April 27 and the whale

Today one of my adult English students, wanting to practice his pronunciation, had selected a couple of articles from an English magazine to read aloud to me so that I could listen and make any needed corrections. The first, an article about tourism in Amsterdam, included this paragraph:

One of the dearest holidays in the Netherlands is King's Day, when the Dutch honor the birthday of King Willem-Alexander. Every April 27, nearly a million people dress in orange -- the country's national color -- to attend concerts, watch boat parades, and shop at huge outdoor markets.

As I have posted before, April 27, 1584, was the date of John Dee and Edward Kelley's vision of a many-eyed whale on a hill, representing the spirit of God; and on April 27, 2014, I posted an account of my own dream of a many-eyed whale. Not until this year would I discover that I had posted it on the 430th anniversary of Dee's similar vision.

Here in the article is April 27 again, and specifically April 27 as an anniversary.

The mention in the paragraph of people wearing orange for King's Day also caught my attention. On March 6 of this year, I had posted some AI-generated pictures of book titles and invited readers to guess what the titles were. One of the books I had chosen was The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers, an 1895 book of horror stories which was one of H. P. Lovecraft's major influences. I know of the book but have never read it, and I can't say why it came to mind. Anyway, the AI illustrated it in a rather straightforward fashion -- a crude human figure dressed in yellow, wearing a crown -- but one of my readers bizarrely guessed "The King in Orange." I assumed this was a simple error; it never occurred to me someone might have written a book about the King in a different color.

Many of my Dee/whale syncs have been mediated by Greg Carlwood's podcast The Higherside Chats. A few days ago, I was browsing the archives and found one that was an interview with John Michael Greer, whose name I knew from having read an article or two years ago on his now-defunct Archdruid Report blog, so I gave it a listen. The name of the show, from May 2021, was "John Michael Greer | Political Sorcery, Will, & Weaponized Magic" -- and it turned out to be about his 2021 book called, yes, The King in Orange, about the "magical war" leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election (Pepe the Frog and all that).

The second article my student read was about the four-leaf clover, and he made a very strange mistake:

According to legend, in the fifth century, Saint Patrick used clovers to explain the Holy Trinity to the ancient Irish. And the ancient Celts believed that four-leaf clovers offered magical protection against whale.

"Against evil," I corrected. "Oh, against evil." How often do people misread evil as whale?

So there's a whale, coming hot on the heels of the date April 27. But the reference to the Holy Trinity in connection with the number four was a sync, too. See, last night I had put "john dee" into the search box on YouTube and clicked on one of the first results that came up, called "The Incalculable Genius of John Dee." Despite the title, the video's main topic is the theory that Edward de Vere wrote the works attributed to Shakespeare, and that those works contain many coded references (created with the help of Dee and Dee's ideas) to that fact. The presenter, Alexander Waugh, focuses on this quote from Dee:

We demonstrate here that the Quaternary is concealed within the Ternary. O God! pardon me if I have sinned against Thee by revealing such a great mystery in my writings which all may read, but I believe that only those who are truly worthy will understand.

Waugh comments, "Well clearly, that great mystery as far as the Ternary is concerned is about the Trinity,"  and then goes on to talk about the ways various Elizabethans contrived to find the numbers three and four in their names. Dee, for example, often signed his name "Δ" (it is thus that he is referred to in the account of the whale vision) -- delta being both a triangle (the Ternary) and the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet (the Quaternary).

To be honest, I had thought that the Dee/whale sync stream had pretty much run its course, but here it is popping up again.

The CJCLDS goes full Satan, supports turning kids trans

In his recent General Conference address, "Following Jesus [sic]: Being a Peacemaker," Elder Neil L. Anderson, apostle of the Latter-day Society Against the Use of Nicknames and Abbreviations, reports:

In February, a headline in the Arizona Republic stated, "Bipartisan bill supported by Latter-day Saints would protect gay and transgender Arizonans."

We, as Latter-day Saints, are "pleased to be part of a coalition of faith, business, LGBTQ people and community leaders who have worked together in a spirit of trust and mutual respect."

This bill which enjoys the official support of the Church, HB 2802, is "bipartisan" in the classic sense of being both stupid and evil.

Much of it is about expanding "non-discrimination" laws to include "sexual orientation and gender identity," and to apply even to the very smallest businesses (previously, businesses with fewer than 15 employees were exempt). This means that if an LPGABBQ person applies for a job, you must either hire them or else be prepared to prove that they were rejected for some reason unrelated to sexual neurosis or ideology. (The CJCLDS supports it because there is an exception for religious organizations -- rules for thee but not for me.) This is bad but not shocking, as such tyrannical laws, applied to various other protected classes, are nothing new.

Here's the shocking part:

A. It is unprofessional conduct for a health provider to provide conversion therapy to a patient or client who is younger than eighteen years of age.

