Google is being weird again.
Update: I published this post at 10:59 a.m. Exactly 47 minutes later, at 11:46, I photographed this logo, which was on the backpack of the motorcyclist stopped in front of me at a red light.
My reason for posting the Google search-result screenshot above was the strange inclusion of "Gandalf the Fresh" (any relation to Chilled?), but it also includes the word Istari -- "Wizards," singular Istar. The backpack logo also includes the string ISTAR. The company is apparently called Jiayi Star, and an image search shows that they typically put a space between the two words.
For whatever reason, the version of the logo that I photographed has no space. Furthermore, the IA lines up with the same letters in the Google screenshot.
If we reanalyze the logo as JIAY-ISTAR, what does the first part mean? It's close to Jay, a name which has come up before -- Jay Leno, Roy Jay, and perhaps most relevantly, "Blue Jays" as a reference to Tolkien's Blue Wizards, two of the Istari.
In Chinese transliteration, the i in jia indicates palatalization; it's a single syllable that might be rendered jyah. This reminds me of how Daymon Smith renders the Book of Mormon name Jacom as Dyacom.
I mentioned that I took the photo 47 minutes after publishing the original version of this post. I had just been thinking of the number 47 because it is the S:E:G: value of both hart and stag, and also of time -- Time being the earliest recorded name for the Tarot trump now known as the Hermit. I also happen to be 47 years old at the moment, and this past 7/22 was Bill's 47th birthday.
12 comments:
The most intriguing of the aliases is undoubtedly "See more," but Gandalf the Fresh is not without appeal; could that be why I re-jiggered it to German, "Gandalf der Frische," and dropped it into the gematria calculator? The number I got was 369, which interestingly, given William's conviction that Gandalf is more or less an iteration of the hermit, correlated with "hermeticism." I then dropped 369 into the blog's search box: and, lo and behold, a hit!
https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/search?q=369
Ha! Wade posted the above comment just seconds before I published the updated version of this post, including gematria references in connection with the Hermit.
The non-highlighted letters in that image spell "marijy," which is apparently a Malagasy word for a type of ox that is black with a white mark on its forehead.
https://mg.wiktionary.org/wiki/marijy
My first thought? "Gandalf the Fresh Prince".
Speaking of the Fresh Prince and translating things into German, I recently posted a screenshot of an old post that punned on the German for "the Frog Prince," referring to "The Froschprinz of Bel-Air."
https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/07/the-hermit-portal-and-well-thing.html
The original post was about an Orb, and the Google screenshot in the present post shows Saruman "pondering his orb."
https://magicianstable.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-emperors-orb.html
https://magicianstable.blogspot.com/2022/01/pondering-his-orb.html
"If we reanalyze the logo as JIAY-ISTAR, what does the first part mean?"
To put it succinctly, "jiay" means "void-treader." Thus, "jiay-istar" signifies "the wise one who treks the abyss." It is a poetic epithet for Odin.
Why does it mean that? Is this another Fake Intelligence analysis?
If Bill can assert that not only Endor but even Valinor too is historically real, and receive no pushback whatsoever, then surely I ought to be able to assert that "jiay" means "one who walks the abyss." In any case, I'll admit what Bill won't; namely, that we're trafficking in an imaginative venture, being "venturesome," so to speak.
One thing can't be denied, or at least ought not be--when we discuss "istar," we're dealing with a word that isn't real; it's a fictional word, it's fiction--folks, it's fake! Tolkien made it up, okay? Middle Earth is fake all the way down, it's fiction. Thus, when we say that "X" means so-and-so, we aren't doing any disservice, we're in the sandbox, just playing along, making stuff up too.
And when Google deals with Tolkien, it's one fake intelligence dealing with another.
https://share.gemini.google/FeIb4pz5smKh
(Incidentally, I don't know if you'll have any difficulty navigating the page when it comes up, should you choose to have a look at it. When I clicked the link myself, I wondered how do I scroll down, and I had to click on the page/screen itself, and then I was able to use my keypad's up and down arrows.)
No, Tolkien isn't a Fake Intelligence. Nor are Fake Intelligence and imagination interchangeable just because both are distinct from Studies Have Shown.
No, William, Tolkien WAS a fake intelligence, an intelligence that generated nothing but fake ideas, nothing but “fiction.” And in the context, “istar” is a fake word,
~Wade
Can you really not distinguish between a fictional idea and a fake idea, i.e. an "idea" falsely so called?
William, surely you'll acknowledge that "istar" is a fictional word. Both the word and its ostensible meaning are fictions. "Wizard" is a fiction. The "istari" are fictions. (Your dreams are fictions.) In the original post, you advance a variant of istar, "jiay-istar." It is enough to know that "jiay" is conjoined with "istar" to know that "jiay" too must, at least in this instance, be fictional. In the post, you pose the question of the meaning of jiay. I thought it would be interesting to supply an answer to that question, an answer that was as grounded in the realm of the imaginary as was the question itself; and, because we've recently made the connection between the hermit, Gandalf, and Odin, I thought it would be apropos to imagine that "jiay-istar" applied to Odin in his capacity (in Norse myth) as the ultimate "wise one." In the end, both "istar" and its supposed meaning, "wise one, wizard," are what they are because Tolkien made them up, so we do no injustice if we invent a meaning for "jiay-istar." The meaning I gave, though invented, was neither fake nor arbitrary; to the contrary, it was well considered. I suppose I'll have to both content and console myself, in true romantic fashion, with the idea that, for me and me alone, jiay-istar means "the wise one who walks the abyss," signifying the Allfather, Odin.
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