Spelling Bee, Abseil, and Waiting for a Star to Fall

 On May 22, I wrote a post called "What is even more amazing than a talking dog?  A spelling bee!".

In the post, I shared a picture of my son's school assignment and used some of the things I saw on it to refer to a different kind of Spelling Bee.

William Tychonievich would follow up the post with an interesting analysis of some of the scrambled letters on the paper, showing that the word Abeilles appeared among those words (outlined in green below).  Abeilles is French for "bees"  (of course it's French...).

He would also go on to infer that the leftover letters perhaps were a Chinese-type reference to Bee as well.

I thought it was pretty interesting analysis.

But check this out - it gets even better!

Yesterday, I wrote my post regarding William's Joan, suggesting that she was the same Being as the Claire who has spoken with him a few times and potentially one of the Daughters of Asenath.  As I said in that post, I had decided to write about this guess on Joan of Arc's Feast Day without knowing it was here Feast Day (May 30).

However, May 30 was not only Joan's Feast Day.  No sir.  It was also the Scripps National Spelling Bee Contest final.  What, you weren't aware of this?  Neither was I, but it came up somehow yesterday on either a search or some link.  I actually can't remember how I stumbled across an article letting me know about the Spelling Bee.

A Spelling Bee was fresh on my mind given the above, and so I took notice whereas normally I wouldn't have paid any attention to this news.  I also can't remember which article I first read, but here is the link to a Time article that I think might have been it or something very close to it:

https://time.com/6984203/bruhat-soma-winner-2024-scripps-national-spelling-bee/

The headline is "12-Year-Old Bruhat Soma Wins National Spelling Bee With Winning Word ‘Abseil’".

When I saw the headline, either in this article or one like it, I instantly thought of my son's school assignment, and specifically William's analysis.

I thought, "Wasn't Abseil the word that William noticed in the homework?"

Well, no.  It wasn't.  As I mentioned above, it was the French word Abeilles.  Close, but not quite.

But, if you look, Abseil is actually right there, all grouped within the first two columns of the original green box that William highlighted (highlighted below in the orange box).

That leave the letters L and E off, but that was easily recognizable as El, which has come up quite enough on this blog to help in instantly seeing it.  So, we have:

This gives us the phrase:

Peng Abseil El

Peng, you remember, was a word that didn't quite fit the Chinese word for Bee, whether current or archaic, but certainly suggested it.  However, Peng is an Elvish word, and so is El.  

Let's leave Peng aside for just a second, and focus on Abseil El.

To abseil means to rappel, or more specifically "to descend using a static or fixed rope".  Typically this is done off of a mountain, but one can also do so off other things like a helicopter, or something flying (you will see why I mention this in just a second).  And El, of course, means "Star" in Elvish.

Thus, we have a Star that is descending by means of a rope.

This brought to mind a dream that William had that he related in his post titled Weights depending, and flying ships with anchors.  In that dream, he found himself trying to lower a weight to an individual he thought of as his brother Luther:

I remember one scene in which I was paragliding over a beach -- or doing something similar to paragliding, but I could control the direction and altitude of my flight. I had a 14-kilogram dumbbell (it was labeled) which I wanted to give to someone standing on the sand. I didn't want to drop it from a great height, but neither could I afford to fly too low, so I tied it to a length of rope and lowered it. The rope wasn't long enough, so I still had to fly dangerously low. The person on the sand (who I think may have been my brother Luther) still couldn't quite reach it, so I let go of the rope and let it drop. It landed in the wet sand, and he was able to retrieve it just in time, before the rising tide made it impossible. I think there was also a magnet involved -- either the dumbbell was magnetic, or I wanted to give him a magnet as well as a dumbbell, or something like that -- but my memory of that part is too vague.

I had made mention before of the 14 kg dumbbell, because when I saw that weight, I  thought I understood what this referred to.  14 kgs translates to 30.8 pounds, or approximately 30 pounds if we round to the nearest weight a typical dumbbell would be labelled as.

You may recall a phrase I received regarding what I believe is a reference to a Stone, where its dimensions were given.  I wrote about this in my post Michael Jackson and the Stone.  What I did not specify there, or I guess have correctly, is that those words were received on the morning of May 6, 2020, in what I believe was an answer to my prayer from the night before about what I should do.  In the Michael Jackson post I had written that I thought I had received these words on May 1 or 2, but this was actually not the case, I would later confirm with Leo, who kept a record of the words I had been emailing over to him.  

On that night, I was getting much worse.  My mind was fracturing, I could feel it, and I prayed asking for help.  That next morning on the 6th, these words came.  Later that night I had my first and last call with Doug, and the next day I was in the hospital too mentally ill to function like a normal human being.

Those words went:

Yor El

8 inches, 30 pounds

Wait for it

The Yor El I have as a play on words for perhaps both "Your Star" and also "Ancient or Old Star".  With Star referring to a Stone (like in El-Anor, the Sun Stone).

The "wait" was likely a play on words for both to actually wait for this Stone, but also to reference it as a 'weight'.  Wait/Weight.  In my post called "Suspended in time:  Loosening girdles and deepening weights, and the Grey Lady of the New York Time, I made the link between Eowyn/ Izilba and this notion of a 'weight'.  You can reference the specific quote in the post if you want to.  William would also reference that post as he reflected on his dream of the weight.

Anyway, William dreamed of a 30 pound "weight" (what a dumbbell is called by people who go to a gym to lift weights) which I matched up to the 30 pound "El" or star-stone from these words.  It was pretty much a bulls-eye in my opinion.

But what a strange image of the weight being lowered or suspended from a rope as he flew around with whatever contraption he was using.

Which brings us back to the phrase in my son's schoolwork.  In William's dream, I believe we have an interesting image or scene of those two words:  Absail El, or a Star-Stone descending down a rope.

