When that gorilla beats his chest

Yesterday evening (August 4) I taught a children's English class. They had read an article about the eating utensils used in different cultures -- forks, spoons, chopsticks, etc. -- and a sidebar mentioned that some chimpanzees used sticks to eat ants.

I asked if everyone knew what chimpanzee meant, and one of the kids responded by beating his chest. I said, "No, that's a gorilla. A chimpanzee is a bit like a gorilla, but it's a lot smaller."

"King Kong!" said one of the kids.

"King Kong is a giant gorilla," I said. "A chimpanzee is a big ape with black fur, like a gorilla, but it's a lot smaller than a gorilla, and certainly a lot smaller than King Kong."

"Oh, I know!" said another student, finally getting it right. "A chimpanzee is a 'black star'!"

They're not allowed to use Chinese in class without permission, so they often take advantage of the pun-translation loophole. The Chinese for "chimpanzee" is 黑猩猩, literally "black ape," and the word for "ape" is a homophone of the word for "star" (星星).

One of the other kids asked if the ants the chimpanzees ate were honey ants. I said, "No, because honey ants live in Australia, but chimpanzees live in Africa. I think the 'ants' they eat are actually white ants, or termites."

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The day before that (August 3), in the comments on "Good riddance, Big Ben!" I had left a link to the 2020 Black Dog Star post "The Cronus Virus - It's Time!" without actually rereading the post myself. After the class, though, I checked my blog comments and saw one from Debbie that began thus:

I clicked on the Black Dog Star link and I'm very impressed with a lot of the information that mirrors my own. . . .

Her wording put the They Might Be Giants song "I'm Impressed" in my head:

I'm impressed, I'm impressed

When that gorilla beats his chest

Fall to bits, I confess, I admit, I'm impressed . . .

With this playing in my head, I clicked my own link and reread the Black Dog Star post.  I had linked to it because it connected Saturn and clocks with the birdemic and was thus relevant to my own post giving "Taiwan's Dr. Fauci" (whose Chinese name sounds like the Chinese for "clock," just as Fauci means "sickle") the nickname Big Ben. I had forgotten that it also included this image:

King Kong and the Black (Dog) Star!

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That night, I listened to music on YouTube while doing the dishes, as usual. One of the songs it played was a Kill_mR_DJ mashup of Toto's "Africa" and Enigma's "Return to Innocence." 

Looking at the screen, I saw that, in addition to Toto and Enigma, a band called "The Script" was credited, as the source of the instrumentals. I'd never heard of them.

Today (August 5), I had lunch at a restaurant, where a TV was playing music videos. I wasn't really paying attention until a live video from a concert came on. Before the song actually started, the singer was giving a little speech on the stage, in which he kept repeating that their band was The Script. Something like, "Whether you've been a Script fan since our first song, or whether this is your first Script concert, we want to say welcome to the Script family!" Then the music started, and I instantly recognized it as the track Kill_mR_DJ had sampled. My attention was now fully engaged, and then the lyrics started:

Yeah, you can be the greatest, you can be the best

You can be the King Kong bangin' on your chest

You can beat the world, you can beat the war

You can talk to God, go bangin' on his door

King Kong beating his chest again! No black stars in this song, but Kill_mR_DJ had put it together with a song by Toto (the name of a famous black dog) -- called "Africa" (home of the "black stars," a.k.a. chimpanzees).

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The reference to banging on God's door also caught my attention. Just before lunch I had, on a sudden whim, paid a visit to the Guashan Shaolin Temple, which I hadn't been to in years. It was the middle of a weekday, and the temple was virtually empty. On the ground floor is an emormous statue of Bodhidharma which has a very powerful presence, but I was there for the meditation room on the second floor. There's framed Chinese calligraphy on the walls -- 18 channeled poems dedicated to each of the 18 Arhats. When I first visited this temple, 12 years ago or so, one of these 18 poems attracted me as if by magnetism (it really feels pretty literally like magnetism!) even though I was basically illiterate in Chinese at that time, and when I touched the paper, I felt a powerful stream of energy flowing through me. (I hate to use "energy" in a New-Agey way like that, but I'm afraid it's the mot juste.) Today I immediately recognized the poem again, felt the same magnetic attraction, and felt the same rush of energy when I touched it. I'm much better at reading Chinese now, and it is the poem dedicated to Cudapanthaka -- called in Chinese 看門羅漢, literally "the Arhat who watches the door."

As I exited the meditation room, I looked back and realized that I had not entered by the main doorway -- a large circular opening with no door -- but by a side door.. This was a green door which, though it was propped open with a chair, had a sign saying "Arhat Energy Room Temporarily Closed."

Way to watch the door, Cudapanthaka! It's not the first time in recent weeks I've passed through a green door into a place that was supposed to be closed.

