Many a Melchizedek

Yesterday morning (June 1), I woke up with the phrase "many a Melchizedek" in my mind, though with no memory of any dream that may have put it there. It comes from my 2021 post "Lives, the universes, and everything" (coincidentally posted on my 42nd birthday), in which I imagine God saying this to Moses:

The first man is called Adam, Moses -- but there are many Earths that have an Adam. Millions of them, quadrillions, numbers you can't even begin to fathom. Many of them have an Abraham, many a Melchizedek, many a Moses. Thou art Moses, but there is a larger Moses -- one who, like me, belongs to many worlds. For ye are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High.

What put that in my mind? A few things likely played a role. As discussed in "Charlie Kirk, Ulysses, and twin flames" (May 24), I had been thinking about "the idea that a soul can split into two." I had also been thinking -- see "A gal named Gal and the rollin' Mississippi" (May 30) -- about a guy named Guy and a gal named Gal. Closely related to a guy named Guy is a man named Adam, which is a Hebrew noun meaning "man." The passage quoted above was inspired by God's statement in the Book of Moses that "the first man of all men have I called Adam, which is many" -- not "man" but "many." What I can't say is why I woke up thinking specifically of the line about Melchizedek, rather than Adam or Moses. Indeed, I'm not sure why I included Melchizedek as an example in that 2021 post in the first place.

Later that day, I lunched at a restaurant called D∞D, whose street address used to be 666 but which has since relocated across the road to 663. I parked right next to this scooter:

That's the word Many juxtaposed with a symbol suggestive of what has been called the Seal of Melchizedek (i.e., an eight-pointed star consisting of two interlocking squares).

In preparation for this post, I searched my blog for the phrase "many a melchizedek". Even when you use quotes, Blogger's search function will return posts that use all those words but not that exact phrase. Thus, the first result was "The seal of Melchizedek and lots of other things (syncfest)" (February 2023). Note that lots of is synonymous with many. The first sentence in that post is this:

Recent sync motifs have included the lemniscate (lazy-eight), two Ds, two doors, and doves.

The scooter photo above, which is what prompted the search, was taken at D∞D -- two Ds and a lemniscate. Later in the post I mention the restaurant by name:

For those who came in late, the double-D and the lemniscate entered the sync stream through a restaurant called D∞D (with a lemniscate for an ampersand), the street address of which is 666.

As I scrolled down, I found that one of the Seal of Melchizedek syncs in that post was a scooter identical except for the color scheme to the one above.

In the 2023 post, the word Many was not one of the syncs; I was just interested in the Seal of Melchizedek.

Another search result was "Lear, the Byrds, and 242" (February 2023), which quotes these lines from a Byrds song:

I'm only seven although I died

In Hiroshima long ago

I'm seven now as I was then

When children die they do not grow

At that point I had not yet read The Story of Alice by Robert Douglas-Fairhusrt, where one may find this passage:

There is a nasty moment in Through the Looking-Glass when Humpty Dumpty asks Alice how old she is, and she tells him, '"Seven years and six months."' '"An uncomfortable sort of age,"' he replies, before going on thoughtfully, '"Now if you'd asked my advice, I'd have said 'Leave off at seven'".' Of course, the only way a real girl could do this would be by dying . . . . In reply to Alice's indignant remark that '"one ca'n't help growing any older'", Humpty Dumpty grimly points out that "One ca'n't, perhaps . . . but two can"' . . . .

This is a direct link to the Byrds song, in which a child leaves off at seven by dying, but Humpty's remark about "one" and "two" links back to the idea of split souls and "many a Melchizedek." In Carroll, Humpty adds, "With proper assistance, you might have left off at seven," making it clear that by "two" he means Alice and someone else. Douglas-Fairhurst doesn't quote that part, though. As he quotes it, Humpty's remark could also mean that Alice could do this if she were two people rather than one person.

Melchizedek is associated in the Epistle to the Hebrews (7th chapter, appropriately enough) with the idea of agelessness:

Melchisedec, king of Salem, . . . without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually (Heb. 7:1, 3).