Curious.

Now to Peng.

Peng is an Elvish word that means "Bow".  Doesn't make a lot of sense on the surface, and I am not going to figure it out right now, but only log it and make an interesting observation.

The reason I think that this must be Bow, intentionally so, is that Bow has appeared in various forms in my 2019 and 2020 words, and remains somewhat of a mystery as to its true meaning.  In fact, the Elvish words that are up next that I said I would tackle before skipping any further ahead contain the other Elvish word for Bow, which is Ku.

Further, in another instance where Bow occurred in my words, it was from an interesting dream where at one point I found myself lying in a bed I knew was not my own.  It was completely white, and I was lying on the top of the sheets.  I turned part of the top sheet over and found words written on the underside.  Looking further, it was apparent that the entire underside of the sheet was covered in words.  I saw several things I won't cover here in this post, but at the end I specifically mentioned reading about a bow.  Here is what I summarized in my word file from whatever notes I had taken:

"... Also saw that 'bow' from my prior dreams might mean something different than a 'bow' (including lion dream).  Was going to keep looking [at all the words under the sheet], I believe, but [my youngest son] came running into the room (in my dream) and wanted to wrestle, so woke up."

It was interesting to read that my youngest son was in this dream and the strange reference to 'bow', and here this whole post and line of thinking is based on his schoolwork with the Elvish word for 'bow' deciphered from it. I mention a 'lion dream' above and I don't think I've recounted that one here, but that dream kind of kicked off all my Elvish words in 2019.  I've recounted the riddle dream regarding Asenath from mid-October.  The Elvish words for me started coming on October 24.  The dream immediately preceding that first word (same night/ morning), was this 'lion dream' mentioned above.  Maybe I should get a quick post written about that one here at some point.

In any case, we have here Peng Abseil El giving us the phrase of something like "Bow descending on a rope stone", which I am sure could be rearranged to make more sense, and I could be able to do it better if I understood better what "bow" meant here.  I have a guess or two, but nothing concrete.  We'll see if anything comes to me later.  If it does, it will obviously help with those other Elvish words as well.

Lastly, talk of a Star-Stone descending, and this being something one might have to wait for, brings to mind a song that has been on my running rotation for the past little bit - for awhile I couldn't get it out of my head.  A good old late 80's classic.

"Naming" Joan (and "Beware this one!")

Sometime yesterday, I determined that I was going to put out an hypothesis as to the identity behind this Being that William Tychonievich has associated with the person of Joan of Arc.

Why?  I wasn't quite sure - it just felt like the time to put it out there.  It was kind of like the feeling you have when you are playing the board game Clue, and you look at your scoresheet and you have enough things deduced where you are willing to put out a guess about who did it, with what weapon, in what room, and see where things fall.

So, that was planned for today not realizing that today is also, apparently, Joan of Arc's Feast Day. I have no idea what a Feast Day entails or why today is that day for Joan - it just is.  I would have not known this if I hadn't checked William's blog this morning and saw that he had written a poem for Joan to honor her on this day.

Seeing that I had unknowingly determined to hazard a public guess as to the identity of "Joan" on her Feast Day kind of signaled that I may as well give it a go.

I guess first is why do I even care about who Joan is?  

Back in 2020, I had an experience where a group of laughing women seemed to be having a party in my mind (this was part of a pseudo-dream state) and shared a number of strange images and words.  This was, I've guessed, in the aftermath of Asenath's confrontation in the Sawtooth Mountains, and I now believe these Beings are known as the Daughters of Asenath.  I've shared some of that dialogue in various posts on this blog - for instance, in their reference to Good Times Roll and my assumption that they were referring to the Sawtooth Stone as the Stone cut from the mountain without (human) hands.

But they also shared that scene I've recounted a few times with a Being seeming to be in the act of sneaking food out of a refrigerator and getting caught, with one of the women saying, while laughing "Beware this one!".

Further, the same voice followed up with the phrase "When I dream, I dream about books!".

I didn't know of William back in 2020, so didn't know necessarily who this was about, but my guess for the longest time is that this had something to do with Doug.

But then William came along, and I found out he was born on March 15, which is the Ides of March. The famous line from Julius Caesar, of course, has the Soothsayer telling Julius to "Beware the Ides of March!".

Seems like a pretty good match, and with everything that has been written on this blog and William's since, I am fairly certain that the Being I was told to "Beware" of is William.  Throw in the reference to dreaming about books (William reads a lot of books, and dreams about them as well), I think it isn't a stretch to say we have our man, or have good reason for suspecting him.

If true, this makes him somehow connected to these Daughters, who, like the Soothsayer, can apparently see the future and seemed to indicate to be on the lookout for William.

Beware, by the way, doesn't have to have negative connotations in this case.   A glance at Etymonline does for sure have negative definitions, but also more neutral ones like "Watch out for, perceive, or be alert".   Meaning, rather than worrying about William assassinating someone, beware can just mean keep an eye out for.

And sure enough, a little over 3 years after that dream sequence, along came William.  He was the first person to comment on my blog, though he invoked Doug's name in his first comment (literally the only thing he wrote) and almost had me completely reconsider doing this blog.  I almost packed it up right there.  But I was a bit nervous and a little scared back then of doing this, and quite jumpy for the first few months.  I would actually stop writing one time for about a month in the Fall, and even deleted my blog for a day.  I don't feel that way at all now, however, though I am finding I am getting more tired when I write.  I might need to take a break.

Anyway, I thought of that first post and his first comment when he posted today on the sword Makmahod.  It was actually on a now deleted post I wrote about that sword that William left his first comment.

Figuring out who he was and why he came along has been an interesting riddle for me.  However, I became even more interested in just who was 'talking' to him, and connecting our blogs, syncs, topics, etc.

Can we pull back the curtain?