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In the temple stairwell, I passed a window where a moth had become trapped between the glass and the screen. After some coaxing and a lot of sliding the glass and the screen back and forth, I finally got it to fly outside. The exact moment the moth flew out the window, a gecko jumped in the window and onto my arm.

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Update: Immediately after posting this, I taught a different children's English class. Their assignment for today included this:

Two references to Toto the dog. Also Oz, a nickname for Australia. (I had had to explain that chimps can't eat honey ants because they don't live in Australia.) See also the references to Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion in this recent comment by WanderingGondola.

Good riddance, Big Ben!

Taiwan's mask mandate, which is still in force, allows masks to be removed in special situations -- including (last I checked) eating, drinking, walking, riding a motorcycle, taking a photo, and lecturing -- so I'm pretty much good. My students, who have to sit at their desks without doing any of those things, not so much.

A few days ago, one of my private students said, "It's not fair that I have to wear a mask but you don't!"

"It certainly isn't," I said. "Feel free to take it off if you like."

"I can't!" she said. "Big Ben says I have to wear it."

Big Ben! I wish I had thought of that.

The Minister of Health and Welfare -- "Taiwan's Dr. Fauci" and the world's most powerful dentist -- was called Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), and his given name is a perfect homophone of 時鐘, the Chinese word for "clock." The Chinese for "stupid" is 笨, pronounced ben, and so Big Ben in London is called 大笨鐘 -- literally, "Big Stupid Clock."

It's just a perfect nickname -- a very clever Chinese-English pun, and (much like "Let's go Brandon") indirect enough to make it playfully irreverent rather than just rude. Forget the old "Tooth Fairy" nickname; I'm never calling him anything but Big Ben from now on.

So imagine my mixed feelings when I discovered, just days later, that Big Ben had resigned! Not in disgrace, mind you, but to focus on his run for Mayor of Taipei -- a position which is generally recognized as a stepping-stone to the presidency. The good news is that Big Ben will likely be in the public eye for many years to come, giving me ample opportunity to talk about him. The bad news is that he hasn't really stepped down but stepped up, and the new guy will probably be just as bad but without the awesome nickname.

Mr. Q 2310, and the Heavenly Trump omen

Today I was on the road at a time when I would not normally have been; I had just come home and then had to go back out because I had forgotten something. While I was out, my eyes were drawn to a license plate that said MRQ 2310.

It was "Mr. Q" that first got my attention. There's been a lot of talk about "Mr. Owl" on this blog recently, particularly as a reference to Michael the Archangel. On July 29 (also, coincidentally, the day known as "Ghost Door Opens" on the Chinese calendar), I received an email from a woman using a pseudonym that begins with the letter Q, in which she said, "There is no real 'Mr. Q[...]' at this time, so with some of the things I've been reading about guardian angels, I'm beginning to wonder if Michael himself might be my guardian, or at least have an eye out for me."

So apparently Mr. Q is yet another name for Michael. In "More Mr. Owl," I noted that the Mr. Owl title does not identify Michael with the owl but with the owl's male counterpart, the hawk. In "If 6 turned out to be 9," I connected the owl with 6 and the hawk with 9. Note that a lowercase 'q' looks like 9, and that the Japanese word for "nine" is kyu -- a pun used, for example, in the title of Haruki Murakami's book 1Q84.

So what about the rest of the license plate? Well, it's my initials, for starters: 23 = W, and 10 = J. I thought there must be more to it than that, though (these things are always overdetermined), so I thought, "Well, what are its factors? It looks like it's divisible by 77, which is the S:E:G: value of Christ . . ." and, still on my motorcycle, I started doing the math in my head. Sure enough, 2310 is 77 times 30. At that moment, I passed a 7-Eleven convenience store, and I thought, "And 77 is 7 times 11, and -- holy shit!"

Why have I associated the owl with the number 6? Because of a restaurant called Six Owl Door, and accompanying syncs featuring six owls, an owl and six doors, etc. On July 28, Ben left a comment in which he linked to a photo of three doors marked with numbers.

The doors are numbered 11, 7, and 15 -- the product of which is 1155. If 1155 means three doors, then six doors would be twice 1155, which is, yes, 2310.

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In other news, here's what's going on in the world of horse racing:

LSP in Grand Prairie, Texas, hosted a horse race for three-year-olds and up, and for most of the maiden race a four-year-old gelding named Moro Flyboy had a clear lead ahead of the rest of the competition, including a horse named “Heavenly Trump.”

As Flyboy, led by apprentice jockey Simon Camacho-Benitez, approached the final stretch of the race, the horse began to veer toward the track’s inside rail.

After flying too close to the sun, Moro Flyboy made contact with the rail and bucked Camacho-Benitez yards from the finish line, which gave way for Heavenly Trump to step up and steal the race (not like that).

