With the Cherubim re-entering the sync stream, I was reflecting on the strange way certain themes or symbols are connected. The Cherubim have been identified with the Gryphon, which has been identified with the griffon vulture Odessa Grigorievna, who is linked to the Garuda, which is linked to the monstrous avian title character of
Flight of the Gargoyle. From a symbol of holiness to a symbol of abomination in fewer steps than it would take you to get from either to Kevin Bacon.
Can there be any real connection between the opposite ends of that chain, though? Is sync-linking really a transitive relation?
Today I read in The King in Yellow a reference to the "ugly water-spitting griffins" of the Place St. Michel in Paris. That's a direct link between Gryphon and Gargoyle.
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The other movie watched earlier tonight was 2023's Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. One important character was a tiefling druid, able to shapeshift into several different creatures. For combat, she often became an owlbear (although in the clip below, she starts off as a snowy owl by necessity). The movie's owlbear design reminded me very much of one of the basic griffon types in Guild Wars 2.
youtube.com/watch?v=cMMTEj1-nME
wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Owl_Griffon.jpg
The D&D owlbear was part of the inspiration for the Gryphon's island in The Tinleys, where all the animals were bird-mammal combinations of various kinds
I just read in Slumbered, "So the Badge of this House of Valmar's writings-kept was the soaring eagle, and these too came into Man' Realm, under the Cherubim, in After Days."
Thus a bird of prey (adjacent to Garuda and Odessa Grigorievna) is linked directly to the Cherubim, without the griffin as intermediary.
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