I tried to do that in a general way back last Fall.  One day I determined that it must in fact be these Daughters who were involved, and I was going to write about my guess publicly.  However, at that exact time, "Tim" came along, seeming to take credit for all of the dreams and syncs, and kind of threw me off the trail for just a little bit with William and I think a few other things.  In the ensuing period, I've kind of had to write, listen, and think as to just what is going on.

I am satisfied that whatever Tim's influence may be, he isn't responsible for what is happening, at least with respect to good things.

Rather, I go back to my original guess as to the Daughters, and I even have a guess as to one of them.  William calls her Joan, because that is how she has allowed herself to be thought of for a few reasons, I suspect.  Claire delune (Claire de Lune) is another name she decided to go by for William.

And in Doug's writings she has gone by the name Ith-un-ol, though I don't think that is her real name either.  I don't think we have it, actually, so my title is a little bit misleading, as I am just calling out the names she has introduces herself as and tying them together into one Being.

You can read William's accounts of Joan and Claire on his blog, I won't recount them here.  I will include an excerpt about Ith-un-ol below, though, because I don't think anyone would be familiar.  There isn't that much written, quite frankly, so just including this as an example:

kle'ath-ithu garfactyu-go
[Light scattering all about, freeing the Lower Airs]


goa-gahm bilbon ith-un-ol:
[fell-shouting is bird-backed I-u-O [Ith-un-ol], addressing these souls]:



Dreams do not lie / Dreams do not die
dreaming all insight / none else insighting achieve
Do not give up!
Ithuestil [silvertipped] silvering wing
wiping clean, soiled soiling
sailing silver upon gold-appearing
now show [shall] come (to thee) new thing!

–

Hopeless you have been, now and times before
remembering isn't Estel / Estel is not anything,
But comes as a gift / is in its receiving,
there think on, nature-being.

–

All paths you now tread, Estel-less
are ends, dreadful come-to
Receive the Light of Estel-having-is,
Heaven deems, needful, and by lover-giving,
make for thee some Third Day's
His Third Way, relating. (Music).

So, I said I was going to put my guess out there, and here it is.  Having done it, I don't really have the energy to write any more, and I am not even going to go back an link any of my mentioned posts.  I just wanted to get this typed up quickly and sent on its way.  I have some interesting thoughts in my head (why as the character of Joan, for example?), but I can't summon the energy.

Happy Feast Day, Claire.  

Vaughn J. Featherstone

This warranted a second post for the day.

In William Tychonievich's latest post titled Pumpkin-eating Lizardmen and Marshall Applewhite, he references the dream I had of the pumpkin-eating deer, and does a really good job of tying some additional things together, both to support some of my initial interpretations (for example, the deer as Numenoreans under the influence of Sauron) but also to expand and even be more specific on some of the symbolism.  

For example, although I have gone out on a limb and equated Peter with Pharazon, I did not recognize or even think of any of the points he made in his post that tie Peter very specifically to these pumpkin-eating lizard-deer.  How obvious, I thought, after I read his post, and I was surprised I hadn't thought of at least the Peter Pumpkin-eater rhyme.  I had forgotten about the Boutros Boutros-Ghali joke, and its placement in the post titled Pumpkins are Dear (Deer).

So, I was extremely interested to read that post, see where he took it, and what connections he made.

It was really well done, I thought.  There was another reference or nod to Peter, though, hiding right there in his post that he may have missed.

He mentions emeritus LDS General Authority Vaughn J. Featherstone, who passed away back in 2018.

First, one bit of trivia regarding Elder Featherstone.  I believe he is the only LDS General Authority that I have a picture with.  True fact.  

I served my LDS mission in Queensland Australia from 1998 to 2000, and he was our Area President (a person who oversees several Missions or geographies).  When I first started out, I was serving in northern Queensland in a small town called Ayr with the nearest major town being Townsville, about an hour away.

Featherstone came to do a mission tour accompanying our Mission President, and joined us for a Zone Conference in Townsville that my trainer and I drove into town for.  There were only a few missionary companionships in that particular part of far northern Queensland, so it was a pretty intimate setting.  Featherstone spoke for quite some time, and even conducted some fairly interactive training.

I was less than a month out in the mission field, so was still pretty green.  In one segment, he had us individually stand up and he role played an investigator (what we missionaries called those looking into the Mormon church).  He asked me to stand up, and proceeded with a question regarding polygamy, something like  "Elder Wright, I hear you Mormons practiced polygamy.  I just can't accept that.  What do you have to say about it?".  I can't remember what I said in response, but I definitely remember him looking me right in the eye and saying "That is a stupid answer.  Sit down".

Other missionaries also earned similar comments, so I wasn't alone.  It turns out the point he was trying to get across was that when an investigator asks a question like that, we need to come back with an answer about the Book of Mormon.  His logic went something like:  If the Book of Mormon is true, then that means Joseph Smith was a Prophet.  If he was a Prophet, then that means the Mormon church is the true church, has the Priesthood, has living Prophets today, etc.   In other words, when an investigator was asking about these various concerns, the real question they were asking was whether the Mormon church was 'true', and to answer that we needed to take them back to the Book of Mormon.

At the time, this made a lot of sense to me.  I have since obviously seen the multiple inherent flaws in that line of thinking, as I am now one who definitely believes that the Book of Mormon is what it says it is, but that the Mormon church, in its current form, is most definitely not (thanks Brigham and company).

I remember him also sharing stories about he could know things about people.   In one instance, he said that he got a horrible feeling about a person when they walked into a room, someone he had never met, and asked the Stake President to look into them.  Turns out it was a bad dude.  In another instance, he told the story of a woman who came into confess about committing adultery.  He asked her if she was able to identify who the other offending party was (not sure why he needed to know?), and she told him that she wouldn't share that.  A name popped into his head, and he said "Alright, then I will tell you who it is".  He said the name, and it turned out he was right.

