Pinging all the syncs

I had a quiet Fourth, on account of (a) not having any American friends and (b) not being allowed to do anything anyway. We rented a DVD (yes, some people still do that) and watched it at home over a non-barbecued dinner and a few beers.

The movie was chosen more or less at random and wasn't particularly good, but it prominently featured:

• DMT and alligators
• the fleur-de-lys of Joan of Arc
• the Battle of New Orleans

All of the above were major themes -- and the name of the movie itself couldn't have been more appropriate: Synchronic.

Linkin' logs

Is Lin Wood still around? I haven't heard anything about him for a spell.

Back in December, I identified Lin Wood as the "alligator" in "The Battle of New Orleans," because he is an allegator (a maker of allegations), and because he is widely perceived to have "lost his mind." (Why did he lose his mind? Just as in the song, they filled his head with cannonballs. Cannon = QAnon, and balls = a colloquialism meaning either "rubbish" or "chutzpah.")

I have also noted that his name is the equivalent of "Wood Wood," because the Chinese surname Lin (林) means "wood, forest." In Mr. Wood's case, "Lin" is short for Lincoln -- which brings us back to wood by way of Lincoln Logs (a close cousin to Tinkertoys!). In fact, his name, Lincoln Wood, basically is Lincoln Logs.

Recent synchronicities involving doubled words and names -- Tintin, 50/50, Snow Snow, Never Never, Nix Nix -- brought "Wood Wood" back to mind, and I realized that "wooden" alligators are featured in Prisoners of the Sun.

The "trunks" that are not really trunks also makes me think of the old theme of fake elephant trunks discussed here: Fox sewing a hose on Slow Joe Crow's nose, and both Calvin and Ernie putting socks on their ears and noses. Calvin's purpose in so doing is to be "an elephant," while Ernie does it as part of a guessing game. The punchline of the Bert and Ernie sketch is the word "neck." Bert has been tricked into guessing "nose" when in fact the answer is "neck." You know what else neck means? Here's part of a Wikipedia disambiguation page:

Remember that nihhus, the Old High German cognate of nix and neck, also means "crocodile." Bert thought, because of the fake "trunk" Ernie was wearing, that he was thinking of the word nose -- but in fact he was thinking of neck. In Prisoners of the Sun, Tintin thinks he sees "trunks," but in fact they are those close cousins of the neck or nihhus -- alligators!

I suppose these free-association synchronicity posts of mine could themselves be called "linkin' logs," couldn't they?

Tintin, St. George, and, uh, lots of other things!

For context, please read "St. George, stake for the sun, and inevitable 'miracles'" and "Gadianton Canyon syncs" first.

In my last post, I connected Tintin saying "Hip-hip-hooray!" in Prisoners of the Sun with Terence McKenna's line, "The gnomes have learned a new way to say hooray."

What does Tintin have to do with gnomes, though? Well, the name Tintin suggests the element tin, atomic number 50. Back in 2011, synchromystics took note of the fact that the movie Adventures of Tintin was released less than a month after a movie called 50/50.

(Marvel's first Thor movie was also released in 2011. Thor is considered in the interpretatio graeca to be the equivalent of the Greek god Zeus, the Roman god Jupiter, and the Etruscan god Tin. The metal tin is also associated in astrology and alchemy with the planet Jupiter. Thor the superhero was created by Stan Lee, whose name also suggests tin.)

The next year, 2012, saw the release of Lockout, starring Guy Pearce as a CIA operative named Marion Snow.

Emilie: What's your name?

Snow: Snow.

Emilie: Snow?

Snow: Yeah. Or Sir. You can decide.

Emilie: What's your first name?

Snow: Snow.

Emilie: Your name is Snow Snow? Well, that's just ridiculous! Why won't you tell me your name?

50/50. Tintin. Snow Snow. Sn is tin, of course, and Snowy is Tintin's dog.

A worker in tin is called a tinker, and that's where the gnome connection comes in. Back in 1987, a new playable race was introduced into Dungeons and Dragons: the tinker gnome.

(That "nasal voice" bit even ties in with Terence McKenna!)

Tinkers learning a new way to say hooray is a positive development, since the exclamation more usually associated with tinkers is damn.

The book that introduced tinker gnomes had the very St. George-esque title Dragonlance Adventures.