B. Subsection A of this section does not apply to [clergy, parents, or grandparents when acting as such, even if they also happen to be health providers].

C. The regulation of conversion therapy is of statewide concern and is not subject to further regulation by a county, city, town, or other political subdivision of this state.

D. For the purposes of this section:

1. "Conversion therapy":

(a) means any practice or treatment that seeks to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of a patient or client, including mental health therapy that seeks to change, eliminate or reduce behaviors, expressions, attractions or feelings related to the patient's or client's sexual orientation or gender identity.

(b) does not include a practice or treatment that does not seek to change the patient's or client's sexual orientation or gender identity, including mental health therapy and that meets the following:

(i) is neutral with respect to sexual orientation and gender identity.

(ii) provides assistance to a patient or client undergoing gender transition.

Got that? If it has been decided (by, perhaps, one of the trans teachers schools will be forced to hire) that your kid is trans, the only treatment it will be legal for health providers to offer is "assistance . . . undergoing gender transition."

The CJCLDS leadership supports this. They support it so much that they made an exception to their usual stance of political neutrality to make an official statement endorsing it.

They can burn in hell.

Systemic racism: Hollywood is run by whites.

The New York Times published this infographic on September 11, 2020.

Who are these 25 people? Below is the name, company, and race/ethnicity of each. For a few I was unable to find specific ethnic details and had to classify them as generic whites.

1. Paul Buccieri (A+E Networks Group) - White gentile
2. Karey Burke (ABC) - Other white
3. Jennifer Salke (Amazon Studios) - Other white
4. Jamie Erlicht (Apple) - Other white
5. Zack Van Amburg (Apple) - White gentile
6. Kelly Kahl (CBS) - Other white
7. David Stapf (CBS Television Studios) - White (no details available)
8. Nancy Daniels (Discovery Channel) - White (no details available)
9. Dana Walden (Disney Television Studios and ABC Entertainment) - Other white
10. Charlie Collier (Fox) - Other white
11. Kelly Campbell (Hulu) -White gentle
12. Ted Sarandos (Netflix) - White gentile
13. Jim Gianopulous (Paramount Pictures) - White gentile
14. Tom Rothman (Sony Pictures Entertainment) - Other white
15. Jeff Frost (Sony Pictures Television Studios) - Other white
16. Kathleen Finch (TLC and HGTV) - White (no details available)
17. Donna Langley (Universal Filmed Entertainment Group) - White gentile
18. Alan Bergman (Walt Disney Studios) - Other white
19. Alan Horn (Walt Disney Studios) - Other white
20. Toby Emmerich (Warner Bros. Pictures Group) - Other white
21. Peter Roth (Warner Bros. Television Group) - Other white
22. Casey Bloys (WarnerMedia and HBO Max) - White gentile
23. Wonya Lucas (Crown Media Family Networks) - Black
24. Pearlena Igbokew (NBCUniversal Television Studios) - Black
25. Jessica Rodriguez (Univision) - Hispanic

How systemically racist is this? Well, let's compare the racial/ethnic makeup of this group of top execs with that of the American population as a whole.

Take a look at the rightmost column. If the number is higher than 1, that group is overrepresented among top Hollywood and TV execs; if it is lower than 1, the group is underrepresented. In a fair world, one without systemic racism, every number would be exactly 1. What do we see instead? That the number for whites is 1.5 -- a whopping 50% higher than it would be in a fair world! Blacks, on the other hand, have a measly 0.7, showing that they are systematically excluded from positions of power in Hollywood.

It's an outrage! Why is no one talking about this?

Support New World Island

Those of you who are on the same page as me, Bruce Charlton, William Wildblood, and Francis Berger, but who don’t have blogs of your own, head over to the monthly discussion thread at New World Island and say whatever’s on your mind. Our friend Carol is getting lonely over there!

Update: Fixed the link!

Call me Ishmael.

After a few days of the synchronicity fairies harping on the the idea of the whale as a metaphysical symbol, it is inevitable that one's thoughts should turn to Moby-Dick. I read Moby-Dick back in 2006, and it blew me away. I thought I was probably going to keep reading and rereading it for the rest of my life. As things have played out, though, I never did read it again. The same goes for Paradise Lost, which I read at about the same time.

(Why did I pick up Moby-Dick in the first place? Because someone had told me, without elaborating, that he thought I might be Herman Melville reincarnated. That never really panned out, either.)

Anyway, about the name Ishmael.

When I left the Mormon Church, which was four years before I had read any Melville, my newfound atheism coexisted uneasily with an absurd but unshakable feeling that I was doing what God wanted me to do. (Nowadays, I think that may have been true. God  needed to get me out of the institutional church to which I was so tightly bound, and only a total loss of faith would do the trick.) At that time, a passage from the Book of Mormon came to mind, ripped from its context, and I applied it to myself (which is what Nephi said we should be doing with scripture anyway!).

