Remember Slow Joe Crow, the anthropomorphized corvid from the Dr. Seuss book Fox in Socks?
Come on, man!
It was the similarity of the word corvid to the official name of the birdemic that led to its being dubbed (by Bruce Charlton and myself) a birdemic. -- and obviously the most germane member of the corvid family is the carrion crow, with the near-perfect scientific name Corvus corone.
Slow Joe Crow popped into my head because his name seemed to combine two prominent features of 2020: the corvid birdemic and the rise and fall of "Sleepy Joe" Biden. On the page shown above, we see Slow Joe Crow flying in from the left, dressed in blue, with his eyes closed as if sleeping, with a downward-sloping curve in the background. Below this picture are three lines alluding respectively to the WHO, the birdemic, and Slow Joe himself.
That page is the second Google image search result for slow joe crow. The first is a logo for a band called Slow Joe Crow: a crow with a crown -- a corvid with a corona! (The logo dates to 2018, before the birdemic.) The third is a link to a currently unavailable tweet, but mousing over the link shows that it originally said "Slow Joe Crow is a friggin' Plague Doctor." (This is a post-birdemic tweet but shows no awareness of or intentional allusion to the corvid/birdemic pun used in my little circle.)
The tweet has reference to the distinctive costume worn by plague doctors in 17th-century Europe -- long overcoat, wide-brimmed hat, and a mask featuring goggles and a beak-like protrusion filled with lavender or other herbs believed to protect the wearer from miasma.
Hats are passé now, as is the miasma theory of disease, but mutatis mutandis, the photo on the left below might as well be captioned "Joe Biden wearing a hat and telling a lie."
Lots of people wear masks these days, but Biden is well known for his aviator sunglasses and for wearing a mask all the time. Also for hiding in his basement den -- speaking of which, how is it possible that I didn't notice this hidden meaning of his logo until just now?
Reader Otto happened upon, and brought to my attention, this 2018 video by Peter Gregory Kelly.
It's very short. Here is a complete transcript:
In this dream, a crow had made its way into my house. And I thought, how did it get inside? It scraffled with the cat a bit, and in the scraffling, I got a few scratches on my arm. The crow seemed to want to stay inside. That was really very puzzling; why would the crow want to stay inside?
This is obviously very suggestive of the birdemic, referencing the name (the crow is Corvus corone, a member of the corvid family), the lockdowns ("want to stay inside," repeated twice), and the pecks ("a few scratches on my arm") -- plus, of course, the face mask that Mr. Kelly wears as he recounts all this!
The only element that doesn't immediately fit is the cat, so I tried to figure out what it could mean. Richard Arrowsmith had previously connected the birdemic with the 19th Tarot trump, called "The Sun." In light of the Chinese tradition of the Red Crows of the Sun, the card is basically called "Corvid 19." I therefore thought about cats and the Sun and came up with the 1965 Donovan song "The Summer Day Reflection Song," and its repeated line "Cat is . . . in the sun," with various participles (sleeping, walking, shifting, yawning, smiling) filling the ellipsis.
Looking up the lyrics online, I found that there were several slightly different versions posted and wondered which was official. This led me to search for donovan official website. This brought up the official Donovan Twitter account and its most recent tweet:
Donovan Sunshine Superman Album
Its stunning, Donovan was 19 when he recorded Sunshine Superman album!
How dare he be so cool 3 years from leaving school
Donovan was 19 when he recorded Sunshine Superman. (Oh, and I wrote a post on the 19th Tarot card called "Sunshine Superman.") Looks like I'm on the right track!
Looking up "The Summer Day Reflection Song," I found that it features corvids (rooks, Corvus frugilegus) as well as a cat.
Dragon kite in the sky Wheel and turn, spin and fly Attacked by rooks who never fail To cry the sound of fairy tales Cat is walking in the sun
The "dragon kite in the sky" also seems significant. In my post on Tintin and St. George, I mentioned that reader Mr. Andrew had drawn my attention to an Owen Benjamin podcast posted just before St. George's Day, with "George fights a dragon" in the title.
Mr. Andrew explained, "Owen's dog is named George (really) - and the dragon reference was just a kite. Has absolutely nothing to do w/ St. George (Catholic or Floyd variety) - just a little coincidence/synchronicity at the same time."
This verse of "The Summer Day Reflection Song" also seems apropos.