The "2021" in the upper right-hand corner of the book cover is not a year (the book was published in 1987) but a serial number -- D&D book #2021. The fact that it matches the current year is a coincidence. Notice also that the letter O in the title is stylized as ☉, the astrological symbol for the Sun.

The name of Tintin's dog (in English) is Snowy (one of the Weather Dogs!) -- a link to Lorenzo Snow and thus to St. George. (Incidentally, Lorenzo Snow was born in 1814 and became President of the Church in 1898 -- both of which are Years of the Dog on the Chinese calendar.) Commenter Mr. Andrew informed me of another dog-name connection: On April 20, just three days before St. George's Day, Owen Benjamin did a livestream, and one of the topics was "George fights a dragon." In the title graphic below, that phrase is even followed by a +, suggesting the sign of the Redcrosse Knight.

Mr. Andrew explained, "Owen's dog is named George (really) - and the dragon reference was just a kite. Has absolutely nothing to do w/ St. George (Catholic or Floyd variety) - just a little coincidence/synchronicity at the same time."

Thinking about dog names, I realized that Snowy begins with Sn, the symbol for tin. Then I remembered that there was a famous dog named Rin Tin Tin -- whose name is so similar to Tintin that Wikipedia is afraid people might confuse the two.

The Wikipedia article on Rin Tin Tin has pictures of seven movie posters featuring that dog. The second of them has a "snowy" theme. (The plural, "snows," suggests "Snow Snow" and the two Snows -- Lorenzo and Erastus -- for whom Snow College is named.)

And the third shows Rin Tin Tin wearing the Cross of St. George -- tying in with Owen Benjamin's dog named George who "fought a dragon."

My late uncle Mike was an amateur singer/songwriter and guitarist, and near the end of his life he put together a CD called George: Twenty Years in the Making -- a reference to the first song he wrote as a child, which was about a dog named George who could dance on his hind legs. It begins thus:

Got a dog, his name is George

He followed me home from school

He's the coolest dog in this whole world

'Cos he dances like a fool

What kind of dog dances on his hind legs "like a fool"? A snowy one, of course!

(Note that in this post I connected the Rider-Waite Fool card with George W. Bush.)

Which brings us to alligators. (I know, I know, you've been thinking, "When's he going to get to the alligators?" Don't worry, here they come!)

Fun fact: Not only do some Tarot decks feature a crocodile on the Fool card; certain French esotericists went so far as to name the card Le Crocodile!

According to David McCann (hmm, can = tin, right?) in this interesting thread, "The idea comes from Paul Christian, who actually called the card The Crocodile: 'The crocodile is the emblem of implacable fate and inevitable expiation.'" This fits in with our theme of "inevitable miracles."

The thread I've just linked to also contains some discussion of the crocodile's role in Punch and Judy shows and in Peter Pan. A user called Mallah writes, "I also think of Captain Hook's fear of the Crocodile with a ticking clock within. Time comes to swallow him up...his time has come."

Speaking of Peter Pan, a "tinker" is specifically an intinerant tinsmith, one who would have traveled around with a knapsack like the Tarot Fool -- so what is the Fool wearing on his clothes if not tinker bells?

Also, isn't Captain Hook a bit reminiscent of Captain Haddock? (Besides the phonetic similarity, there is the obvious relationship between hooks and fish.) In Prisoners of the Sun, Tintin rescues Captain Haddock from an alligator -- right after the Captain says of alligators, "They don't fool me"!

I have mentioned (here) the email I received mentioning St. George in the same breath as "DMT entities." In my reply, I wrote:

I once read a paper on DMT experiences, of which the only thing I remember is the (admittedly memorable!) line, "Ken experienced anal rape by alien alligators, and dropped out after his high dose."

When I wrote above that "synchromystics took note of" the connection between 50/50 and Tintin in 2011, I was thinking of the blog g8ors.blogspot.com ("gators"), though I haven't been able to track down the exact post.

The alligator also ties us back into a sync theme from a few months back: the Jimmy Driftwood song "Battle of New Orleans," which humorously describes Andrew Jackson's forces using an alligator as a cannon. (The line "the gator lost his mind" also ties into the Fool/crocodile connection.) Although the Battle of New Orleans took place in early 1815, the song "Battle of New Orleans" begins "In 1814 we took a little trip." The phrase "took a little trip" is a nod to the DMT/Terence McKenna theme, and 1814 is the birth year of Lorenzo Snow.

