Riding the great white bird into heaven

Late last night, I posted "Spiders like flutes," which includes an image of the back cover of the 1974 Cat Stevens album Buddha and the Chocolate Box. I had originally only been interested in one of the tracks, "Music" (see "Long green ships and the bad ol' debil"), but the inadequacy of all online lyrics sites forced me to search for images of the album itself, serving to remind me of its other tracks as well.

The second track, immediately after "Music," is "Oh Very Young," which includes these lines:

Will you carry the words of love with you?

Will you, will you ride the great white bird into heaven?

That image of riding the great white bird into heaven was chosen to illustrate that song when it was released as a single.

Approximately four and a half hours after posting the back cover of Buddha and the Chocolate Box, I read this in Flying Saucers Have Landed:

Now one legend concerning the building of the pyramids goes on to tell how a rain of meteors struck the Earth causing great earthquakes and tidal waves but, it says, 'great white birds' descended to Earth and carried the people of the King up into the sky to safety. This legend occurs in two forms, both practically identical. One says that the people were carried off by huge white birds, the other says they were transported by 'shining stars' that fell to Earth.

Another legend tells how the tidal wave that destroyed Atlantis swept on round the world, inundating Egypt. A terrifying account is given of the fear-crazed survivors trying vainly to scale the slippery polished slopes of the pyramids, slipping back into the flood until all had perished; only those who left in the 'white birds' or 'stars' were saved.

That's an extremely specific sync -- the exact phrase "great white bird," and the birds carry people into the sky. I included one more paragraph in the excerpt above because the idea that Egypt was flooded when Atlantis was destroyed ties in with the idea that the name Egypt sometimes refers to Atlantis.

The other track from Buddha and the Chocolate Box that caught my attention was "King of Trees," in which the titular tree is cut down and its leaves burned. One of Pharazon's crimes was cutting down and burning the White Tree of Numenor. Cat Stevens sings:

I loved you, now they've come to burn the leaves

Don't burn the leaves

The guy who burns the leaves is identified as "Willie" in Art Garfunkel's song "Feuilles-oh, sauvez la vie moi":

Willie works as the garden man;

He plants trees, he burns leaves

Art Garfunkel has various synchromystical links to me. The song quoted above is from an album with the interesting title Angel Clare. Another of his albums, Fate for Breakfast, was released on March 15, 1979, the day I was born.