North Carolina Saves Mummy

We went to the northern part of the country today, and my wife drove part of the way back. While she was driving, she listened to an hour-long recording of The Mantra for Dispersing Calamities and Bringing Auspicious Good Will set to music. It's Sanskrit transliterated into Chinese, the pronunciation changing so much in the process as to render it unrecognizable. (For example, prajvala becomes boluo-ruwala.) You could be fluent in both Sanskrit and Chinese and still not have a clue what it's saying.

Dozing off in the passenger seat, I had a brief dream in which I looked up this mantra song on YouTube and found that it was from a channel called North Carolina Saves Mummy. As soon as I saw the name of the channel, I woke up.

I was born in North Carolina, thereby causing my mother to become a "mummy." She used to call me her "firstborn in the wilderness," which is how Lehi addresses Jacob in 2 Nephi 2. The Research Triangle isn't exactly the wilderness, but the Ohio home in which I spent more of my childhood than anywhere else -- where I usually tell people I'm "from" -- is now part of Hell Hollow Wilderness Area. I suppose the title I've chosen for this blog also reinforces this idea of being "from the wilderness."

In a comment on "Ladder-day Cinq," Wade McKenzie suggests that the ladder image associated with my birthday in The Secret Language of Birthdays puts me "in the position of a 'ladder-day' Jacob." He meant the biblical figure who saw a ladder to heaven, but Lehi's son Jacob also seems relevant. Wade also alludes to the fact that Secret Language associates my birthdate with the Devil card of the Tarot (the 15th trump for the 15th day of the month), which fits with the fact that the wilderness I'm from is Hell Hollow.

Incidentally, if I had to choose a Tarot card to represent my birthday, I would go with the Ten of Swords rather than the Devil. Note how closely the imagery corresponds to that of this novelty product marketed as the "Ides of March Pencil Holder":

Just an hour and 43 minutes before Wade left that comment, I had left a comment on "A spider recreates a scene from a Spider-Man movie" referring Debbie to what I called Lehi's Heart Sutra in "The Heart Sutra, Dinderblob/Darkinbad, and Zion" (February 2025) The Heart Sutra, being a Sanskrit text that plays a central role in Chinese Buddhism, is clearly adjacent to the Chinese-Sanskrit mantra above, and that post even refers to my wife's listening to a musical version of it. That post quotes part of 2 Nephi 2:11-12 and compares it to the Heart Sutra. Although I don't quote that part in the post, v. 11 includes Lehi's addressing Jacob as "my firstborn in the wilderness."

Coming back to the name of the YouTube channel in the dream, "mummy" refers not only to a mother but also to "(esp. in ancient Egypt) a dead body that has been preserved from decay." Bill, following Daymon, understands the word Egypt to refer sometimes to Numenor, and in "Reincarnation, or something else?" (July 2025), I used ancient Egyptian imagery to illustrate Bill's proposal "that I am the reincarnation of Ar-Pharazôn, last king of Númenor."

The headdress used in the meme to convey the idea of "Pharaohs and such" is in fact mummy imagery, taken from the famous mummy case of Tutankhamun. The ridiculousness of the White dude dressed up as King Tut also suggests the word mummery. (That post also mentions my uncle's idea of my being the reincarnation of Byron. A few days ago, in a comment on "Under," I quoted William Blake's address "To Lord Byron in the Wilderness.")

Given that context, "North Carolina Saves Mummy" could mean that being reborn there offers the being formerly known as Pharazon a chance at redemption.

Searching Google for north carolina mummy turned up an article about "Spaghetti: The 20th Century North Carolina Mummy." Interesting name.