Since the Tarot has come up, I should also mention that St. George's cross is featured on the Judgment card, which I have discussed extensively as a prophecy of Donald Trump's winning the 2020 election. I have also discussed the 19th trump, The Sun, as a prophecy of the birdemic -- which gives a whole new meaning to the title Prisoners of the Sun. In fact, the correspondent who sent me the Tintin scan that started this whole sync cascade was using it to make a point about the birdemic:

The eclipse corresponds to the "deadly birdemic", and Tintin's god-like powers correspond to the peck. Now that most people are pecked, all They need to do is reduce media coverage on the "cases" and make out as if the peck has saved the day. The birdemic will vanish (miraculously), and they will then write history according to their narrative, using it as artillery in the pro-peck propaganda war as an example of how effective GM pecking is.

And I think that's about enough for one post!

Three recent sync themes united

From a magazine for Taiwanese students of English. One of my adult students asked me about this article this morning.

Here are the bits I've highlighted:

• "1.8" -- the date of the Battle of New Orleans
• "foxes put the flowers on their feet to hide the sound of their footsteps" -- which makes them fox socks, not gloves
• "it is very easy to get the amount wrong" -- proper dosage = temperance

Update: Less than an hour after posting this, I checked a young student's writing and found that he had misspelt "horses" as "hoses" -- "Do hoses run fast? Yes, they do."

This is another link to Fox in Socks: "Nose hose goes some, crow's rose grows some." In this post, I connect the nose in "nose hose" with rhino ("nose" in Greek) and mention that the rhino "belongs to the same order of mammals (Perissodactyla) as the donkey" -- and, though I did not mention it before, the horse.

Stand me by those pillars, let me take this temple down

Given how much I've been blogging about Samson lately (here and at The Magician's Table) and about songs about New Orleans, and given how often I cite the lyrics of Leonard Cohen, it might seem hard to believe that I never knew there was a Leonard Cohen song called "Samson in New Orleans." But I didn't. I discovered it tonight.

Here are the lyrics, with a few interesting passages highlighted.

You said that you were with me
You said you were my friend
Did you really love the city
Or did you just pretend

You said you loved her secrets
And her freedoms hid away
She was better than America
That’s what I heard you say

You said how could this happen
You said how can this be
The remnant all dishonored
On the bridge of misery

And we who cried for mercy
From the bottom of the pit
Was our prayer so damn unworthy
The Son rejected it?

So gather up the killers
Get everyone in town
Stand me by those pillars
Let me take this temple down

The king so kind and solemn
He wears a bloody crown
So stand me by that column
Let me take this temple down

You said how could this happen
You said how can this be
The chains are gone from heaven
The storms are wild and free

There’s other ways to answer
That certainly is true
Me, I’m blind with death and anger
And that’s no place for you

There’s a woman in the window
And a bed in Tinsel Town
I’ll write you when it’s over
Let me take this temple down

Deus vult.

Hush my darling, be still my darling, the lion's on the phone

Hmm . . .  a red telephone?

Y'all know by now that I don't shy away from crazy. Well, buckle up.

A little bird just whispered to me, "Is it possible that Donald J. Trump is in space right now?"

Why? How? This can't possibly be literal, right? I don't know, but there's something undeniably appealing about the idea of President Trump munching popcorn and looking down on the lying dog-faced pony show from Space Force One.

⁂

The synchronicity fairies consistently portrayed Trump's 2016 victory -- finalized in the wee hours of 9 November -- as a second 9/11, with Trump unexpectedly smashing through the twin towers of the uniparty. Could this be a third? After all, 9 + 11 + 2001 = 2021.

After 9/11, my even-crazier uncle and I played the game of retrospectively reading prophecies of the event into Nostradamus, Beatles lyrics, and so on. One such "prophecy" I discovered was in "The Guitar" by They Might Be Giants.