And Aaron said unto the king: Behold, the Spirit of the Lord has called him another way; he has gone to the land of Ishmael, to teach the people of Lamoni.

Now the king said unto them: What is this that ye have said concerning the Spirit of the Lord? Behold, this is the thing which doth trouble me (Alma 22:4-5).

"The Spirit of the Lord has called him another way" -- that was the exact feeling. But what was "the Spirit of the Lord"? What could any of that possibly mean to an atheist. Behold, this is the thing which did trouble me.

The Aaron and Ishmael mentioned in the passage I have quoted are not the familiar biblical figures, but the occurrence of the name Ishmael nevertheless made me think of Genesis.

And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Behold, thou art with child and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael; because the Lord hath heard thy affliction.

And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren (Gen. 16:11-12).

As a firstborn son who had just officially made himself the black sheep of the family, to live as "a wild man" unmoored from institutions, I identified with this Ishmael, too, and I read all the biblical connotations of Ishmael into the Book of Mormon line about being "called . . . another way . . . to the land of Ishmael."

⁂

Remembering all these things today, I realized that there is another figure who is called a "wild man" in Mormon scripture: the biblical prophet Enoch.

And it came to pass that Enoch went forth in the land, among the people, standing upon the hills and the high places, and cried with a loud voice, testifying against their works; and all men were offended because of him.

And they came forth to hear him, upon the high places, saying unto the tent-keepers: Tarry ye here and keep the tents, while we go yonder to behold the seer, for he prophesieth, and there is a strange thing in the land; a wild man hath come among us (Moses 6:37-38).

The name Enoch is of course a link, in very general terms, to John Dee and his "Enochian" system -- but what I saw when I read this was the mention of Enoch "standing upon the hills." Later, at the end of Joseph Smith's Enoch narrative, God receives Enoch "up into his own bosom" (Moses 7:69). The language reminded me of what the angels said to Dee: "The Hill is the World, The waters are the bosome of God, . . . The Whale is the spirit of God." This links Enoch not only to Dee, but specifically to the center of the current sync-storm: Dee's whale on a hill.

Dee did not specify what kind of whale it was, but the sync fairies have associated it specifically with the orca, or killer whale -- and, as I shall explain presently, Enoch = Behemoth = killer whale on a hill.

The Enoch-Behemoth connection comes from the apocryphal book of 2 Esdras.

Then didst thou ordain two living creatures, the one thou calledst Enoch, and the other Leviathan;

And didst separate the one from the other: for the seventh part, namely, where the water was gathered together, might not hold them both.

Unto Enoch thou gavest one part, which was dried up the third day, that he should dwell in the same part, wherein are a thousand hills:

But unto Leviathan thou gavest the seventh part, namely, the moist; and hast kept him to be devoured of whom thou wilt, and when (2 Esdras 6:49-52).

Leviathan, the great sea monster, is always paired with Behemoth, the great monster of the land. Here, for some reason, the name Enoch is used instead, but the context makes it obvious that it means Behemoth, not the prophet. And note that hills are mentioned again -- Enoch's domain is "wherein are a thousand hills."

But surely it is Leviathan that is to be identified with the whale, not Behemoth! Melville continually refers to whales as Leviathans, and it is even the word for "whale" in modern Hebrew. Whatever Behemoth might have been, it obviously wasn't a whale, right?

Well, I grew up reading not only the Apocrypha but also old D&D manuals, so I can tell you that Behemoth is a whale -- and not just any whale, but specifically a killer whale on a hill. This is a scan from the 1980 edition of Deities and Demigods. (Fortunately, you can find anything on the Internet!)

How perfect a match is that? Behemoth -- alias Enoch -- is portrayed as "a killer whale . . . that inhabits the plains and hills," and its inclusion in a book called Deities and Demigods also implies that it is in some sense -- like Dee's whale on a hill and Miller's orca -- a god.

Also, although the Behemoth picture itself was drawn by Paul Jaquays, check out the name of the first illustrator credited on the title page.

Orca Horizons

Back in 1998, when there was such a thing as a Mormon missionary and I was one, there was a cassette tape called "Orca Horizons" which lots and lots of us owned. It had been introduced by that one kind of New-Agey elder, the one who had a "sound-light entrainment device" to induce altered states of consciousness without breaking the Word of Wisdom, and it consisted of the 1997 Kierre Lewis album Horizons (piano arrangements of Mormon hymns) overlaid with a recording of the chirps and whistles of killer whales. Everyone made a copy, including me.

This album came to mind due to the synchronicity described in the last post, where, just after reading about John Dee and Edward Kelley seeing a whale that represented God, I listened to an interview with Dr. Richard Alan Miller in which he said "that orca was God."