The indisputable, Balaam-inspired act of God propelled Heavenly Trump to victory. Camacho-Benitez and Flyboy were reportedly unscathed after the incident.

From the accompanying video, it appears that Heavenly Trump is a white or light-gray horse, ridden by a jockey with a yellow cap.

"Heavenly Trump" is presumably a reference to the biblical "last trump" which calls the dead to rise from their graves, as illustrated on the 20th trump of the Tarot. The article, though, is obviously playing on the similarity of the name to that of Trump, the politician. Well, I made that connection long ago.

I also connected Trump with "The other Trump trump," the Sun. This card, which is associated with Gemini and Flag Day (Trump's sign and birthday), shows a yellow-haired child riding a white or light-gray horse next to a wall. Notice that when Moro Flyboy hits the "wall," bucking the jockey, the article refers to it as "flying too close to the sun."

Moro Flyboy -- Heavenly Trump's rival -- is connected in the article with the biblical story of Balaam, whose mount "thrust herself unto the wall, and crushed Balaam's foot against the wall." Balaam wasn't riding a horse, though, but a donkey -- symbol of the Democratic Party. I suppose this all syncs with Biden's foot fractures shortly after the election, and his recent fall from his bicycle.

If 6 turned out to be 9

In a recent comment, Debbie wrote:

So, regarding the interchangeability of the Owl and the Hawk, maybe Hendrix said it best; "What if 6 turns out to be 9"?

This was in the context of the Hawk being the solar (yang) counterpart to the lunar (yin) Owl. This reminded me that in the I Ching, 6 and 9 represent the transitions between yin and yang. The number 6 is "old yin" (yin changing to yang), and 9 is "old yang" (yang changing to yin).

The yin-yang symbol even looks like a 6 and a 9, even though it long predates the use of Arabic numerals in China.

 

If 6 and 9 are yin and yang, then the owl corresponds to 6, and the hawk to 9. I've already posted syncs relating to six owls and the Six Owl Door. Debbie points out that the hawk is linked to the Egyptian god Ra. The Wikipedia article on Ra says: "As Atum or Atum-Ra, he was reckoned the first being and the originator of the Ennead ('The Nine')."

An owl feather on my doorstep

I found this right in front of my door this morning. I mean right in front; the bird would have to have flown into my carport in order to deposit it there. As soon as I saw it, I knew intuitively that it was from an owl. An hour or so poring over a feather atlas confirmed that (80% confidence; not sure of the exact species, though; possibly a collared scops).

A shrew has taken up residence under the garden hose in front of our house -- which is a mixed blessing because it kills lots and lots of cockroaches but also leaves poop and cockroach wings everywhere. How it's survived so long with so many cats around is beyond me. We've been trying to get rid of it for a while, but we've also come to think of it as "our" shrew (the taming of the shrew?). The feather was right next to the shrew's base of operations, so if we don't see our soricid friend again, I guess we'll know what brought the owl to our door.

The broad purpose of synchronicity is to alter consciousness and induce new kinds of thinking

From the conclusion of Mike Clelland's book The Messengers: Owls, Synchronicity, and the UFO Abductee:

[P]ulp sci-fi publisher Ray Palmer . . . said that flying saucers intrude into our lives to make us think. I would amend that to say that they intrude into our lives to make us think deeply. The same could be said for owls. . . .

Those owls at sunset didn't grant me enlightenment or anything so grand, instead they initiated a process of crumbling. Some brittle part of me started falling away and something new has been trying to emerge. . . .

I have changed. I now see magic in the world around me. It's woven into the fabric of everything. This might seem naive, but I see owls, UFOs, and synchronicity as an expression of this magic, all blurring together and playing a similar role. These are deeply challenging ideas, but they are also seductive, and they've been tugging at my soul.

I agree entirely with this assessment, and I find Clelland's formulation of it to be helpfully clarifying. The primary purpose of synchronicity, and of the elusive nonhuman intelligences that are inextricable from it, is to elicit -- patiently, often over the course of many years -- new ways of thinking and of being. Clelland's title refers to messengers, but this is clearly a case in which the medium is the message.

Whitley Strieber has expressed a similar idea many times, saying that the close-encounter experience is primarily "a process of creating questions that can neither be borne nor answered," and that it is in this way that other worlds are helping our own.

I understand what Clelland means when he refers to "some brittle part of me . . . falling away" under the influence of synchronicity (mediated, in his case, by owls). Looking back, I think I can even say that synchronicity had its role to play in awakening me from my dogmatic slumber and leading me by slow degrees out of the narrow desert of dismissive materialism and back into the fold of Christ. I refer not to any particular synchronicity, not to any dramatic "conversion experience," but to a gradual falling away of brittleness through an influence as patient and diffuse as the love of one's parents.