In the song "The Guitar," first they sing, "In the spaceship, the silver spaceship, the lion takes control." This sounds like a hijacking, and the name Osama means "lion" in Arabic. Later in the song, we hear, "The lion's on the phone." Just as in the Beatles' "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window," the phrase "on the phone" is an allusion to 9/11 by way of the emergency phone number 911. The music video cuts to footage of buildings collapsing right after they sing "on the phone." This song is from the album Apollo 18. Apollo suggests Apollyon, the demon mentioned in Revelation 9:11, and 18 plus two (move over once, move over twice) gives us 20 — that is 9 + 11.

The footage of buildings collapsing is accompanied by trumpet music.

Trump was first connected with the lion Aslan by Scott Alexander in Unsong.

The lion represents Trump. He’s big and predatory and has a mane of golden hair. Heck, even the political cartoonists have got this one; they’ve been drawing the theme of the lion attacking the elephant all year. The witch represents Hillary. She’s a powerful but widely-disliked old woman.

(This time around, the witch is apparently being played by Nancy Pelosi.)

Vox Day recently made the same connection, quoting the Narnia character Puddleglum and then replacing Aslan with Trump.

I'm on Trump's side even if there isn't any Trump to preside. I'm going to live as like an American as I can even if there isn't any America.

And what about Apollo 18? Far-darting Apollo is the god of the bow (céleste dieu d'arc et d'harpe), and 18 is 1/8, the date of the Battle of New Orleans. While that specific date has come and gone without being preceptibly pivotal, I don't think that means the Battle of New Orleans has lost its relevance.

Nothing to do but wait and see, watch and pray.

And when we touched the powder off . . .

I've already identified Lin Wood as the "alligator" in "The Battle of New Orleans" (allegator = maker of allegations) -- and, like clockwork, they've filled his head with Qanon-balls and powdered his behind. He's just let loose with a rash of highly specific allegations -- including that Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself because he is still alive -- so off the wall that people are asking if he's lost his mind. Vox Day's comment:

Given that some of the objects of his criticism have publicly threatened defamation lawsuits, either Lin Woods is off his rocker or he is in possession of hard evidence. 

By the way, I'm getting a pretty strong Hickory vibe from this guy, who even bears a certain physical resemblance to Andy Jackson, and whose name is basically Wood Wood Wood. (Lucian Lincoln "Lin" Wood. Lucian, from a Latin root that means "grove" as well as "light"; Lincoln as in Lincoln Logs; even Lin means "wood" in Chinese.)

⁂

Also: I'm not sure why I didn't think of this before, after posting so much about Old Hickory and also citing Aleister Crowley on the Kabbalistic interpretation of nursery rhymes.

Hickory, dickory, dock.

I think dickery means something along the lines of "shenanigans," or maybe just being a dick. In this case, though, I think the relevant meaning comes from the old use of dick to mean "detective." Dickery means detective work, collecting evidence.

Dock: "in the dock" means "on trial."

The mouse ran up the clock.

To "run up the clock" means to drag things out, treading water until the deadline arrives. Both sides are doing this, so I'm not sure who or what the "mouse" is.

The clock struck one,

The traditional deadline is 12:00 midnight, so the clock striking one means things not being resolved until after the usual date.

The mouse ran down,

Vehicular assault? Running out of steam? Running down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico? It all depends on the identity of the "mouse."

Hickory, dickory, dock.

Arlo's dreams

A tip from a reader:

You recently posted about Arlo Guthrie singing the song City of New Orleans. Arlo also has a song, "In my darkest hour" which he said came to him in a dream.  The song begins: "It's the 10th of January and I still ain't had no sleep."

In a recent post, I wrote:

It appears that we are looking at a roughly five-day period here:

• Jan 6: birthday of Joan of Arc, Maid of Orleans; Feast of Epiphany
• Jan 7: Saturn-Pluto conjunction ends
• Jan 8: anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans
• Jan 9: anniversary of the beginning of Joan of Arc's trial
• Jan 10: anniversary of Caesar's crossing the Rubicon

Today I had a sudden hunch to Google the phrase "five days in January," which brought up a novel by that name by one R. T. Lowe. Here's the blurb:

Reeling from a terrible accident that claimed the lives of his parents, Felix arrives at Portland College hoping only to survive the experience. In time, however, with the help of his reality star roommate, and Allison, his friend from home, he immerses himself in the distractions of college life and gradually dares to believe he can put his past behind him. But a fateful storm looms on the horizon: In the nearby woods, two hikers become the latest victims in a series of gruesome murders; a disfigured giant embarks on a vicious cross-country rampage, killing teenagers who fail his 'test'; an ancient society of assassins tasked with eradicating the wielders of a mysterious source of power awakens after a long silence; and a grassroots movement emerges from the shadows to capture the public's imagination, its hidden agenda as revolutionary and terrifying as the man who created it. Only one man -- the school's groundskeeper -- knows that the seemingly unrelated events are connected, and that an eighteen-year-old boy stands in the center of the storm.

