The Gospel of Luke on lobsterback

In Animalia, as discussed in "This episode is brought to you by the letters G and L," the Gospel of Luke appears on the back of a lobster. No, not like the Judgement Tablet on the back of a cicada! It's in ordinary book form, if a bit thicker than the Gospel of Luke as we know it, but the book is supported by a lobster.

I've already written a bit about the possible significance of the Gospel of Luke, but I didn't say anything about the lobster. It's been nagging at me, though, and I finally figured out its relevance: "The Lobster-quadrille"! The G and L post prominently featured a griffin, also shown together with something representing sacred records, and the Gryphon in Alice is the one who, with the Mock-turtle, sings "The Lobster-quadrille." (That word quadrille originally meant "one of a set of four," which has obvious relevance to the Gospel of Luke.) In the song, lobsters are thrown out to sea from England, so far that they nearly reach the northern shore of France:

You can really have no notion how delightful it will be

When they take us [the whiting and the snail] up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea!

. . .

There is another shore, you know, upon the other side.

The further off from England the nearer is to France --

Normandy is on the northern shore of France, and of course there were later Normans in England as well, so there is possible relevance to Minbad the Mailer. Besides being written correspondence, mail is also a kind of armor, and Normandy and Brittany belong to what was once known as Armorica -- so perhaps the Norman Mailer is sending "mail" (in the form of sacred writings) back to his homeland of Armorica. What was once just called mail is nowadays known as snail mail, and "The Lobster-quadrille" makes it clear that the lobsters being thrown toward France are accompanied by snails.

Where was I reading about Armorica recently? Oh, right, Rimbaud's A Season in Hell:

Hélas, l’Evangile a passé! l’Evangile! l’Evangile. J’attends Dieu avec gourmandise. Je suis de race inférieure de toute éternité. Me voici sur la plage armoricaine.

Alas! The Gospel has gone by! The Gospel! The Gospel. Greedily I await God. I am of an inferior race for all eternity. Here I am on the Breton shore.

Louise Varèse has "the Breton shore" in her translation, but the original French is clearly referring more generally to Armorica as a whole. That geographical reference was all I had remembered as possibly relevant, but when I looked it up I saw that it is juxtaposed with "The Gospel" repeated three times. The third Gospel is, of course, that of Luke.

So we have Rinbad (Rimbaud-Tolkien) waiting on the Armorican shore for the Gospel of Light to be sent over from Britain on lobsterback by Minbad the Norman Mailer. Lobsterback is 18th-century slang for a British soldier, so perhaps it is soldiers who travel from Britain with the Gospel. Or perhaps I should say from "Britain," in scare-quotes, as labels do not always mean what they seem. When I dream, I dream about books -- and one of the books I've dreamed about, back in 2020, was titled Britain as Another Planet. In "How can these books not exist?" I describe looking at some books inside a dome-shaped indigo building (supposedly a "convenience store") called Blue Harbor:

One of these was a "round book" -- that is, its pages were circular rather than rectangular -- and I wanted to look through it but couldn't because it was shrink-wrapped. The others were ordinary books and didn't look very new. I perused the spines and noticed these three titles:

• Things Soon to Come
• Britain as Another Planet
• I Tried to Be Parents

Rereading that now, I was struck by the "round book," since a recent dream has featured Plates (sacred records) in the form of a round disc.And "I wanted to look through it but couldn't because it was shrink-wrapped" -- what is that but another way of saying, "I cannot read a sealed book"?

This idea that a "round book" of plates has something to do with the "Gospel of Luke" received minor but interesting synchronistic confirmation today. I was, for complex psychological reasons, praying the Rosary while lying supine on a tile floor. On Thursdays, one prays the Luminous Mysteries, or Mysteries of Light (Luke means "light"), and as I was doing the third of these five meditations (Luke is the third Gospel), a single copper coin fell out of my pocket and onto the floor -- a little metal disc.

The book that proceeded forth from the mouth of a Jew

Nephi's vision prominently features a book that "proceeded forth from the mouth of a Jew" (1 Ne. 13). Mormons almost universally understand this to be the Bible, even though that doesn't really make any sense. The Bible was written by lots of different people, some of whom were Jews (though such important authors as Moses, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Paul were not), but the book Nephi saw is repeatedly described as coming out of the mouth of one Jew. It's not the Bible.

I was just thinking about this mysterious book the other day because of its possible relevance to one of the couplets in "With?"

Minbad the Mailer was a Jew

And wrote a lot of novels, too.

Norman Mailer, obviously. It's oddly worded, though, making him first and foremost a Jew, with the fact that he was a novelist mentioned only as a sort of afterthought. As soon as I started reading "With?" seriously, I suspected that Minbad was "the Jew" from Nephi's vision.

This checks out:

Thou hast beheld that the book proceeded forth from the mouth of a Jew; and when it proceeded forth from the mouth of a Jew it contained the fulness of the gospel of the Lord (1 Ne. 13:22).

A "Norman mailer" could be someone sending out messages from Normandy, France. Mailer's real name was actually Nachem, meaning "comforter."

Jews are members of the Tribe of Judah, whose symbol is the Lion, just as the Bull is the symbol of the House of Joseph. In my last post, I discussed a picture of two lions in a library and focused on one of the books, The Gospel of Luke, which is symbolized by the Bull. I somehow missed the very conspicuous fact that there's another book literally proceeding forth from the mouth of a Lion!

Lassie Come Home -- that is, symbolically, the title of the Book from the Mouth of the Jew. I have a lot to say about the significance of that title, but it will have to wait until I have time. For now, I just want to get it out there with this quick post.