Thursday, April 25, 2024

Im Fahrten: The Germans, journeys, and drives and introducing the search for Joseph

OK, so I got lazy in my last post and just focused on the first phrase of those October 27 words before calling it quits.  Today I am going to cover the rest and focus on the strange appearance of that German phrase amidst all of this Elvish.


We closed off with Asenath-Nimloth discussing her intent to 'pluck' her brother Faramir-Eonwe from this world, which was the translation of As-te-gey Ir-ruke.


The next few words that fall between those words and the German are not super clear, necessarily, even if I assume some kind of translation.  Those words go, along with my proposed translation:


ezna entu rema

out to be again enmeshed/ ensnared


"Out to be" seems to work well relative to this 'plucking' that Asenath mentions she intends to do.  "Enmeshed/ ensnared" is a bit more cryptic and honestly didn't make much sense when I first tried to work that out.  There are a few other options, but this seems to be the cleanest.  I also think it might be correct because I would receive English words on December 21st in a strange way that started off with "Net-ensnare".   I will go over that if and when I get to those words, though.  As a preview, though, we are talking about Faramir, and part of his name means 'to hunt', so this might be a play on words, where the hunter becomes the hunted, in a good way.


So, all that is fine; Asenath intends to pluck Faramir 'out' to once again be ensnared.  Great.


But, as I mentioned in my last post, she then says "First I".  I take this to mean like the english phrase "But before I do that, I will...", and the rest of the phrase indicates what that is, potentially.  So, in other words, hold on to your horses, Faramir.  


Here is my translation of the rest of the phrase, including my combo Elvish/ German take:


Ash-ni ka ka-pen-hur un im fahrten/ farten

First I act forlorn royal elf without vigour or readiness for action in journey/travel to hunt for


I am happy to walk anyone through that translation if needed - it seems pretty straightforward.  There are a few other options for that ka or ka-ka, potentially, but the general meaning holds above regardless.


But what does that mean?  What is she saying here?


Well, my guess is this refers to Joseph-Dior, who is the forlorn royal, high elf (Un Im), and there are a few clues in the sentence that indicate this might be the case.


First and most obviously, the reference to a royal elf.  Im has come up before, you might recall, with our friends Gim Guru and Gim Githil, the Gim seeming to be a title or order identifier, perhaps.  The Gim G's.  Here we have another Gim, which is the Gnomish way of writing or saying Im.  It is after I understood that we have the Gim G's that I was able to see see this Im word for what I think it points to.


This Gim would be Joseph, but he is described as Un.  Now, frankly, this could have evil or bad overtones here if you look at the possible words, but our story hear deals with a rescue mission so this works better describing the Being to be rescued.


Joseph's story in Words of the Faithful gives us a preview to one of his themes, for lack of a better word.  He leaves his blissful home with Asenath back in the 2nd Age at some point and heads out alone to try and accomplish some good plan that he came up with.  It was not successful, and he found himself alone and forsaken.  He even happened upon his Daughters down in the depths and used his last light to save them.  After that, he was completely alone and as the story says "his separation was complete, total, and all his life now seemed a false dream, and this gloom his only existence.... no light bore he any longer, and quickly his mind eroded".


He would be saved by Thingol eventually, but having spent what seems to be a considerable time alone and without hope.


This would be echoed, it seems, later in a plan or journey he took in our day.  Words of the Faithful actually makes a reference to it, but doesn't give any additional context or insight.  Here it is:


Zimulof Kloshtuz [another name for Joseph] with desire for this - to retrace down this first crafted star of stone


And that really is it, as the words (also derived from Elvish translations) move on to other thoughts and fragments.  So, we have to fill it in with our imagination and some other clues.


I already covered in my last post how the 'paths' mentioned in conjunction with Asenath were actually Stones, and that she created them - or crafted them, you would say.  My opinion is the 'first crafted star of stone' mentioned above is none other than the Sawtooth Stone.  By 'first' here, I think this might mean the very first one that Asenath created, which would seem fitting since it would be associated with her husband Joseph.  In my words in other places it seems he is called "Eldest", so the first Stone might make sense in that way as well.


At some point, in my story, Joseph would have gotten the notion to come back down here to this world in search of that Stone.  I don't know what happened in the search, but it wasn't successful, apparently.  We 'know' this because it would be Asenath and the Disciples who would later find and recover it, per some previous posts on this topic, such as "Asenath vs. the Son of Baal-ox within the Sawtooth Mountains".