No smoking guns here, but the phrases I have bolded are suggestive. Trump was a reality star; "storm" is Q lingo; eighteen = 1/8 = the Battle of New Orleans.

Some of the lyrics of "Darkest Hour" also caught my attention.

It's the tenth of January and I still ain't had no sleep

She comes waltzing in the nighttime, made of wings

She is dressed up like a bandit with a hundred sparkling rings

"Dressed up like a bandit" means wearing a bandana over her face. "A hundred sparkling rings" suggests the planet Saturn.

Her father's in his chambers with his friends all gathered 'round

They are plotting their enemy's demise

With their last detail done, they await the coming sun

While I am staring in my lover's eyes

Her brothers and her sisters are all through for tonight

Pretending that they've just come to power

But she, far most of all, knows that they can only fall

In my darkest hour

This bit pretty much interprets itself, I would say. "Pretending that they've just come to power" -- could any line be more December 2020 than that?

"Darkest Hour" is supposed to have come to Guthrie in a dream. It appears on his 1976 album Amigo, which also features another "dream" song.

Living now here but for fortune

Placed by fate's mysterious schemes

Who'd believe that we're the ones asked

To try to rekindle the patriot's dreams

Arise sweet destiny, time runs short

All of your patience has heard their retort

Hear us now for alone we can't seem

To try to rekindle the patriot's dreams

Can you hear the words being whispered

All along the American stream

Tyrants freed the just are imprisoned

Try to rekindle the patriot's dreams

Ah but perhaps too much is being asked of too few

You and your children with nothing to do

Hear us now for alone we can't seem

To try to rekindle the patriot's dreams

I'm not usually one to say this, but: Deus vult. I think we're being given another chance, and I pray people will rise to the occasion.

I'm the train they call the City of New Orleans

Apropos of the Battle of New Orleans, this old Steve Goodman song, as sung by Arlo Guthrie, came to mind: "The City of New Orleans" -- which is not actually about the city, but about an Amtrak train called the City of New Orleans, running between Chicago and New Orleans.

A few lines in particular caught my attention:

Dealin' card games with the old men in the club car
Penny a point ain't no one keepin' score

"Dealin' card games" suggests Trump, whose name is a card-game term and who wrote The Art of the Deal. "The old men" are the oldest president ever and his even-older opponent.

"Penny" = Pence. "A point" = appoint. "Ain't no one keepin' score" = no need to count the votes. If, as some are speculating, Pence hands Trump a win on January 6 by refusing to count those electoral votes which are contested or obviously fraudulent, this line will turn out to have been strikingly prophetic. It would then take Biden a couple of days to concede -- because you have to fire once more before they begin a-runnin' -- so that his concession would be perfectly timed for the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans.

Through the Mississippi darkness
Rolling down to the sea

To paraphrase: "down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico."

Note that Biden is known as "Amtrak Joe" and is said to have traveled more than two million miles by train. And of course he is a "Blue" -- that is, a Democrat. This makes him a "railroad blue," no?

But all the towns and people seem
To fade into a bad dream
And the steel rail still ain't heard the news
The conductor sings his songs again
The passengers will please refrain
This train got the disappearing railroad blues

Trump, Old Hickory, and 2020

The U.S. 20-dollar bill has Andrew Jackson on the front and the White House on the back. It is the only banknote to depict the White House. It is the only denomination of U.S. currency whose number corresponds to an election year.

I am not the first to have connected the 20-dollar bill with the year '20. Back in 2015 -- the centennial of the Battle of New Orleans -- a movement called "Women on 20s" was launched, with the stated goal of getting Old Hickory off the 20-dollar bill by 2020 and replacing him with a woman. It was later decided (by a vote, naturally) that this woman would be Harriet Tubman. The reason for choosing the 20-dollar bill, and the year 2020, was that 1920 was the year women began to participate in mass voting in the U.S. (A secondary reason, of course, was that the Democratic Party hates hates hates the man who founded it.)

