Fruit grown from a ruby in a cup (with a turtle)

I had another brief vision or waking dream today, while praying the Rosary and contemplating the Descent of the Holy Ghost.

I saw a large golden goblet, and a big ruby -- about the size of a large walnut -- was put inside it. I couldn't see who was putting it there. I just saw the ruby move through the air and down into the cup, but slowly and deliberately, not as if it were falling or being thrown. My impression was that it was being placed in the cup carefully by an invisible hand.

A few seconds later, a box turtle walked up to the goblet. It stood up on its hind legs and put its forefeet on the rim of the cup, trying to peer inside. As soon as it did this, all kinds of fruit started bubbling up from the goblet until it was full almost to overflowing. There were bananas, grapes, a pineapple, and lots of other fruits whose individual identities didn't register. The whole thing reminded me of Carmen Miranda's fruit hat. It was just a lot of fruit -- no plant or tree from which it was growing -- but my impression was nevertheless that it had all grown very rapidly from the ruby, and that the turtle's attempt to look into the cup was what had triggered it.

⁂

I have no clear interpretation of this, just a few hints at possible connections. One thing I immediately thought of was the Rider-Waite Ace of Cups card:

Here, too, we have something being put into a golden goblet. The imagery of the descending dove ties in with the context of the vision (I had been contemplating the Descent of the Holy Ghost), and of course turtle is a word that can refer either to a shelled reptile or to a dove.

I also thought of "This episode is brought to you by the letters G and L," where a gorilla seems to be about to put a bunch of grapes into the Holy Grail.

The ruby in the cup made me think of one of Debbie's dreams, where she was given a cup with a crystal in it, and the whole thing had something to do with Heaven's Gate. Since comments aren't searchable, I can't find that dream, so Debbie, I'll have to ask you to post it again. (You might consider starting your own blog so that these things are searchable.)

I also thought of William Wright's "Herbie the Hamster: A Short Story." The story is about a seed, and the ruby in my vision functions as a seed. Hamsters and box turtles play similar roles as low-maintenance pets often kept by small children, and the turtle's standing up on its hind legs to look into the cup reminded be of Herbie's efforts to get over the wall and see what is outside.

Further Journeys

The Journeys book in which I found the story of Dot was one of four books in that series which I found in the same disused room in which I had found the magazine with the red and green doors on the cover. Today I paged through the other three volumes.

One of them has a large blue moon on the cover:

In my February 2 post "No H in Snake," I wrote that that was "the best deadpan surrealist response whenever anyone said 'Remember there's no I in team.'" One of the Journeys books has a story in which that line is repeated again and again.

There may be an i in pizza, but there's still no h in snake.

In the Dot post, I wrote about how the H. G. Wells story "The Door in the Wall" mentions "spotted panthers" behind the Green Door -- an odd expression, since the spotted animals are usually called leopards, panther being reserved for the black variety. Journeys, though, has a picture of a black panther and emphasized that it has spots.

Besides the panthers, three other kinds of animals are mentioned in the garden behind the Green Door: doves, "paroquets" (parakeets), and a capuchin monkey.

Presently, a little Capuchin monkey, very clean, with a fur of ruddy brown and kindly hazel eyes, came down a tree to us and ran beside me, looking up at me and grinning, and presently leapt to my shoulder.

Journeys also has a picture of a capuchin monkey -- identified as such in the text -- on someone's shoulder. Wells writes of a "little Capuchin monkey"; Journeys also emphasizes this species' small size.

(The Capuchin as a variant of the Hermit card is also mentioned in "Temperance, the Hermit, and the hourglass." Capuchins are Franciscan friars; Fra Angelico was a Dominican friar.)

In yesterday's post "Winter, flowers, and the grail," I noted the incongruous appearance of a big silver trophy cup in the music video for the Tori Amos song "Winter":

Journeys has an extremely similar picture:

One of the stories is about a boy named Sam who moves from Texas to New York. He misses Texas, but at the end he feels better about New York when he sees a T. rex skeleton in the museum.

The idea that a T. rex would help a homesick Texan feel better is an indirect link to the mini T. rex theme, since Texas is where the "mini T. rex" cryptid is from. Later, there's another story about a museum, which of course has several pictures of T. rex skeletons -- nothing terribly noteworthy about that. On the last page, though, there's a picture of a plastic T. rex toy -- a mini T. rex -- even though the whole story is about dinosaur skeletons in a museum and there are no toys in the story at all.

Oh, and there's also a picture of an eight-spoked ship's steering wheel, which Debbie will appreciate.

Winter, flowers, and the Grail

I downloaded a collection of H. G. Wells short stories so that I could read "The Door in the Wall," but since I've got it and all, I figured I might as well read the rest of them. Today I read "The Flowering of the Strange Orchid," which is about -- spoiler warning! -- a flower that kills people, one of its weapons being the heady scent that renders its victims unconscious. It reminded me of a sonnet by my uncle, William John Tychonievich, called "O Poison Rose of Poetry," so I looked it up and reread it for the first time in well over a decade.

O poison Rose of Poetry, we drink

Your deadly nectar deep with each inhale

Of life's sweet atmosphere. Our breath does stink

Of your humid, earthy vapors. O Grail

Of Thorns and bright red-colored Seduction,

Your Goddess-sent scent both lures and entraps

Butterfly bards pulled by your soft suction

Into this matrix of sharp spiny paps.

Within your lattice prison we flutter

And strive, suffocating on your perfume

Until we fall and our corpses clutter

Your attar-petaled bed, our womb and tomb.

And here we lay, amid robust young shoots,

Our rotting essence feeding hungry roots.

I had forgotten there was a Grail reference in there! Earlier today I read and posted about an /x/ post called "Quantum Spacetime is the Holy Grail."

The main character in the Wells story is named Winter Wedderburn. Winter is a rather unusual given name, and for some reason what it made me think of was the 1992 Tori Amos song of that name, even though it's probably been 20 years or more since I've listened to anything by that singer, whose persona and most of whose music I've come to find actively repellent. (I was a big fan in my college days. Things change, my dear.) "Winter" is good, though, so I found it on YouTube and played it. I had never seen the video before.

Most of the video is pretty straightforward -- Tori walking around, singing, playing the piano, etc. -- but at one point it switches to a black screen with a big silver cup -- a trophy perhaps (it goes with the lyrics "you say I wanted you to be proud"), but also suggestive of the Grail.

A hand from offscreen pulls the cup away, and then some flowers float in and arrange themselves into this circular configuration. Then it's back to your regularly scheduled walking, singing, and piano playing.

The circle of flowers is a weird sync, since earlier today I saw this on /x/, posted with no comment but "what did they mean by this?":

Has Charles not been crowned yet? Kind of taking their time, aren't they? It's just some innocent graphic design, incorporating the floral emblems of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland -- unless, that is, you're /x/ enough to see the inverted crosses hidden in the shamrocks and the inverted pentagram at the top of the crown, usurping the place of the Cross. Anyway, whatever else it may be, it's a pretty specific sync with the Tori Amos video.