Today I was browsing in a new-to-me used bookstore I had discovered, and I was drawn to a novel called Swamplandia! by Karen Russell even though the cover had that "critically acclaimed" look that usually makes me give a book a wide berth. I opened it up and found this:
The sync fairies have spoken. I bought the book.
William Wright left a comment on my original "raised by wolves" post in which he connects the expression, by way of the Rudyard Kipling character Mowgli, with spacefaring frogs:
The phrase "Raised by Wolves" reminds me of Jungle Book. Mowgli is raised by wolves. Kipling said that Mowgli was a made up name - in other words, though it meant "frog" in the book, this wasn't based on any known languages.
As an amphibian, Mowgli would be able to live and travel on both land and water - perhaps even Many Waters?
A frog crossing space has come up in your own posts, where in one instance you reference Pepe the Frog crash landing on a shooting star. The 'thumb'-nail image for that video you posted has Arnold's head swapped with that of a green frog as he flees the temple (likely skipping out of this world for another).
This immediately made me think of the 1986 Italo disco song "Shadilay" (I mentioned Italo Calvino in the post), which on September 11, 2016, was suddenly discovered by /pol/ and became associated with Pepe the Frog and his Egyptian deity alter ego Kek.
For those unfamiliar with the song and its memetic significance, see "SHADILAY: The sacred word that founded a new meme faith." That article also points out that Shadilay was the name of a fan-created Pokémon made in 2015, described by the author as "a glum-faced amphibian, water/ghost-type Pokemon." Since another "ghost-type Pokemon" has recently entered the sync stream, that seems relevant.
Kipling said that Mowgli means "frog" but that he'd just made it up. Shadilay is also a made-up word, but according to its creator, Marco Ceramicola alias Manuele Pepe, it means "spaceship." (I can't seem to find where he said that, but I'm sure he did. A 4plebs search confirms I'm not crazy.)
Eunuch. I'm shock'd, young chaps, I truly am -- To turn down jingon-berry lamb, Imported from the Persian court, With Medish sweet-balls for dessert! Are you so bold as to propose To scorn such gifts with upturn'd nose And ask for river-wine and beans? The King will wonder what it means!
Daniel. It means the King is sitting pretty: Two wonders in a single city! "Come see the Hanging Gardens. Then -- The lunch of these four Hebrew men!"
-- Yes and No
Once he tried to feed all the animals in all the world in one day, but when the food was ready an Animal came out of the deep sea and ate it up in three mouthfuls. Suleiman-bin-Daoud was very surprised and said, 'O Animal, who are you?' And the Animal said, 'O King, live for ever! I am the smallest of thirty thousand brothers, and our home is at the bottom of the sea. We heard that you were going to feed all the animals in all the world, and my brothers sent me to ask when dinner would be ready.'
-- Rudyard Kipling, "The Butterfly that Stamped"
After getting 11,000 fake Swedish visitors from the devil knows where, followed up by a roughly equal number of authentic Swedish puns courtesy of Sean Fowler (plus a Kraken pun of my own), I've got Sweden on my mind -- so, while washing some dishes, I found myself humming, "Swing low, Swede chariot . . . ."
And then the good old associative machinery threw up this:
In this version of the classic swing song originally by Cab Calloway, Minnie the Moocher is described as "a low-down hoochie-coocher" and is given "a platinum car with diamond-studded wheels" by the King of Sweden in a dream. Swing, check. Low, check. Swede chariot, check.
Minnie's ridiculously luxurious auto reminds me of the They Might Be Giants song "Mink Car" -- from the album of the same name, which was released on September 11, 2001.
It's knocking off my diamond wig
Knocking me down onto the platinum ground
Woke up in a beautiful dream
Alone, alone
I got hit by a mink car . . .
Ever wonder where the word mink comes from? Turns out it's a loan-word from Swedish.
Hugh Laurie ends his version of "Minnie the Moocher" by repeating the line, "But Minnie had a heart as big as a whale!" What creature, I thought, would have a heart as big as a whale? Surely only the Leviathan -- or its Scandinavian equivalent, the Kraken. (Technically, I suppose the Kraken would have three such hearts.) And then I thought of Kipling's Animal that came out of the deep sea. Isn't a moocher someone who exploits the generosity of others, like the Animal in the story? And wouldn't Minnie -- or, more properly, Mini -- be a natural nickname for "the smallest of thirty-thousand brothers"?
Sometimes I write something I think is just too bizarre to publish -- and then I usually publish it anyway, and as often as not I soon get an email from some stranger saying, "You too? What an amazing coincidence!"
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Early this afternoon, I was sitting in my living room. We have a large window in the front, but it was a very sunny day and the curtains were drawn. Suddenly, my tomcat Geronimo (a highly accomplished jumper) got between the window and the curtain and started jumping up on the glass again and again like a maniac. My wife said there must be a bird or something outside, so I popped out to take a look.
