X:

This chronicle the knights read begins with Brute and ends when "gentle Alma seeing it so late, / Perforce their studies broke." This association of Brute with studies made me think of my 2024 post "Étude brute?", so I reread it. That post quoted the line "When I dream, I dream about books" (from one of Bill's dreams, which he thinks was about me) and recounted a vision (dream-adjacent) in which I was told that of a particular book, "This book is the Cherubim. Not the Book of the Cherubim, but the Cherubim themselves."

Given the phrase "cherubims of glory" (Heb. 9:5) and the way Ezekiel's cherubim are inseparable from "the glory of the Lord," I think there may be some connection there. Terry Tempest Williams's "Glorians" are apparently encounters with nature that come with the force of revelation -- "visitations from the holy ordinary," as the subtitle puts it -- which, together with the Cherubim link, made me think of Traherne:

The brightness and magnificence of this world, which by reason of its height and greatness is hidden from men, is Divine and Wonderful. It addeth much to the Glory of the Temple in which we live. Yet it is the cause why men understand it not. They think it too great and wide to be enjoyed. But since it is all filled with the Majesty of His Glory who dwelleth in it; and the Goodness of the Lord filleth the World, and His wisdom shineth everywhere within it and about it; and it aboundeth in an infinite variety of services; we need nothing but open eyes, to be ravished like the Cherubims. Well may we bear the greatness of the World, since it is our storehouse and treasury. That our treasures should be endless is an happy inconvenience: that all regions should be full of Joys: and the room infinite wherein they are seated.

If The Glorians is anything like Traherne, I want to read it. But I don't think you can write like Traherne and write about the greenhouse effect. As Bertie Wooster once said about being a successful dictator and designing women's underclothing, it's "one or the other, not both."

Rereading the original "Hometo Omleto" post, I see that it, too deals with the Cherubim. It also features a dog, and in the first comment, Bill writes:

The dog can be a reference to Sirius (the Dog Star) which will come up at some point over on my blog if I can get to it.

The Dog Star -- specifically the Black Dog Star -- recently resurfaced in "King son of Light, and black dog stars." That post title uses King as a name, a translation of the name Vasily. The dog in the "Hometo Omleto" post is named King.