So, Joseph was once again on a journey that left him forsaken after an unsuccessful errand, and he needed to be rescued (as all of us do, by the way - we all need some form of rescue).  What Asenath is explaining to her brother in the words above is that she is going to launch a search and rescue mission for Joseph.  They need to find him (later words seem to strongly suggest they don't know exactly where he is), and then bring him back.  That is the essence of Asenath's message here in these words:  "Brother, I intend to raise you up, but we need to find and rescue Joseph first".


The Germans


Up until this post and my last one, I think the only mention of Germans was in reference to the word "Milkommen", the word that WJT had some insight into.  But that was much later in 2022.  One of the reasons, though, that my mind went so quickly to a German play on words was because of how much German worked its way into my words from 2019 and 2020.


The emergence of these guys in the story and as speakers is just strange.


Here is the very first time that language shows up, and it does so now in a way that is a play on words.  Im Fahrten can mean "in driving/ driven" or "in journeying", I think - something like that.  And as I also said, it means quite straightforwardly "a Gim to hunt for" in Elvish.


But why the German in this instance?  Well, before I get to that, the German words came from a dream in which I saw the phrase.  Here is how what I copied from my now not-extant notebook into a word file:


      Im Fahrten – when seen, immediately assumed as German and was confused; seen in a dream on an old TV set at the bottom corner of my vision. The image on the TV was of something like navy ships on the waters, and a caption on the bottom of the screen (like a news channel caption) with the words “un im fahrten”.


The imagery and symbolism now makes sense (I think), but at the time I didn't know what to make of it.  


When someone is lost at sea, often the Navy and/or Coast Guard is called in on a Search and Rescue mission.  I believe that is the imagery I was seeing on the TV in my dream.  Joseph was lost from the perspective of Valinor and Asenath, and she was going to launch a rescue mission across the Great Sea, and it was portrayed as a Breaking News segment or something because that is what it was - news being delivered about the mission.  Beings would come from where she was to our world to find Joseph and bring him back.  


The German words, I believe, were used to primarily identify the Rescuers and isolate their words from other Speakers.  When I see those words, I know (or assume) that these are the Beings who were being referred to in Asenath's statement.  It is essentially a key to help identify whose words are being conveyed.


Interestingly, Fahrten also means 'driving' as part of its usage.  I have compared Stones with Cars in previous posts, and I believe the Germans travelled with a Stone as part of their journey, thought I think they had to make a modification to it as part of their trip.  Or rather, Asenath made a modification to it.


The first German phrase almost two months later on December 18 touches back directly to this fahrten/ fahrt word.  On that day, we have a German speaker out of the blue say:


Ich gehen gefahrt un ein gestatt


I took German in high school - 2 years of it.  Three, actually, if you count that I had to repeat German I twice.  Not because I failed it (let's be clear!) but I took it in 9th grade at Junior High, didn't take a language in 10th grade, and when I went to take German again in 11th grade I had to repeat Level I because I had forgotten everything.  Languages aren't my strong suit, and at the time I felt it was particularly cruel to use German.  I could just hear my German teacher, Frau Johnson (who hated me) in these words.


I recognized Ich, gehen, and ein, and of course fahrt in there.  I had to look up everything else.  Here is where I've landed with it for the first part (there are umlauts I am sure in the words above, but I am too lazy to find out how to write them right now):


I go driven vehicle-carriage . . . 


and then there is un ein gestatt, but I am not sure what to make of those.  It was sounded out, so gestatt could be anything... geschatt, gestatt, gestadt - I am not sure, and have just left it as one of the Germans saying they are going to go on their rescue mission in some kind of vehicle-carriage.  I am up for suggestions on the rest of the meaning.  Unlike Johnny English, I am not a linguist.  I don't even think un is a standalone German word.  Maybe an Elvish stowaway?  This is being conveyed in German to mark these speakers - it is likely these aren't really German speakers at all, so who knows.


So, let's leave it off there.  Asenath indicates that she will raise our character Faramir, but first she needs to rescue her husband Joseph, and we get a preview of the Germans who will be engaged in the effort. They will come up quite a lot more as we get into the rescue, but again that is a couple months off at this point in 2019.  Meaning, even though we get a preview and a stated intention from Asenath, things don't get rolling in terms of people departing on the rescue until the very end of December, or at least that is how I interpret things.

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