During his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump announced that he would oppose this plan to replace Jackson with Tubman, and made it clear that he was pro-Jackson rather than anti-Tubman. CNN quoted him thus:

"Well, Andrew Jackson had a great history, and I think it's very rough when you take somebody off the bill," Trump said during a town hall on the "Today" show on NBC Thursday morning. "I think Harriet Tubman is fantastic, but I would love to leave Andrew Jackson or see if we can maybe come up with another denomination."

When Trump moved into the White House in 2017, he immediately had a large portrait of Andrew Jackson put up in the Oval Office. He clearly sees himself as a second Old Hickory.

The 2020 election made it clear that Trump's decision to keep Jackson was the right one. To allow him to be replaced by a woman-of-color named Harriet on the 20 would have symbolically foreshadowed Trump's allowing himself to be replaced by a woman-of-color named Harris in '20. But Jackson stayed, and so will Trump, and regular readers will know I have reason to suspect his final victory will take place on or around the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans.

By the way, Women on 20s is now saying the Jackson's continued presence on U.S. currency is what killed George Floyd. From their website:

Women On 20s and associates are calling on the U.S. Treasury to take a knee and make our $20s counterfeit proof and upgrade it with a portrait of Harriet Tubman. The Treasury’s failure to update the $20 cannot be separated from the tragic events which led to the murder of George Floyd on May 25th, 2020. . . . As we’ve been saying for years, symbols do matter.

You may recall that the reason Mr. Floyd was in police custody when he died had to do with his alleged attempt to pass a counterfeit 20-dollar bill. If only that particular denomination had been "upgraded" with the counterfeit-proof likeness of Harriet Tubman, he would probably still be alive today!

Well, they're right about one thing anyway: Symbols do matter. Keep playing this song.

Clarification on the end of the Saturn-Pluto conjuction

I have previously said that the current Saturn-Pluto conjunction will end on January 8. That turns out not to be precisely correct. Assuming an 8-degree maximum orb for a non-Sun, non-Moon conjunction, the Saturn-Pluto conjunction will end in Washington, D.C., at 3:05 p.m. on January 7, 2021. At that point, Saturn will be 2°24'46" Aquarius, and Pluto will be 24°24'46" Capricorn, for an orb of precisely 8 degrees.

Of course, this is a sort of false precision. The 8-degree standard is an arbitrary one, and some astrologers consider planets to be in conjunction even with an orb of 10 degrees. Nevertheless, by that one fairly widespread convention, the conjunction will end on the afternoon of January 7, and January 8 will then be the first full day on which Saturn and Pluto are no longer in conjunction.

This means that the license plate I saw -- 192 NYT -- is not a near miss after all but does code the precise date that the conjunction will end: 19 - 2 = 17, and 19 + 2 = 21; the numbers 17 and 21 correspond to the date 1/7/21. The significance of "NYT" remains to be seen.

It appears that we are looking at a roughly five-day period here:

• Jan 6: birthday of Joan of Arc, Maid of Orleans; Feast of Epiphany
• Jan 7: Saturn-Pluto conjunction ends
• Jan 8: anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans
• Jan 9: anniversary of the beginning of Joan of Arc's trial
• Jan 10: anniversary of Caesar's crossing the Rubicon

By the way, when did the Saturn-Pluto conjunction begin? I have a hunch about that; let's see if it checks out. Stay tuned.

Maid of Orleans

Following up a lead from commenter NLR a while back:

Joan of Arc -- Maid of Orleans -- Battle of New Orleans

I read Laura Wood's blog, The Thinking Housewife, from time to time, and at the top of her sidebar is this picture, captioned "St. Joan of Arc, defender of all nations."

Joan died at the age of 19. White horse, plumed headdress, red banner, the number 19 . . . what does that all remind me of?

Tradition has it that Joan was born on the Feast of Epiphany, January 6, 1412. Her trial for heresy began on January 9, 1431. The Battle of New Orleans took place on January 8, 1815.