It wasn't a bird; it was a white cabbage butterfly, steadily beating its wings and flying directly into the windowpane. The glass was of course an impassable barrier, but it wouldn't alter its course in the slightest, and the result was that it just sort of hovered there. Now everyone knows that a normal butterfly's flight path resembles that of a drunken skywriter. Straight lines are simply not in their repertoire; nor is this sort of persistence when confronted with an impassable obstacle. Nevertheless, it persisted.
As I looked at the butterfly, a question suddenly popped into my head out of nowhere: Are you a traveling man? -- quickly followed by the rest of this stock Masonic dialogue: Yes I am. Traveling where? From west to east. (I'm not a Freemason, but one picks up these things.) The feeling that I was somehow having this dialogue with the butterfly -- ridiculous on its face! -- was unmistakable. The whole time, the butterfly kept flying persistently straight into the windowpane, and on the other side of the glass, a highly neurotic tomcat kept bouncing up and down like a superball.
Finally I snapped out of whatever passing trance the butterfly had put me in and gently shooed it away from the window. It immediately resumed normal butterfly behavior, and the cat settled down.
Checking a compass later, I found that it had indeed been flying at a perfect 90-degree azimuth, from west to east.
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The weird feeling that I had been "communicating" (if reciting a stock dialogue can be called that!) with the butterfly made me remember that last year I had experienced a synchronicity in connection with the idea that the spirits of the dead can appear as moths -- I had read about this in Whitley Strieber's Afterlife Revolution and then heard the same thing shortly thereafter from a Taiwanese associate. Well, I thought, this was a cabbage butterfly, not a moth, but it's close anyway.
When I looked up my old post about the moth synchronicity, though, I found something that I had forgotten. The post showed the cover of The Afterlife Revolution -- illustrated with a picture of a white cabbage butterfly!
I ended the post thus:
I wonder how common this association is? I know Aristotle used the same Greek word to refer both to the soul and to the cabbage butterfly. (By coincidence, this same species of non-moth appears to have been chosen by Strieber's entomologically confused cover illustrator.)
I had forgotten that about Aristotle, too, but he does in fact use the word psyche ("soul"), in History of Animals 5.19, as a name for those insects that arise "out of those caterpillars which arise on leaves of green, especially on those of the cabbage-plant."
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Coming back to the ridiculous idea of a butterfly being a Mason, I remembered that Freemasonry's central symbol is the building of the Temple of Solomon, and that in the Rudyard Kipling story "The Butterfly That Stamped," a butterfly stamps its foot and makes King Solomon's palace (close enough!) disappear and then reappear. (It is actually Djinns that do this, but Solomon has arranged for them to make it look as if the butterfly is making it happen.)
Suleiman-bin-Daoud laughed so much that it was several minutes before he found breath enough to whisper to the Butterfly, "Stamp again, little brother. Give me back my Palace, most great magician." . . . So he stamped once more, and that instant the Djinns let down the Palace and the gardens, without even a bump.
Then I thought about the song "Build Me Up Buttercup" by the Foundations.
Building up foundations sounds like a mason's work, does it not? Buttercup is a bit like butterfly, but not quite close enough to be satisfying. Ah, but what's the very first thing Wikipedia has to say about the Foundations? "The Foundations were a British soul band." Soul = psyche = cabbage butterfly.
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Since Whitley Strieber had entered into this synch-stream, I thought of his "nine knocks" incident, documented in Chapter 11 of his book Transformation (a synonym for butterfly-style metamorphosis). Strieber recounts how he was at home, reading an essay by John Gliedman about quantum entanglement, when he noticed that his two cats were beginning to behave strangely, as if they are terrified.
The cats' fear didn't make sense to me at all. I decided there must be some animal outside, perhaps a deer. I returned to Dr. Gleidman's essay.
I read the following sentence: "The mind is not the playwright of reality."
At that moment there came a knocking on the side of the house. This was substantial noise, very regular and sharp. The knocks were so exactly spaced that they sounded like they were being produced by a machine. Both cats were riveted with terror. They stared at the wall. The knocks went on, nine of them in three groups of three, followed by a tenth lighter double-knock that communicated an impression of finality.
In his book A New World, Strieber refers back to this incident and connects it with Freemasonry.
I cannot know if this was intended, but the knocks reflected a tradition in Masonry where when someone is elevated to the 33rd Degree, they knock in this way on the door of the hall before being admitted.
He repeats this assertion in The Super Natural.
Also, when entering the thirty-third degree, a Mason must knock on the door of the lodge nine times in three groups of three.
I know basically nothing about the higher degrees of Masonry, but certainly "three distinct knocks" is a thing, and it wouldn't be surprising if they sometimes did three groups of three. Anyway, the point here is that Strieber, just like me today, (1) saw his cats behaving strangely, (2) assumed it was because of an animal outside, and then instead (3) observed something which he connected with Masonic ritual.