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Despite having a rather idyllic childhood, I secretly spent a rather large portion of it in a state of abject terror. In very early childhood, this took the form of a paralyzing fear of "bad dreams" and of "monkeys" and "bugs" coming into my room at night. This led to insomnia, and when my parents offered the advice that one good way of falling asleep is to close one's eyes and pretend to be asleep, they had no way of knowing that what they were suggesting was absolutely impossible, that I could no more do it than I could jump off a cliff. (My 2013 poem "The Bugs" deals with this chapter in my life.)

Around the age of 11 or 12, I discovered the works of Whitley Strieber, which terrified me more than anything I had ever read and provided a sort of nucleus around which free-floating terror could congeal. As late as my college years, I suffered from an intermittent but extreme fear of the dark which was very difficult to overcome, even though I constantly challenged it by taking a night job and walking home every morning at 4 a.m.

When I became an atheist, fear stopped as if it had been turned off with a tap. (When I was 17, I had written an essay arguing that atheism was a response to the fear of the dark. It's a bit rich that five years later, with zero self-awareness, I myself dealt with my fear of the dark by turning to atheism!) I had decided that I no longer lived in a supernatural world, and the disquieting aspects of the supernatural obligingly withdrew. This disappearance of fear -- not a manic sort of fearlessness at all but a bored fearlessness -- was extremely abrupt, and I noted it at the time and found it somewhat disturbing even though I had to admit it was perfectly rational. (Under atheism, there are no stakes and nothing matters, so what the hell is there to be afraid of?)

Somewhat surprisingly, the return of faith has not brought a return of fear. The supernatural is back, and of course some aspects of it are extremely malevolent, but I'm just not scared of it anymore. It's neither mania nor ennui this time, but just a calm sense of being "persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 8:38-39; I think Paul also exhibited non-manic fearlessness). 'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fear relieved.

Why am I writing all this in a post about synchronicity? I don't know, it just seemed relevant somehow.

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I think some people resist synchronicity because it is fundamentally irreverent, blending the absurd with the holy and stubbornly refusing to recognize the demarcation that separates the sacred from the profane. I have sometimes had occasion on this blog to apologize for, well, the vulgarity of some of the sync fairies' links, and of course I've just been going on about how St. Michael's defeat of the Dragon is related to the nonsensical palindrome "Mr. Owl ate my metal worm."

I no longer really object to this, obviously. The Hebrew word for "holy" means "separate," but the English word holy means "whole."

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Another little synchronicity: In this post, I included a link to my old poem "The Bugs," which describes a technique I used to use as a very young child in order to fall asleep without closing my eyes first: visualizing two clouds, one on either side of my head, and trying to focus on them both at the same time. Just before finishing the post, I went into the kitchen and saw that my wife had bought a drink from a tea stand and that the cup was decorated with this image:

The most important teaching of the Book of Mormon

Mikhail Vrubel, Descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles (1885)

While I was writing my sync post "NPH 421 and spontaneous human combustion," much of which deals with Moroni burying the Golden Plates in AD 421, Bruce Charlton was writing his post "Should Christians hand-over their eternal salvation to... historians? Romantic Christianity at the cutting-edge." Bruce writes:

According to the scholarship of Terryl Givens; the BoM is broadly highly compatible with the Bible. Its production functioned mainly as a sign that new Christian revelations were being made by God, via a new prophet. But the BoM has one theological innovation, which is that individuals ought to seek personal revelations to confirm all significant and foundational Christian claims.

This "theological innovation" comes from what is called Moroni’s Promise. In my 421 post, I linked to Wikipedia’s BoM chronology. For the year 421, it says:

About AD 421: Moroni finishes the work his father and ancestors started, leaving a promise to its readers, and buries it in the earth.

The text of Moroni’s Promise (Moro. 10:3-5):

Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts.

And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.

And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.

Moroni did not specify what form this "manifestation of the truth" would take, but it has become conventional in Mormonism to focus on a sensation known as the "burning in the bosom." This of course syncs with the fact that my 421 post is also about spontaneous human combustion -- in which, according to the leading expert on the subject, the body is burned from the inside out.

In my October 2021 post "Who or what is the ultimate spiritual authority? (a Mormon perspective)," I criticized what is perhaps sometimes an excessive focus on the specific "burning in the bosom" sensation, but my ultimate conclusion is nevertheless a soundly Mormon one: The ultimate spiritual authority is the Holy Ghost speaking to each believer's mind and heart, and all other authorities are downstream from that. This is the essence of Mormonism -- and, as Bruce argues in his important post, it is also the essence of Romantic Christianity. There is a very real sense in which we Romantic Christians strive to be "more Mormon than the Mormons."

(And perhaps also more Quaker than the Quakers, with their Inner Light. I say this tentatively, not really knowing that much about Quakerism, but it occurs to me because my 421 post also dealt with Moby-Dick, a novel which is full of Quakers.)