Marionette dangles dead Insensitivity is fed By the TV wizard's wand Whilst in the spell you're conned Cat is smiling in the sun
Marionette strongly suggests "Slow Joe Crow" Biden. I have linked Slow Joe with Robin Hood, in part because his middle name is Robinette -- and obviously Robinette Hood's better half would be Maid Marionette. A marionette is a puppet, and this one is controlled "by the TV wizard's wand." I have already linked Biden, in his Slow Joe Crow persona, with a mechanical puppet controlled by a magician with a wand.
I recently noted that the magician's name is Steve -- in Latin, Stephanus. The Latin Wikipedia entry for that name begins thus: "Stephanus est nomen et praenomen masculinum quod e verbo Graeco στέφανος, 'corona', vertitur." (That is, the name Stephen may be translated into Latin as Corona.)
There may be a cat link in Steve Martin's name as well. The marten (an animal of the weasel family) has historically been called the marten cat, and there has been some speculation that the "cats" domesticated by the Greeks and Romans were in fact martens.
Coming back to marionette, the most famous marionette in literature and popular culture is undoubtedly Pinocchio. In my original Slow Joe Crow post, I noted that Dr. Seuss character's resemblance to a plague doctor and to Slow Joe Biden, writing
Hats are passé now, as is the miasma theory of disease, but mutatis mutandis, the photo on the left below might as well be captioned "Joe Biden wearing a hat and telling a lie."
That "telling a lie" bit was a direct reference to Pinocchio: If Slow Joe's nose grew when he lied, like Pinocchio's, it would stretch out his Covid mask and make it look like a plague doctor's "corvid" mask.
Trying to think of more cat-sun connections, I thought of the 1971 Cat Stevens album Teaser and the Firecat. The name "Firecat" sounds solar, and the cat on the album cover is bright orange, like my own cat Q*Bert. And although I didn't notice it until just now, if a marten counts as a cat, then Cat Stevens is basically the same name as Steve Martin.
When Teaser and the Firecat was released, Cat Stevens wrote and illustrated a children's book of the same name as a promotional tie-in. In the story, the moon falls down from the sky and ends up "on a prickle-red-tree. Then out came five red owls and Teaser told them what had happened. The owls picked up the moon with their beaks, and they flung it into the starry sky." Problem solved.
Nothing Whitley Strieber about this picture!
This is so maddeningly close to being a hit! Instead of 10 red crows associated with the Sun, we have five red owls associated with the moon. Way to mess up the sync, Cat Stevens! Don't you know the sync fairies can't communicate clearly when you're on acid all the time? Anyway, they're still red birds from outer space.
And finally it's come to me, the answer to the riddle of Peter Gregory Kelly's dream. Where have I seen a cat and Slow Joe Crow together? Here:
In all fairness, that's not actually Slow Joe Crow hisself (it's Pogo; I have to say "hisself") but Deacon Mushrat. Still, with his hat, specs, and beak, he's certainly got the plague-doctor look. And who's that with him? Not just a cat, but an unelected "stick to facts" pretender-to-the-presidency cat named Simple J. Malarkey. Since Malarkey was intended as a caricature of Joe McCarthy (this was 1953), we can even assume the J stands for Joe.
"Just to be clear, this is not Jim Crow. This is more like Jim Crow's nicer, public health-defending cousin, John Crow. This is all about safety and science because we're the government and we care," said DeBlasio.
Jim Crow, John Crow, Joe Crow -- and then I remembered that Slow Joe himself had recently come out with his own new, more transmissible Jim Crow variant.
Biden’s bizarre quote has confused a lot of people who assumed that Jim Crow and Jim Eagle were two people. However, this isn’t the case.
Jim Eagle isn’t actually a real person. Joe Biden made up the name as a play on words, using different bird species to get his point across.
A crow is a small bird, whereas an eagle is far bigger and more dangerous.
What Biden was trying to say is that what the Republicans are trying to do with their voting legislation is huge, and far worse than that of the pre-Civil Rights Jim Crow era.
If you’re not familiar with what Jim Crow is, it’s a series of laws that enforced racial segregation in the United States.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure most people got that it was a play on words using different bird species -- and I'm also pretty sure that's not how "X makes Y look like Z" analogies work. If you want to express how big and dangerous something is, you might say it makes a lion look like a kitten -- not that it makes a kitten look like a lion!