So, after we had all been called stupid and been put on notice that Elder Featherstone was able to look into each of our very souls, it was with some amount trepidation that each of us one by one went to go take individual pictures with him.  Was he going to send anyone home right there on the spot after spending a few seconds next to them in close proximity?

Thankfully no, and he turned out to be a really nice, understanding, and thoughtful guy, based on my own experience with him.  He would later be replaced by Elder Johnson, and that guy came across as fairly intense and/or insane by comparison.

Anyway, stepping back from memory lane, why am I bringing up Vaughn Featherstone here?

Well, remember I have a little thing with names right now, so I decided to look Vaughn up.  William has now mentioned him twice, first in the original post quoting him, and then in this most recent post mentioning that he had quoted him.  The first time I noticed given my past association with Vaughn.  The second time his name screamed at me to look this up.

The results were interesting, to say the least.

The first thing I noticed is we have Stone here.  A Feather-Stone, to be exact.  Birds have feathers, and sometimes feathers show up on people's doorsteps, as well, I thought as I looked at this name.  They can be all types of colors, feathers, but sometimes they are Black.

What about Vaughn?  That turns out to translate directly as "Little".  So Vaughn Featherstone translates into Little Feather-Stone.  I guess there is also that  J. in there (or was that supposed to be Jay?).  Using just first and last name, and leaving aside the feather, we have Little Stone.

Peter's name also translates directly as Little Stone.  So pretty clean tie to Vaughn Featherstone, but we just have this extra Feather hanging around.  I decided that we would just translate it as Peter-with-a-Feather, or perhaps Feathered Peter?  A Feathered Peter could also be a kind of bird, right?  

Anyway, I thought it was remarkable, though not surprising at this point, that we have a name referencing Peter (in disguise) in a post that not only references Peter specifically, but seems to support this link between him, Pharazon, and the Numenoreans.

And the fact that it is a man named Vaughn J. Featherstone who is known (apparently, per William... I actually wasn't aware, or didn't remember) for a theological reading of Humpty Dumpty is just about perfect in terms of putting this all together.

Leon Eggbert, Pharazon, and Sun-Moon Time

In a post back in October of last year, I first introduced  the phrase "Sun Moon time" from an Elvish set of words from the spring of 2020.  In that post, I left off one final line that went along with the phrase.  The full phrase, with the missing line, is:

March 1, 2020

As soon as change comes upon Eressea, thou shalt rise to it beyond

Keno ansilio insgwiliant osse enflorien finu

Sun moon time

Leon Egbert

Leon Egbert (or Eggbert) is what I had left off in that earlier post.

I am not going to go into the Elvish part of these words now, partly because I had written a few days ago that if I am going to tackle some more of those Words, I was going to start where I had left off with the 'Nyarna' set of words (per my dream, but who knows if I even interpreted the intent of that correctly... I am not sure those words seem any clearer to me now, and staring at them doesn't necessarily seem to help!)

Rather, I wanted to explore Leon Eggbert just a little bit in light of recent thoughts and see where it goes.  It seems relevant to recent thinking on Pharazon, actually, as I hope to show here.

I will actually start with Eggbert.  I initially wrote it down as Egbert, but this was me writing down a sounded out word, so I think Eggbert is perfectly fine to use here, and is actually what was intended.  Now, of course, I look at name meanings all the time - back in 2020 I didn't yet know I can and should do this in certain cases, or at least look at the names a bit more carefully.  So, I didn't really try to understand the potential meaning of the name, and even if I did, at that time it wouldn't have made any sense, as you will see.

Let's break Eggbert down into Egg-Bert, and look at those name components.

Egg we will leave as Egg.  Simple.

What about Bert?  Bert can mean:  "Bright, famous, or noble".  So, combining this with Egg would give us something like Famous Egg.  Hmm - a famous egg... a famous and really well known egg.... anyone recall a Famous Egg being brought up lately?

Ah, yes.  Humpty Dumpty.  The most famous egg that I personally know of.

The Humpty Dumpty trend and theme that has shown up on both my blog and William Tychonievich's all started with me waking up with the Humpty Dumpty rhyme running through my head back on the morning of May 1.  Not only did I have the rhyme on my mind, but I had the very clear and distinct impression that Humpty Dumpty represented Pharazon.

Since then, Humpty has come up several times on both this blog as well as William's.  William even wrote what I thought was a pretty awesome twist on Humpty's experience, situating him on the wall enjoying a great fall (autumn).  

May has been Humpty Dumpty month, in a sense.

But Bert can also mean "Bright".  Was Humpty bright?  In terms of appearance, not really, it would seem, in the rhyme (and one might question his brightness in the form of intellect in his choice to sit on the wall, and in his conversation with Alice...).  But Pharazon definitely was!  As quoted in previous posts, in Words of the Faithful, Pharazon is said to dress up in golden clothing and armor so that he could shine really bright at midday (and of course he had his fancy belt):

In gold finery he covered his nakedness, gilded in sunlight so none could withstand him at mid-day

So, Pharazon was definitely Bright, or made himself to be, and I have Pharazon as Humpty, so we have now covered off both Famous and Bright.  

What about Noble?  Well, it can mean the same thing as Famous, so we have already got it partially covered, but I am thinking creatively today, so let's break it out further.

From that same paragraph I pulled the quote about Pharazon dressing up in his golden threads, it also refers to him and his desire to be the "portended Noble that would restore the land and its people to the glory that was sung of the gods in yesteryears, when the magic sun and the silver Silpion gave light and truth to all the fair folk" 

So, a Noble, both in intent (to be a specific Noble) but also in actuality relative to his high-rank, class, and birth.   Also, did you catch the Sun and Moon reference there?

And Humpty was also Noble... if taken literally in the sense of a lofty Being, sitting on top of a high wall.  A Noble Being.