Yeah, they ran through the Breyers

 From "The Battle of New Orleans":

Yeah, they ran through the briers and they ran through the brambles
And they ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn't go
They ran so fast that the hounds couldn't catch 'em
On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico

The briers = the Supreme Court, as typified by Justice Stephen Breyer -- who, according to allegator Lin Wood, has it in for the President

This may be most important tweet of my life.

Chief Justice John Roberts is corrupt & should resign immediately. Justice Stephen Breyer should also resign immediately.

They are “anti-Trumpers” dedicated to preventing public from knowing TRUTH of @realDonaldTrump re-election.

— Lin Wood (@LLinWood) December 17, 2020

The brambles = ?

The bushes = the RINO establishment, as typified by the Bush family

A rabbit = Justice Amy Coney Barrett -- either individually or as representing the pro-Trump faction within the Supreme Court. (The indirect article is significant: a rabbit = A. Coney!)

The hounds = surely not God! No one can outrun God.

And here's Dolly Parton.

Saturn-Pluto conjunction to end on January 8?

With reference to my recent post about January 8, my correspondent writes:

Also, in this post William Wildblood talked about a conjunction of Saturn and Pluto:

I will quote the relevant paragraph

On a totally different note, there was a conjunction of Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn in January. This lasts for about a year as Saturn moves forward then goes retrograde in May, going back to within a degree or so of Pluto in October, before moving forward again and going out of orb, as it is called, early next year. Saturn and Pluto are the two of the most difficult (in terms of the challenges they present to human consciousness) planets to deal with. Saturn represents restriction, limitation and what is hard and unyielding while Pluto symbolises forces of death, transformation and destruction. Put together and in Capricorn which is ruled by Saturn, meaning its effects are magnified because of a similarity of expression, they represent quite a package. What it means is that problems that have been suppressed or denied will be brought to a head. There will be no escaping them and they must be faced and dealt with. This will mean hard times but out of that may come, if one reacts with sense and really does face them, a new understanding. The potential for new life or death are both there.

From this paragraph it sounds like the conjunction is ending in January but I'm not sure because I haven't been able to find anything specific about when it ends, only that it's happening.  But wouldn't that be amazing if it was ending on January 8?

So I checked an online ephemeris, giving the positions of the planets at 05:00 Eastern Standard Time (i.e., Washington, D.C.) for each day in 2021.

When neither the Sun nor the Moon is involved, conjunction is generally defined as an angle of 8° or less. At 05:00 EST January 8, Saturn will be 2°27' Aquarius, and Pluto will be 24°26' Capricorn. That's an angle of 8°1' -- just barely out of conjunction. At 05:00 EST January 7, the two planets will still be in conjunction, at an angle of  7°26'. I don't have access to hourly data, but it appears that the conjunction will end either on Jan 7 or Jan 8. Given a change of 5 degrees in 24 hours, we can estimate that the conjunction will end about four-fifths of the way from 05:00 on the 7th to 0:500 on the 8th -- in other words, almost precisely at midnight!

I also note that one of the symbols of Pluto (incorporated into that planet's astrological symbol) is the bident (like a trident with only two prongs) -- a word which has also been brought to my attention recently by Scott Alexander's novel Unsong, where it is the devil's weapon of choice.

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Update: I've checked with someone who knows more about astrology than I do, and he has confirmed that the Saturn-Pluto conjunction will indeed end on January 8.

January 8?

In a recent post, I mentioned that an email correspondent of mine had looked at the daily Mass reading for December 14 and tried interpreting it synchronistically as a prophecy. That actually wasn't the only date he looked at.

The post inspired me to do my own synchro research (on a much smaller scale).  For each day of the year, the Catholic mass has daily readings.  I checked January 8, January 20, December 14 and also the Sunday after January 20, which is the 24th.

I knew that December 14 was the day the electoral college voted and that January 20 was Inauguration Day, but the other date mentioned didn't mean anything to me. I wrote,

And forgive my ignorance, but what’s the significance of January 8?

He replied,

I realized after sending this email that January 8 was a mistake. I remembered reading that date in a comment, but I must have been mistaken because the significant day is January 6, when Congress meets to count the electoral college votes and declare a winner.

I didn't think anything of it at the time, but that should have been a huge red flag. A mistake? Like an accident? A coincidence? This is synchronicity research -- we don't believe in that stuff! You drop a Tarot card out of the deck while you're shuffling, that's not an accident; it's part of the reading -- probably the most important part.