I suspect that Slow Joe was thinking of eagles not as bigger and more dangerous than crows, but as more patriotic and all-American. He was trying to say that requiring ID to vote was so sinister and horrible that it made a sinister, horrible crow look like a majestic eagle by comparison.
He may also have been thinking of Sam Eagle, of Muppet Show fame, and misremembered the name.
Or maybe he was thinking of Larry Bird. I mean, with Biden who the hell knows?
I've just realized what the Jim Crow Jim Eagle thing reminds me of. This:
Fra. P. said jokingly that everything contained the Truth, if you knew how to find it; and being challenged, proceeded to make good. It is here inserted, not for any value it may have, but to test the reader. If it is thought to be a joke, the reader is one useless kind of fool; if it is thought that Fra. P. believes that the makers of the rimes had any occult intention, he is another useless kind of fool.
-- footnote to Aleister Crowley's exegesis of nursery rhymes
Having predicted Slow Joe Crow, Fox in Socks continues to be applicable to the world of 2020.
Slow Joe Crow, as his name indicates, represents both Joe Biden and the birdemic. Rose is the past tense of rise, so "Crow's rose" represents the reported "rise" of those two things. What fuels this "rise"? A nose hose -- that is, a hose suspended from the long nose of Slow Joe Crow himself. And, since Pinocchio, a long nose only means one thing.
Knox is Trump. Fox is the news media. Do I really have to spell this out?
This is what Fox says after shaming Knox for objecting to the whole nose-hose-rose-grows thing. Nothing like a little distraction. Here is lots of new blue goo now -- or, as we like to call it, "news."
And now I have a new nickname for Google!
Mr. Knox, sir, what a shame, sir!
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No, I don't think Dr. Seuss was a prophet; and no, I don't think this is a coincidence. Writers who deliberately write nonsense, like those who use drugs, partially enter the world of dreaming and open themselves up to all kinds of influences, including subconscious precognition and "Jungian slips." It's the Edgar Cayce effect, named for the famous "sleeping prophet."
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Update:Immediate confirmation from the synchronicity fairies! Literally the very next thing I did after clicking "post" was to open up my phonics book to see what I was teaching today.
A nose, a fox, and a rose in a pot. The "cone on a fox" echoes my earlier association of Slow Joe Crow's nose with a plague doctor's mask. As for "There's a hole in the cone and the robe and the bone," I mentioned that I've been reading Scott Alexander's Unsong, and at the moment I'm in the middle of the kabbalistic analysis of "There's A Hole In My Bucket"; the chapter uses as an epigram Leonard Cohen's line "There is a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in."
One year ago tomorrow, I first identified Slow Joe Biden with Slow Joe Crow and then, a day later, with a bluegrass album called The Crow. Earlier this month, the name Brandon came to be inextricably linked with Slow Joe.
Today, this 4chan thread (linking it to the recent shooting by Alec Baldwin) reminded me of the existence of this movie:
Brandon Lee was of course Bruce Lee's son, and his full name was Brandon Bruce Lee. The Brandon whose name has become attached to Slow Joe is NASCAR driver Brandon L. Brown. I haven't been able to track down his middle name -- could it be Lee? At any rate, the two names are highly similar: Brandon B. L. and Brandon L. B.
Here's a bit from the screenplay for The Crow. "Eric" is the Brandon Lee character.
Here come Lead SWAT and his Merry MEN.
MOVING ANGLE - WITH ERIC - ADJACENT ROOFTOP
Eric runs for it. Half a story higher. He hits the wall and skitters up, gripping tiny cracks in the brickwork.
ANGLE - RESUMING MEN ON FRONT SHOWTIME FIRE ESCAPE.
Lead SWAT hesitates -- because of what he sees.
LEAD SWAT
Holy shit, it's spiderman.
He tries to pull a bead and fires too late.
LEAD SWAT (CONT'D)
What're you boy scouts staring at!
Let's go! Let's go! Let's go!
To be fair, just about every movie ever made probably includes the phrase "Let's go!" somewhere in the script -- but I was intrigued by the strange stage direction (or whatever it's called in movies) inexplicably referring to a SWAT team with the Robin Hood term "Merry Men." I have previously connected Robin Hood both with Slow Joe (middle name Robinette, two sons named Hunter and Bow) and with the Crow (Russell Crowe played Robin Hood).
This is Steve Martin's 2009 bluegrass album The Crow. The cover features a banjo-playing crow, with headgear distinctly reminiscent of Slow Joe Crow or a plague doctor. The back cover reveals that the crow is secretly controlled by hidden machinery under the table.