In any case, with Egg-Bert we have a Famous, Noble, and Bright Egg:  Humpty-Dumpty-Pharazon.

Let's turn to Leon.

Leon means Lion, at its root, I think.  Lion's have come up before here, and over on William's blog, but in a couple peculiar forms:  A giraffe (Camel-lopard or Camel-lion) and a chameleon (also Camel-leon).  We have explored both forms of this Lion, but I want to quickly call out the Chameleon.

Lizardmen came up recently, and I have associated them with the Numenoreans.  A chameleon is a type of lizard, and this then would also seem to be consistent with a portrayal of Pharazon as a type of Lizardman, or a Chameleon/ Camel-leon.  So, this works well.

Maybe too creative to connect a Lion with a Lizard?  Could be, but I don't think so.  The chameleon has come up too much here and over on William's blog to be dismissed as not having a potential connection here in this setting, with everything else that has also been written.  I am not saying it has to be this way, or even is necessarily, I am just saying that in the name Leon we have have a fairly direct reference to the different type of Lion that has come up lately, and not only come up, but done so in very specific instances and references.  Though it seems there can be good Chameleons and bad ones, or something like that.

So, in my current thinking, Leon Eggbert = Pharazon, through potentially dubious sleight of hand maneuvers that have Humpty Dumpty as the linchpin in the game.

But it makes sense enough to keep as a viable option.

It also, then, helps give additional meaning or context to "Sun Moon time".  Recall that I have made quite a bit out of the Anor and Ithil Stone, the Sun and the Moon.  However, I also recently explored the existence of two Beings, Gim Goru and Gim Githil (the Gim G's), and stated that they also, based on their names, represent the Sun and the Moon.  I even specifically mentioned after I built up that part of the story, that perhaps Sun and Moon don't only refer to Stones, or the Faramir and Eowyn connection, but also potentially these other two Beings.

In that story, I have Gim Guru as Faramir, and Gim Githil as Peter.  This also then fits very well with my recent, and strange, thought of Peter being the same Being that had played the role of Pharazon.  In other words, when we see Sun Moon time, it might be at least partially referencing Faramir and Peter-Pharazon-Marsh acting in some kind of partnership as Gim Guru and Gim Githil.

Far-fetched, maybe, but not any more so than anything else covered here, and it is at least internally consistent and the connections make sense.  In my book that means the option that this is so remains open.

The redemption of Pharazon in the form of Peter (and other Beings) and his future role in redeeming not only Numenor but those that were harmed by Numenor's actions remains one of, if not the, most surprising story elements that I have thought through over the past little while.  It continues to come together into something that can make sense, both in terms of how the story itself works, but also with what the clues and syncs point to and form a picture of, though I am still interested to see how it ultimately turns out.

All I can do is just continue to see where the story leads to. 

Deer Hunting, Dir Hunting, and the Lizardmen High-Stakes Trading Company

 I had many different strange dreams last night, some clearer than others after I woke up.  One involving deer has caught my attention, and I have some interesting guesses regarding meaning, so I am going to spend some time on that one.

In my dream, I was at my current home which is a small farm.  In the back pasture, I spotted one deer, which in real life isn't a very uncommon occurrence - we have deer all over the place.

I became concerned that this deer was going to eat my pumpkins, however.   This also maps to waking, normal life, in that in past years the deer have gone through my pumpkin patch and caused considerable damage.  A couple years ago we lost well over half of our pumpkins to deer coming in and eating and destroying them.  These are the pumpkins, remember, that I wrote about in past posts that we sell on the roadside and my kids split the proceeds.  In subsequent years, I surrounded the patch with a few strands of electric wire surrounding the entire perimeter, which helped considerably.

So the concern in my dream wasn't unwarranted, and for whatever reason it became apparent to me that this deer, in fact, going to eat my pumpkins if I didn't do something about it.

I got my rifle out and began to shoot.  Now, as I am doing this I realize there are a couple major issues with my actions.  First, rifle hunting of deer is illegal in my part of Minnesota (you have to be further north to use rifles).  It is either shotgun or bow here.  We have a deer stand up in the back of our pasture for bow hunting, but I find I don't have a lot of time these days to go up and sit in it.  And second, it wasn't yet hunting season, at least I didn't think it was in the dream.

But here I was, shooting at this deer in my pasture to protect my pumpkins.  However, it appeared my shots were not finding their mark, as I kept shooting but the deer was still there.  I ended up getting something like a large fabric target that I put in between me and the deer.  I now couldn't see the deer physically, but I knew that if I just aimed at the target, I would hit it.

Sure enough, the target was perfectly aligned with the deer, and I hit him.  

In real life, my back pasture, although sloped to the east, isn't hilly, so from my house I can look all the way back to the trees.  Dream-pasture, however, was super hilly, so that when I shot the deer, it fell down out of view and I couldn't see it.  I walked back to investigate, and when I reached the top of the hill, I was extremely surprised by what I saw.

There were dead deer all over the place down below.  Seeing this, I assumed that I must have actually been hitting the deer with my shots all along, but there were so many of them that a new one would just pop up in the place of the one I shot.  I didn't notice the switch and assumed I had missed.  I am not sure if that is true or not, but that is what I determined to explain the carnage I now saw.

Not all of the deer were dead, however, with some laying down asleep and others milling around.  When they saw me, however, they all began to run away in all sorts of directions.  As they did so, I looked to my left and saw a deer walking on two legs, upright just like a human being would walk.  However, it had been shot in the foot, and so now was limping and holding a walking cane for balance as it was trying to get away.  It was so strange to see this deer walking like a man!

I noticed my rifle was out of ammunition and hadn't carried any with me when I walked back to check things out.  I regretted this, because I thought I should have tried to be humane and put the poor limping deer out of its misery.