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The email exchange I've quoted took place on November 16-19, and I revisited it on the eve of December 14. Then I suddenly started thinking of the song "The Battle of New Orleans" -- which I hadn't heard or thought of in decades -- and couldn't get it out of my head. I had a very strong impression that it was relevant to the electoral goings-on but couldn't see how. New Orleans? Trump won Louisiana handily, and it is not one of the contested states. Battle of Atlanta or Detroit or something would have been more apropos.

Yesterday, I attempted an analysis of the song. I gave it my best shot but still felt like I was missing something essential.

Well, today I finally had the bright idea of reading up a bit on the Battle of New Orleans -- the battle, not the song -- and now I know the significance of January 8. I'm quite sure that I didn't know the date of the Battle of New Orleans before -- I had kind of assumed, based on the song, that it took place sometime in 1814 -- but it was January 8, 1815. In fact, "The Eighth" was a major American holiday from the election of Andrew Jackson to the start of the Civil War. As the date of America's last battle against the British, it was considered a sort of second Independence Day. (The war had already been won, and a treaty signed, but the treaty hadn't been officially ratified yet, and news of it had not yet reached New Orleans.)

So I am officially making a prediction that Something Very Big -- most likely Biden's formal concession -- is going to take place on January 8.

A first attempt at cracking "The Battle of New Orleans"

I've already mentioned that the synchronicity fairies keep bringing the Jimmie Driftwood song "The Battle of New Orleans," as made famous by the Spectacular Johnny Horton in 1959, to my attention in connection with the ongoing electoral circus in America. (Remember "Shadilay"? This is this year's "Shadilay." I'm not sure yet how or why, but it is.)

Here, for a little variety, is the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band version:

I was taught this song in a public elementary school, which goes to show how much times have changed. Can you imagine kids today being taught a song that glorifies gun violence, cruelty to alligators, and so "problematic" a personage as Old Hickory?

Anyway, here's a first stab at an analysis.

First of all, we notice that singer who made the song famous was named Horton. Horton is also a Dr. Seuss character, an elephant, known for his repeated lines, "I meant what I said, and I said what I meant, and an elephant's faithful one hundred percent!" (Johnny Horton had not yet released his first album when Horton Hatches the Egg was published.)

. . . unlike the British at the Battle of New Orleans!

Johnny Horton used to perform the song in a period uniform, holding a musket with a flared mouth like a trumpet.

And now we come to the lyrics themselves.

We fired our guns and the British kept a-comin'
There wasn't as many as there was a while ago
We fired once more and they began to runnin'
On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico

Fire has more than one meaning, but when Donald Trump says, "You're fired!" he's not talking about artillery. Couldn't "We fired our guns" mean "We terminated the employment of several top-level defense officials"?

"We fired once more and they began to runnin'" could mean, among other things, that the firing of some officials led others to resign of their own accord.

We looked down the river and we see'd the British come
And there must have been a hundred of 'em beatin' on the drum
They stepped so high and they made their bugles ring
We stood behind our cotton bales and didn't say a thing

President Trump has stayed pretty quiet and played his cards close to his chest -- unlike his enemies, who have been beatin' on the drum and making their bugles ring.

Old Hickory said we could take 'em by surprise
If we didn't fire our muskets till we looked 'em in the eye
We held our fire till we see'd their faces well
Then we opened up our squirrel guns and really gave 'em -- Well . . .

To look someone in the eye is to tell him the truth, or to challenge him to tell you the truth.

"We held our fire till we see'd their faces well" means we waited for all our enemies to identify themselves and show their hand before striking.

We fired our cannon till the barrel melted down
So we grabbed an alligator and we fought another round
We filled his head with cannonballs 'n' powdered his behind
And when we touched the powder off, the gator lost his mind

Finding a way to fight another round even after your cannon has melted means continuing to fight even when everyone is saying you've already lost.

An allegator is one who makes allegations. (Alligator is etymologically el lagarto, "the lizard"; I'll let David Icke handle that one!)

A skeleton of years ago

The synchronicity fairies have been bringing this old song to my attention a lot lately. I haven't figured out how it fits into the scheme of things, but overall it seems a happy omen.

(Note added: I realize the title of this post is confusing. By "a skeleton of years" I mean 206 years.)