Incidentally, Martin's cover art also syncs nicely with my recent post (at The Magician's Table) on Etteilla's version of the Magician card:
Notice the hat of the figure on the table. Also notice that the card's name is Maladie -- "sickness" -- tying in with the plague-doctor/birdemic angle.
(I don't know why the synchronicity fairies are feeding me all this material on a man doomed to become irrelevant in two weeks' time, but who am I to kick against the pics?)
An email correspondent of mine brought it to my attention some weeks ago that the first of the daily Mass readings for December 14, 2020 (the day the electoral college votes in the U.S.) is from Numbers 24, the story of Balaam being called upon to curse the Israelites but blessing them instead -- the implication being that, if the synchroncity fairies have anything to do with it, the electoral college might similarly "disappoint."
Following the link from the Mass readings website, I read the chapter in the Douay-Rheims version, a translation with which I am not at all familiar. (Mormons are King James readers.) The reading is only vv. 2-7, 15-17a, but I quote some of the context as well.
[1] And when Balaam saw that it pleased the Lord that he should bless Israel. he went not as he had gone before, to seek divination: but setting his face towards the desert,
[2] And lifting up his eyes, he saw Israel abiding in their tents by their tribes: and the spirit of God rushing upon him,
[3] He took up his parable and said: Balaam the son of Beor hath said: The man hath said, whose eye ire stopped up:
[4] The hearer of the words of God hath said, he that hath beheld the vision of the Almighty, he that falleth, and so his eyes are opened:
[5] How beautiful are thy tabernacles, O Jacob, and thy tents, O Israel!
[6] As woody valleys, as watered gardens near the rivers, as tabernacles which the Lord hath pitched, as cedars by the waterside.
[7] Water shall flow out of his bucket, and his seed shall be in many waters. For Agag his king shall be removed, and his kingdom shall be taken awry.
[8] God hath brought him out of Egypt, whose strength is like to the rhinoceros. They shall devour the nations that are his enemies, and break their bones, and pierce them with arrows.
[9] Lying down he hath slept as a lion, and as a lioness, whom none shall dare to rouse. He that blesseth thee, shall also himself be blessed: he that curseth thee shall be reckoned accursed.
[10] And Balac being angry against Balaam, clapped his hands together and said: I called thee to curse my enemies, and thou on the contrary hast blessed them three times.
[11] Return to thy place. I had determined indeed greatly to honour thee, but the Lord hath deprived thee of the honour designed for thee.
Why have I highlighted the bit about the rhinoceros? It caught my eye partly because of its unfamiliarity -- the King James has unicorn, and I believe the animal intended by the author was the aurochs -- but also because rhinoceroses had been on my mind recently for other reasons.
My recent Robin Hood post begins with a simplification of my actual train of thought. I said the story of Samson and the fiery foxes made me think of the brower Firefox, which in turn made me think of a fox firing an arrow. In fact, I got as far as Firefox and then got stuck. The sync fairies had to bring the Disney Robin Hood movie to my mind by other means.
I was thinking about songs that presage 2020 -- for example, the Beach Boys song "Time To Get Alone," from the 1968 album 20/20, featuring the refrain "Away from the people / And safe from the people." One of the songs I thought of was the 2005 They Might Be Giants song "I Never Go To Work" ("On Monday, I never go to work / On Tuesday, I stay at home . . ."). Besides the obvious 2020 theme of staying home and not going to work, it's also about practicing the trumpet every day and thus connects to Trump. The music video shows the main character staying home and practicing the trumpet in defiance of his boss, who is a rhinoceros.
This made me think of the "rhino guards" in the Disney Robin Hood film, and it was only then that I made the connection between Firefox and a fox firing an arrow.
I haven't seen that movie since I was tiny, but those rhino guards have stuck with me -- so much so that, the first time I saw a red turtle dove, its strange combination of gray and pink made me think of them.
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RINO is a widely understood acronym for Republican in Name Only -- used by members of that party as a pejorative for fellow party members with whom they disagree. It predates the Trump era, and has even been applied by the GOP establishment to Trump himself, but it is currently used most often by Trump and his supporters with reference to the anti-Trump wing of the party.
The acronym is an apt one because the rhinoceros, though superficially resembling an elephant, in fact belongs to the same order of mammals (Perissodactyla) as the donkey.