I then noticed another shape take form in front of me.  At first I thought it was a young buck, with a very tiny set of antlers.  As it continued to take form, however, what I thought were small antlers were actually pointy ears, almost like horns, protruding from the head of what was now very clearly a dog of some kind.  This dog did not look the least bit friendly, and we looked at each other for what I think was just a second, before it too, I believe, ran off.

I was left with the problem of quite a few deer carcasses scattered around my pasture.  It was mass carnage.  What was I going to do with them?  My first thought was that I should bury them, but that was going to be either a really large pit or many individual graves all over the place.  I then became concerned that someone would find them, and my illegal acts would be uncovered.  Again, my understanding was that it wasn't hunting season, so I shouldn't have been shooting them (even though they were after my pumpkins), and in addition I had used the wrong kind of firearm.

I asked the advice of someone who I believe was my older sister, and we determined that it would be best to go straight to the Minnesota DNR and let a conservation officer know exactly what had happened and let things go from there.  I could possibly face severe legal consequences, but it seemed like the right thing to do.

I started to wake up, but as I was doing so, I had one clear phrase come into my mind that I understood was the name of this group of deer that were after my pumpkins:  The Lizardmen High-Stakes Trading Company.

And then I fully woke up.

As I said, I had other dreams as well, and there were all sorts of strange things in my mind once I was up for good this morning, but I've been focused a bit on this deer dream.

That closing reference to this deer as some kind of company or consortium associated with Lizardmen stood out to me.  Yesterday, William Tychonievich had written a post linking back to my Brittany Spears posts, and in that post he included an image he had pulled from another thread with 3 different Warhammer characters or races.   I am also completely unfamiliar with Warhammer, thinking it must be a book series, but it looks like it is a game of some kind, perhaps.  Anyway, he did some syncing up with two of these races or character types - Tomb Kings and Bretonnia. 

Left out were the Lizardmen, but he closed the post with the following statement:

I do hope the sync fairies will do something with the Aztec lizardmen, too. I mean, that's kind of badass. Not quite as badass as an Aztec lizardman in a New Sex Pistols T-shirt, but still.

I had read this post yesterday, so I was aware of it and also the reference to Lizardmen.  Thus, it was not necessarily surprising or interesting in and of itself that this name was referenced in my dream.

What was interesting to me is that Lizardmen were explicitly and very clearly in my mind linked to the deer in my dream.  What do Lizardmen have to do with deer?

I was stumped for a little bit, but then I had an interesting thought:  Dir, an Elvish word, would be pronounced exactly like Deer.  It's meaning?  Man.  I knew this because Dir had come up in my Elvish words from 2019.

And then I understood (I think!)

The deer in my dream were meant to represent Men.  Dir/ Deer.  We had another homophone game here, one that now crossed languages.  We've had Miles' Stones and Brittany's Spears over the last couple days, and now Deer/ Dir  in this dream, though now expressed visually or symbolically. 

The imagery of my dream now made quite a lot of sense, including the significant role of the pumpkins, and the intent of these Deer-Men to come onto my farm and eat them.  The answer to the riddle of the Lizardmen High-Stakes Trading Company, then, is that these were and are Numenoreans, at least some segment of them.  Those that assaulted Eressea and Valinor.

The rest of the name makes complete sense in that light, but I've run out of energy and time to go through into detail here right now today.  If you play around with High Stakes (as perhaps referencing both a "wager" as well as "poles or spears") and Trading (as the more archaic "Treading" or "Tread") and look through some of the details or wording regarding the Numenorean invasion of Eressea in Words of them that have Slumbered, then you might find some interesting things that line up well and point to these Numenoreans.  I don't mean to be cagey about it, I just literally have no more energy to write about this right now, for whatever reason, so am trying to point people in a few interesting directions if they want to check it out for themselves.

Anyway, WJT asked for something from the sync fairies with respect to Lizardmen, and maybe here is something for folks to look into.  Even his recent references to the Sex Pistols and Richards-Dicks would seem to support this view, if you look through some of what has been written in the past and do some dot-connecting.  Pretty clearly, in my opinion, if you just look.

Milestones, Miles' Stones, and Michael's Stones

The word "Milestones" came into my head really clearly this morning as I was waking up.

I didn't immediately look into this, though, as there were a few other things on my mind.  I actually sort of forgot about it.  Later, I went for a run, and as I was finishing up and coming back into my driveway, the word came back into my mind and I was suddenly interested in looking into it.

On my phone as I was walking around outside still cooling off, I looked up "Milestones" on Etymonline to see if there were any interesting definitions I wasn't aware of.  I mean, I am very aware of the term.  I use it frequently, for example, in work, as various projects have deliverables and certain milestones that need to be reached.  And just in everyday usage of marking progress or reaching certain important events or times.

Etymonline pretty much broke down the word into Mile + Stone, and kept it pretty short and sweet:  "stone or pillar set up on a highway or other line of travel to mark the distance in miles".

It was in looking at Mile + Stone, I had the thought that Miles was a name and couldn't Milestones be written as Miles' Stones?  Well, now I had a name to look up based on using a homophone of Milestone.  This seemed like it could be going somewhere.

I first came across a definition that had "Soldier or Servant".  That could be interesting.  I then found something that seemed just as promising.  

From Wikipedia we get the following:

Miles or Myles /ˈmaɪlz/ is a Norman French masculine given name of uncertain meaning. It might have been a changed diminutive of the name Michael that was influenced by miles, the Latin word for a soldier, because of associations with Archangel Michael, the Roman Catholic patron saint of the military.

Other sites confirmed that, while not definitive, it seems that it is well understood that Miles is a form of Michael.  Thus, the term Miles' Stones could instead be written as Michael's Stones.