The original quote, what the angels allegedly said to Dee and Kelley, was "The Whale is the spirit of God."

I just looked up Horizons and found this summary on the Desert Book website:

In this debut album, pianist Kierre Lewis brings a fresh new sound to her interpretations of such familiar and favorite hymns as 'Lead Thou Me On,' 'All Creatures of Our God and King,' 'The Spirit of God,' 'Praise to the Lord, the Almighty,' 'Our Savior's Love,' and the ethereal 'If You Could Hie to Kolob.'

The Spirit of God -- word for word, exactly what Dee's angels said the whale represented.

The firehose of syncs relating to Dee's whale continues

This afternoon (March 31) I caught myself humming the 2010 Gorillaz song "On Melancholy Hill" -- and then I realized why. The song contains the lines, "Up on Melancholy Hill / Sits a manatee." I had just been reading an account of John Dee and Edward Kelley's 1584 vision, in which "The waters sank, and fell suddenly away, so that the Whale lay upon the Hill, roaring like a Cave of Lions." A marine mammal on a hill -- whether whale or manatee -- is certainly an unusual enough theme!

This evening after work, I checked Greg Carlwood’s podcast, The Higherside Chats, which the reader will have gathered I have been listening to fairly often these days. There was a new episode up, an interview with someone called Dr. Richard Alan Miller. For some reason, instead of listening to it, I suddenly had the idea that I should search the archives and see if there were any other interviews with the same guy. There was one, from March 28, 2016, and I started listening to it.

Dr. Miller turns out to be an extremely eccentric polymath who has been involved in all sorts of different scientific and magical projects, one of which involved trying to communicate with dolphins.

GC: Something I hoped you could elaborate on was your past with John Lilly, you were working with dolphins.

RAM: Oh, yeah, well that's a Carl Sagan project. Everybody watching dolphin and their clicks and whistles, even in the movie Our Man Flint, you had a language . . . being able to talk to dolphin. Our Man Flint, there's an old one, after James Bond! Dolphin, actually, their clicks and whistles are a more advanced form of language than even Hebrew. They brought me in, I was in Berkeley for, oh shit, maybe 10 days, and within 10 days I had been recording, had the sounds, and looking for structure in the cadence form using scopes and, you know, old shit like that. And I noted that there was encoding and code cipher within their language. Their language had less redundancy than even Hebrew.

GC: Wow.

RAM: Well, yeah. Yeah! You know, the Sepher Yetzirah and how you relate sounds to words. The dolphin are possibly 10 times more efficient in their language as a form of Clifford algebra. And because of the way they compress it in sonar, a lot is transferred in a burst, and a lot of information. And that's because their brain is actually physically bigger than man -- and who's higher on the food chain? Orca has a cerebral cortex that's twice the size of man, and that mammoth cetacean is actually firing 60 percent of it at any given moment, which by definition, we would say that that orca was God -- not our God, but that which cannot be known, as a definition.

That's right, he just said a whale was God. On another old THC interview I recently listened to, with Jason Louv in 2018, Louv had summarized Dee's experience thus: "And at one point they even meet God, and God is not an old man with a white beard up in the clouds. God is a whale covered with eyes from head to toe."

I didn't notice it at the time, but typing up a transcript for this post, I notice that, in the lead-up to his statement about a whale being God, Dr. Miller brings up James Bond out of the blue. What got me interested in John Dee in the first place? Hearing (also on THC, an episode from 2020) that John Dee supposedly signed his letters "007." (I've since been informed that this may have been made up by Dee biographer Richard Deacon, who was a friend of Ian Fleming's.)

RAM: And now I'm coming in as a biblical scholar, I'm a tzadik, Hermetic Kabbalism, and I'm a physicist, . . . and I am here to tell you we don't have a clue. In my opinion, there may be as many as at this moment at least four mammals that are more evolved technically than man. And when we talk about -- all four have bigger braincases. Turns out they're cetacean, and all four of them are better designed for their habitat than man is in his biosphere. So what does that suggest in terms of hierarchy and lifeforms? And here's the last piece of that curveball, when I have seen orca hunting dolphin. That means it's about food chain. How's that feel? Not food from the gods, but food for the gods!

GC: So you got dolphin and orca in there, what are the other two?

RAM: Well, your pilot whale and manatee. All four have, yeah, those four mammals, and now -- then you have gorillas. A gorilla doesn't have as big a braincase, but an elephant does. . . .

I paused the podcast as soon as I heard the word "manatee." That's when I realized I was going to have to type up a transcript and post it, and I wanted to note the time. When I pressed play again, the very next sentence mentioned "gorillas" -- for no real reason; he just mentioned them and then immediately switched to talking about elephants.

I sitll have no idea what the point of all this is, but the sync fairies are certainly pulling out all the stops!