Rhinoceros means "nose-horn" in Greek -- so the abbreviated form rhino is literally just "nose." (The omission of the holy letter H is also significant!) This suggests an additional meaning for the line "Fox sews hose on Slow Joe Crow's nose."
Remember what the Grinch did when he needed a reindeer? He used some thread to attach a big horn to the top of his dog's head.
Well, by the same logic, how would you "make" an elephant? By sewing a hose to some other animal's nose, of course. As discussed before, Fox is the news media and Slow Joe is Slow Joe. "Slow Joe Crow's nose" means nominal Republicans (RINO = rhino = nose) who are in fact on Slow Joe's side rather than Trump's. (A trump is a horn. Rhino is rhinoceros with the part meaning "horn" removed.) The media sews a hose to their nose (yes, the word nose is doing double duty here), presenting them as "real" Republicans.
Having just recently connected Fox in Socks with Men in Tights, I realize that the word hose can also mean "hosiery" -- tights, socks, and such.
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Note: The TMBG video ends with the rhino boss agreeing to play the trumpet in spite of himself. Make of that what you will.
Slow Joe is still being compared to a banjo player, one who is being secretly controlled by a hidden mechanism.
Asked an unchallenging question about 12-year-olds and vaccination, he drifted off in the middle of a sentence, and, as he so often does, looked down, got that Deliverance banjo player look on his face, and appeared to be listening to something in his earpiece, and then strung together a sequence of words that were not grammatically related to the rest of the sentence, but which, on their own, were coherent. As if repeating what he just heard.
This might be a good time to review my October 2020 post "Slow Joe Crow on the banjo," featuring His Joeness as a machine-operated banjo-pickin' corvid plague doctor under the control of a magician called either Steve ("crown," stephanos being the Greek equivalent of the Latin corona) or Maladie ("sickness").
Back in 2020, Joe and Bye were closely associated.
At the time, this bumper sticker meant that "Don" was not the stickee's president and needed to be ousted by "Byedon." Now, the most natural reading is, "Biden: Not my president," respelled so as to suggest Bye! (Joe!), and the -don ending is as likely to make one think of Brandon as of Trump, who has never really gone by Don anyway.
In other onomastic news, Trump has a new, not-very-catchy nickname for Mitch McConnell (etymologically a "Big Bad Wolf" name, incidentally).
As Margaret Hatmann says in the Intelligencer article, this is a big step down from Crooked Hillary, Lyin' Ted, and Sleepy Joe, and it flies in the face of the universally accepted fact that McConnell resembles a turtle, not a crow. Why the need for a corvid nickname, even one that doesn't really fit? It fits with my own nickname for Biden, Slow Joe Crow. Merrick Garland is part of the same pattern: the ancient Greek word for "wreath, garland" is κορώνη (the source of the Latin corona). The ancient Greek word for "crow"? Also κορώνη.
"Old crow" in Chinese is 老鴉 (lǎoyā) -- which is pronounced exactly the same as 老鴨 (lǎoyā), literally "old duck," but also the Chinese name for Donald Duck -- 唐老鴨 (Táng Lǎoyā), literally "Don Old Duck," the 唐 (Táng) character being the same one used to transliterate the first syllable of the name Donald. Thus is the Donald himself connected with the idea of an "old crow."
S. K. Orr recently posted a link to a particularly inspired Tucker Carlson monologue, under the heading "I, Too, Want To Encourage Brandon To Go." This rephrasing of the "Let's go, Brandon!" slogan made me think of the Dr. Seuss classic Marvin K. Mooney, Will You Please Go Now? -- and of the time-honored tradition of replacing the title character with the president of the United States.
"Marvin" put in an appearance in my recent Gene Hackman dream, in which Hackman plays a father interacting with his son in a series of short video clips. At first the son is called "Danny," and the Hackman character is angry (expressing that anger by means of minced oaths like "Gosh darn it!"); later, the son becomes "Marvin," and Hackman's tone changes to one of kind reassurance.
In my original post on the dream, I asked "Why Gene Hackman?" and offered some speculations, but I did not consider the two names of his "son."
When I hear the name Danny, the first association I make is with the song "Danny Boy," which begins thus:
O Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen and down the mountainside
The summer's gone and all the roses falling
'Tis you, 'tis you must go, and I must bide
So Danny and Marvin have this in common, that they must go. (After which "Danny Boy" stops just one consonant short of name-checking Slow Joe!)