In my story, I have associated Faramir-Eonwe with Michael (Jackson!), and this Being receiving Stones (potentially the Anor and Sawtooth Stones) and so this connection made sense to me.   

Miles can also mean "Mercy", so Mercy's Stones could also work here.

In any case, it was another fun little word game that seemed to result in something meaningful as I quickly worked through it.  I wrote about Brittany's Spears yesterday and their potential meaning as the Stones (and what comes from them), and I am guessing that these could be the same thing as Michael's Stones, which again I think could be the Sawtooth and Anor Stones.

The Brittany Spears: A quick follow-up

 Early this evening I was out in our barn cleaning up some of some bee hives, frames, and equipment.   I had to put a new box of frames on one of my hives, and I had made a mess when I had been rummaging through my existing frames to put together the additional box for the bees.

Anyway, as I was restacking boxes and frames, the Brittany Spears name popped up in my mind again, but this time I distinctly interpreted the phrase as having to do with multiple Spears - like the noun, as a weapon - and they were in Brittany.  Before, I had linked Spears almost like a verb, I think, like skewering or spearing someone or something.  Now, it came across as something like the Spears of or in Brittany.

I mentioned I had dropped the location assessment or angle earlier because I don't really know where to go with it anyway.  Brittany is in France, and France has played a remarkably prominent role in both the story of the Sawtooth Stone, the history of the Shire and Tom Bombadil, and other tied syncs like Francis Bacon and Francis Scott Key, so it seems there is some relevance there, but it is unclear exactly what.

Anyway, so I looked up Brittany again.  In one overview of the region, it was noted that Brittany comprises 1/3 of the French coastline.  This stood out to me based on the fact that I have our Stone Couriers sailing across the Atlantic and arriving in France with their cargo.  Now, I guess they could land anywhere in Europe and make their way to France and wherever Tom's house might be, but it seems that perhaps the simplest way would be to land in France itself.  It is a more direct route and if they were trying to avoid too many complications or chances of discovery, intrusion, or loss/ theft, then sailing as close to their final destination may have been the way to go.

So, in that scenario, the fact that Brittany comprises so much coastline of France, and has several harbors and inlets scattered around for large and small ships alike, straight math not factoring anything else says they had at least a 33% chance of landing in Brittany.

Then it would have been a question as to how far overland they had to go to reach Tom's House.  Perhaps they didn't have to travel far, and their rendezvous with Tom was still within the confines of Brittany, and perhaps not even too far from where they landed?

In an interesting word game, I found out this evening that the word for "Key" in French is Cle (with an accent over the e, but I am lazy and don't know how to type that).  Recall that I had that little sync or instance with the newspaper that one day where I saw the words "Find Key House".

If we substitute Cle for Key, we then have Find Cle House.

In Elvish, C and K are pronounced the same, so Cle House could be spelled Kle House.

Where have I seen Kle before?  Oh yeah, in words that first gave me this notion of the Family of Light.  In those words I had Kle Family, or Light Family.  that is how I translated it at least (you won't find Kle exactly in that form in Eldamo, but I am fairly confident, as much as I can be, that Kle is Light here).

So, that would give us Find Light House, in that little newspaper message I saw, or a lighthouse.  I thought that was an interesting little game, but what made it even more interesting is that I then found out that Brittany has the highest concentration of Lighthouses in the entire world (I assume by concentration they mean lighthouses per mile of shoreline).  I have to rely on online sources for this, but it was cited in multiple places.  There is even a famous Lighthouse Route/ Road that is cited as a major tourist attraction.  From Brittany's official tourism site:

The Brittany coast has the largest concentration of lighthouses in the world, with a record in Finistère. From Ile Vierge to the Stiff lighthouse, via Pointe Saint-Mathieu or Petit Minou lighthouse, climb to the top of these sentinels of the sea and marvel at the extraordinary panoramas!

-- Brittany "On the Lighthouse route" site 

 

Anyway, so if we can swallow a Sawtooth Stone travelling with Couriers to the eastern seaboard of the US, and then across the sea by boat on its way to France, it isn't out of the realm of possibility for them to have landed in Brittany and to have even been guided by these lighthouses.  They indicated, per my thoughts on the pieces of that dialogue I captured, that they needed to write instructions down.  Maybe they were heading to a specific lighthouse as a marker or waypoint on their journey.  Who knows.

I just found it was an interesting play on words to get from Key House to Light House, and to find that Brittany is famous for its lighthouses.

Back to Spears, though.  We have more than one, since plural form of the word, and spears pierce through things, whether object or Being.  That is what they are designed to do.

I shared some of my January and February 2022 words in a series of post several months ago.  In Part 1, I related how it seems that a secret plan was now being shared with certain Beings.  As part of this secret plan, it seemed like someone and/or something would cross a divide and perhaps cause something to shine, light a beacon, or something like that (which I have touched on in a few different ways in different posts).

In those phrases is a word ter, which I translated in that instance as "straight and/or through".  But there is another related meaning which is simply "to pierce".  Interestingly enough, this concept of "piercing" also comes up in my 2019 and 2020 words, though I don't think we have gotten to any of those here, thought I will go back and check.

I am not even going to put those 2022 words here an rehash them - you know where to find them if you want to look them up.  The important thing I want to log here is that it seems that 'piercing' some divide, chasm, darkness, whatever as part of this return home is required.  And to pierce something, you must have something that will do the piercing, perhaps.

That is where the Spears come in, and my current guess is that these would be rather strange Spears indeed since they aren't likely to be very sharp in a physical sense.  Far from it - round, like a globe.  It is the stories and power that is pulled out of them that will do the piercing, like a sharp sword or spear.  Basically, I think the Brittany Spears are referring to the Stones, and in this case I guess it would be the Sawtooth and Anor Stones.  These would be the Spears that pierce whatever darkness, veil, or obstacle that exists, I guess.  