In my 2009 post "The old savanna calling," I discuss "Danny Boy" (as modified by the Beatles) in connection with 9/11 prophecies. I link it both to the lion and to the 18th Tarot trump, the Moon. In the Seuss book, Marvin's last name is Mooney, and "by lion's tail" is suggested as one of the many ways in which he may "go." This even makes it onto the cover of some editions.
The "Let's go, Brandon!" phenomenon began on October 2, 2021. In the "Ripple" Tarot spread, October 2021 is represented by a modified version of the Moon card. Where the traditional Tarot card features two dogs, or a dog and a wolf, the "Ripple" version replaces them with (Chinese-style) lions.
As for the name Brandon itself, it apparently derives from a Celtic root meaning "crow, raven" (Slow Joe Crow). There is also the etymologically unrelated French word brandon, meaning a flaming torch, or a twist of straw or paper used to start a fire. This ties in with my "spontaneous human combustion" premonition, and with a dream in which Slow Joe is called "the Human Torch." There's also this interesting figurative meaning:
Personne, chose ou événement qui provoque des conflits, des querelles. Brandon de discorde, brandon de guerre, de guerre civile. Jeter le brandon de la discorde parmi les citoyens. Cet écrit est un brandon de guerre civile.
(In case your French is even worse than mine, a brandon can be a person or thing that provokes conflict, and the bolded phrase means "a brandon of civil war.")
Finally, I note that "Let's go, Brandon!" has become a way to curse without cursing, a way of implying a particular vulgar word without actually saying it. This ties in with the "Gosh darn it!" minced oaths of my Hackman dream.
My last post ended with Samson tying firebrands to the tails of foxes, which made me think of the browser Firefox. And this made me think of the other meaning of the word fire.
And that's when I realized that tights are a kind of socks.
I had previously connected Fox in Socks with Joe Biden (see my posts Slow Joe Crow and Lots of new blue goo now), so you can well imagine that it came as something of a shock to suddenly realize that not only is Biden's middle name Robinette, but his two sons are called Beau and Hunter.
Well, shoot! What are the chances of a bull's-eye like that?
All three Biden men are alumni of Archmere Academy. The school's colors are deep ("lincoln"?) green and white, and the school newspaper is called The Green Arch.
Archmere is a Catholic school, and the Bidens are nominally Catholic -- "Mary men," you might say.
Biden's 2020 campaign logo was notable for omitting the letter E, replacing it with speed lines suggesting that the D had zoomed in from somewhere else.
And perhaps Biden thinks of himself as a Robin Hood figure: He knows he's stealing, but he also thinks he's a hero for doing so. I'm referring to the election, of course, but the "Robin Hood" project of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor is also something one associates with the Left.
I have connected Fox in Socks with the Red Sun and with Betelgeuse -- which, it occurred to me, is connected with archery because it is in the constellation Orion the Hunter. It turns out, though, that Orion isn't actually an archer; the part of the constellation that looks like a bow is "officially" either a shield or a lion.
Or both!
However, running a Google image search for betelgeuse archer did turn this up -- from, of all places, the white nationalist site Stormfront.
It's a comment on a thread called "Giant star Betelgeuse (or 'Beetlejuice') is dimming & changing shape." (I have no idea why this astronomical topic was being discussed on a political "hate" site; there is nothing about politics or race or anything in the entire thread.) The comment, posted on February 19 of this year, reads: "If Betelgeuse explodes tomorrow it only means it actually exploded on a day 650 years ago, during the age when England still fought with bows and arrows" -- with, in case the meaning were not clear, a very large picture of some Englishmen doing just that.
It seems a strange thing to zero in on. The point is simply that Betelgeuse is very far away (642.5 light years) and that anything we observe happening to Betelgeuse actually happened hundreds of years ago. Any historical figure or event or outdated technology would have served to make the point, but the poster chose to focus on archery, and specifically archery in England. The 14th century is, of course, around the time the Robin Hood legend began to become popular.
Bringing this all back to the Sun card, note that Robin Hood is classically depicted -- in the Disney film and Men in Tights, for example -- with a large, often red, feather in his cap. The rider on the white horse on the Rider-Waite card wears the same ornament.
Rider, wait!
I have connected this rider with the first horseman of the Apocalypse: "And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer" (Revelation 6:2).
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Note added: I'm not sure how I could possibly have missed this before! I've just connected the rider on the white horse with Robin Hood, in part because of the red feather he wears. In my post Red crows of the Sun, I connected that feather with what it says on the tin: legendary red crows associated with the Sun in Chinese folklore. How could it have escaped my notice that there is a Robin Hood movie in which Hood rides a white horse and is played by an actor whose name literally means Red Crow?
Russell means "red." Crowe means "crow." This isn't just a bull's-eye; this is splitting an arrow on the bull's-eye!
(Incidentally, it's really possible to do that. The famed "Robin Hood shot" has been duplicated three times by a kid from South Dakota with the ridiculously appropriate name Mike Merriman.)
When, in late October of this year, I posted on how the Rider-Waite Tarot accurately predicts the results of every U.S. presidential election from 2000 to 2020, it didn't take much chutzpah to declare Trump the prophesied winner of this year's race. Trump winning in a landslide seemed the only possible result, and I dismissed Biden as a soon-to-be-forgotten Walter Mondale figure. Even when the synchronicity fairies kept stubbornly bringing Biden to my attention (via Jay-Z, Dr. Seuss, Steve Martin, and Clickhole), I just couldn't take him seriously as a potential winner. ("I don't know why the synchronicity fairies are feeding me all this material on a man doomed to become irrelevant in two weeks' time," I wrote on October 25, "but who am I to kick against the pics?")
Now that the Media -- supported by their political arm, the Democratic Party -- have "officially" called the race for Biden, I'm going to stick my neck out and double down on my prediction. The Tarot has been 100% accurate in stating the winners of every other presidential election this century -- with the 0th trump predicting the winner in '00, the 4th trump the winner in '04, and so on -- and the 20th trump unambiguously says Trump. I stake my reputation as an interpreter of the Tarot on this prediction. If Trump doesn't win in the end, the Tarot is not what I think it is.
Let's go over what I mean when I say that. For those who don't know it, this is the 20th trump in the Major Arcana, called The Judgement.
1. Did you know that the word trump only occurs twice in the entire King James Bible? Both instances refer to the scene portrayed on this card.
In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed (1 Corinthians 15:52).
For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: (1 Thessalonians 4:16).
An aside: Obviously, the name Biden as such does not occur in the Bible -- but if we ignore spaces, it does: "Thou sayest, Lo, thou hast smitten the Edomites; and thine heart lifteth thee up to boast: abide now at home; why shouldest thou meddle to thine hurt, that thou shouldest fall, even thou, and Judah with thee?" (2 Chronicles 25:19). This seems to allude to Basement Biden's "sheltering in place" and to prophesy his fall after boasting that he has smitten the Edomites. (Edom means "red" in Hebrew, so the Edomites are the Republicans -- and I suppose everyone knows to which modern people the name Judah refers. Judah is of course also the same name as Judas.)
(An even-more-tangential aside: Looking for other 2020 names in the Bible led me to Deuteronomy 14:7, which reads, "Nevertheless these ye shall not eat of them that chew the cud, or of them that divide the cloven hoof; as the camel, and the hare, and the coney: for they chew the cud, but divide not the hoof; therefore they are unclean unto you." The camel, the hare, and the coney. This seems to connect Kamala Harris with another woman who came to prominence in 2020, Amy Coney Barrett, and to pronounce them both unclean. Does this presage some future treachery from ACB?)
2. The trump has a flag attached to it. Trump was born on June 14 -- Flag Day.
3. The flag has a big red cross on it. Red is the Republican color, and the cross resembles T for Trump. This is in fact St. George's flag, signifying victory over the dragon.
4. The angel has a full head of blond hair, with a touch of orange.
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What are we to make of the scene on the lower half of the card, which shows the dead rising from coffins which appear to be floating in the water? A few thoughts:
They could represent Trump voters -- defeated, "dead," and then with their fortunes unexpectedly reversed. The water could represent the Trump's claim that lots of Trump ballots were dumped in rivers.
Alternatively, they could represent actual dead people -- who, as we know, voted in record numbers in 2020! The problem with this is that they appear to be cheering for Trump, when in fact corpses appear to have voted overwhelmingly for Biden.
But perhaps they're cheering because they think they've won -- gotten rid of Trump. He's up in heaven, an angel, dead. Little do they realize that the day of reckoning is coming.
And what's that in the background? Mountains -- or an approaching tsunami?
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What about the prophecy -- which, believe it or not, I also take seriously -- that Trump will invite "Joe Camel" (Joe and Kamala) to the White House? I don't know what to make of that yet, but here's my best guess: The recounts and lawsuits ("Sue sews Slow Joe Crow's clothes," i.e. suits) and everything will not be completed by January 20, Biden will be sworn in, and Trump will peacefully "invite him to the White House." Shortly thereafter, the election results will be overturned by the Supreme Court, and Trump will be restored.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it. The highway is for gamblers. If I end up being wrong, I will, as they say, eat crow.
So, the pun "Death Jab for Cutie" popped into my head in connection with the pecks. I know nothing about the band Death Cab for Cutie -- only that there is a band with that name -- so I ran an image search for their album covers. Lo and behold . . .
While we're on the subject of musical prophecy, there's also the 2004 song "We're All In This Together," from the self-titled debut album of Old Crow Medicine Show. Corvids and medicine! Later a different song (or several different songs?) with that same title would be promoted as the "birdemic anthem."
Is Lin Wood still around? I haven't heard anything about him for a spell.
Back in December, I identified Lin Wood as the "alligator" in "The Battle of New Orleans," because he is an allegator (a maker of allegations), and because he is widely perceived to have "lost his mind." (Why did he lose his mind? Just as in the song, they filled his head with cannonballs. Cannon = QAnon, and balls = a colloquialism meaning either "rubbish" or "chutzpah.")
I have also noted that his name is the equivalent of "Wood Wood," because the Chinese surname Lin (林) means "wood, forest." In Mr. Wood's case, "Lin" is short for Lincoln -- which brings us back to wood by way of Lincoln Logs (a close cousin to Tinkertoys!). In fact, his name, Lincoln Wood, basically is Lincoln Logs.
Recent synchronicities involving doubled words and names -- Tintin, 50/50, Snow Snow, Never Never, Nix Nix -- brought "Wood Wood" back to mind, and I realized that "wooden" alligators are featured in Prisoners of the Sun.
The "trunks" that are not really trunks also makes me think of the old theme of fake elephant trunks discussed here: Fox sewing a hose on Slow Joe Crow's nose, and both Calvin and Ernie putting socks on their ears and noses. Calvin's purpose in so doing is to be "an elephant," while Ernie does it as part of a guessing game. The punchline of the Bert and Ernie sketch is the word "neck." Bert has been tricked into guessing "nose" when in fact the answer is "neck." You know what else neck means? Here's part of a Wikipedia disambiguation page:
Remember that nihhus, the Old High German cognate of nix and neck, also means "crocodile." Bert thought, because of the fake "trunk" Ernie was wearing, that he was thinking of the word nose -- but in fact he was thinking of neck. In Prisoners of the Sun, Tintin thinks he sees "trunks," but in fact they are those close cousins of the neck or nihhus -- alligators!
I suppose these free-association synchronicity posts of mine could themselves be called "linkin' logs," couldn't they?
Back in January, one of my readers contacted me to say that he had been encountering seemingly significant sequences of fives (55, 555, 5555, etc.) for years and asked if I had any idea as to what it might mean. Since then, we've been corresponding on and off, often but not exclusively about 5-related synchronicities.
Today my wife told me she had ordered five pairs of socks for me and that I needed to pick them up at the shop and pay for them. When I asked how much, she said, "I don't remember, 500-something." When I went to the shop, I found that the total was exactly $555.
Why is fox equal to 666? It comes from taking the system of Greek and Hebrew numerals, on which gematria is based, and applying it to English. The first nine letters have values from 1 to 9, the next nine are numbered from 10 to 90, and the remaining letters are assigned to the hundreds.
So I gave Fox in Socks a quick reread to see if anything new jumped out at me. Well, yes -- taking "new" and "jump out" quite literally.
This caught my attention because I had just got some new socks. Only later, after posting the gematria table above to show the reader how fox = 666, did I realize that by the same rules, new = 555.
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Incidentally, the Greek-numeral equivalent of FOX is ϜΞΧ. Replacing O with Ξ (xi, three horizontal lines) was discussed in my old post, "Jay-Z in 2009 presages Biden and 2020." It also means Biden was adding the letter xi to his name in his logos, paralleling the nickname Xiden, used by his critics to suggest that he is a pawn of China.
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Note: My title means (roughly) "Yes, that's just it!" in Spanish. It's pronounced S-O-C-K-S.