And so, if that is true, then this must mean that the Stones are currently in Brittany.  Hey, it is in France, and quite a few of these little syncs point to it, so I think better than zero chance, though obviously highly speculative and we will see where things go.

Nyarna and Brittany Spears

In a brief dream last night I stood in an area where in front of me were words, almost floating in the air.  I knew they were words, but they were shapeless, like blobs.  I focused on one of these word blobs and began to 'shape' it, meaning as I focused on it the word began to form in such as way that it was now both revealed and readable.

The word that first formed was "Nyarna".  Encouraged by this, I turned my attention to the other formless words around me.  However, I found that they were slippery, in the sense that as I felt the word taking shape, I would lose it and couldn't quite get them to take a form I could make out.  It was during this process of attempting, and failing, to bring form to these words that I woke up.

Later, I fell asleep again, and while I can't remember the exact dream, I woke up, or was in the process of waking up, with the name Brittany Spears on my mind.  I don't remember if I had visually seen the name, but that specific spelling was an important part of it.  Brittany.  This was an obvious reference to the singer Britney Spears, but I understood it to mean something different, or rather not refer specifically to that person.  I actually didn't even know or remember how to spell Britney Spears' name, and only in my later searches would discover that the name on my mind had been spelled differently (Brittany vs. Britney).

So, let me go through some thoughts relative to both dreams.

Nyarna

Truthfully, the Brittany Spears reference and mystery occupied my mind most after waking up in the morning, and is what I looked into first.  Nyarna would just be on my mind a little later, but I will cover it off first.

Nyarna is an Elvish word which means "long epic tale, story, legend".  In looking this up, I remembered that this word, or something like it, had appeared back in my 2019/2020 set of words, though I couldn't remember where.

It turns out that it is the word "enyarno" that I was thinking of, and had translated in the same way as meaning a tale or story.  The word would have been sounded out back then, and I assumed that "enyarno" was my way of writing out "nyarno" (literally saying the n as en).  The -o ending, recall, can sometimes point to a noun, object, etc.  So that made sense to me at the time several years ago, and still makes sense now.

The interesting thing, however, is the Nyarna reference in my words literally comes right after where I have left off with my 2019 words walkthrough on this blog.  I had fast-forwarded a few weeks to the smoking of the Anor Stone (which is what I think happened), found in my post last week titled "Smoking a crystal:  Darkening the Sun in its going forth".  Since then, I have written a bit on Pharazon, other topics, etc. but have not really returned back to those 2019 words yet.

The mention of the Anor Stone being smoked or darkened occurred on Nov. 17, 2019.  Four days later on Nov. 21 there is one of the more interesting set of words from that time, and two days after that came the phrase which included the Nyarno mention.  Those two days, Nov. 21 and 23, I think are on the same topic and thus likely a continuation of the same thought.

So, how does my dream factor into this?  I think it is saying to go back to where I left off and take the next step and explore what they might mean.  That next set of words, if I focus on them, might reveal more clearly what they mean, just like in my dream, whereas if I skip ahead and look at words following (which I have done a bit of trying to make sense of a few things) I might be less successful in deriving meaning from those words, or being able to 'shape' them into something understandable.

That is what I have landed on, at least, and I think it makes sense.  It is worth a shot, so that is what I am going to do.  Next post I will give the Nov. 21 and 23 words an overview, so stay tuned.

For the remainder of this post, however, I want to discuss the Brittany Spears reference, which was interesting to explore.

Brittany Spears

I started by looking up the means of Brittany, of course.  Standard playbook.

Initially, this wasn't super helpful, or so I thought.   Brittany simple means "from the land of the Britons" or "from Britain".  OK.

But then I noticed in my search that Brittany, although it has everything to do with Britain, actually sits in France. 

I found this really interesting, for reasons that should be obvious to whoever has kept up with posts on this blog.  The theme of things being supposedly in Britain but actually in France factors in fairly heavily into some of the story I have explored here, specifically with the Shire and Tom Bombadil's House being located in France, whereas everyone assumes England.

Even recently, we had Bruce Charlton, an Englishman, using French phrases in discussing Tom.

The fact that Brittany is an actual place in France then had me going down a quick thought exercise of wondering whether it is possible that Brittan is where Tom's House could actually be, if one were to try and track it down?

I spent a little bit of time on this, but it was kind of a dead end.  There are maps that overlay Middle-earth with Europe, with most/ all of them having the Shire up in England.  I've gone through not-very-detailed looks before about how the map would shift if you moved that down to France, and I still don't really have a good perspective.  In this case, because Brittany is on the very northwest corner of France, having Tom's House there would either mean the scale of Middle-earth is much smaller than both Tolkien and readers assume, or that there is a significant portion or Middle-earth lands that then go underwater.  You essentially move the map directly south, to place the Shire in Brittany, and significant portions of western Eriador fall off into the Atlantic, and Gondor and Mordor are at the bottom of the Mediterranean.  I mean, people have brought up things like Doggerland, where much more of Europe was above water after the last ice age, but I don't really know much about that or have really looked into alternative Europeans geography.

This wasn't a problem I was prepared to tackle today, basically, so I pretty much dropped the line of questioning as to whether Brittany, France has any physical location relevance for us here.

I returned to thinking on the name, and I remembered that William Tychonievich actually wrote a post about Britney Spears, and one of her songs "Lucky".  In that post, he changed the lyrics of one line slightly to read "She's so rocky, shisa star", and I remembered it because I had left a comment there talking about rocky stars.  In the line, you have someone saying that she is both rocky and a star (per William's change).  Rocky stars (or Stone Stars) come into play in my story here in the form of the Palantir, with the Ithil Stone being one of those.  

In that post, William spent time on Moon symbolism, and I also mentioned that this seemed to fit in well with the concept of the Ithil Stone.

This thought pulled me completely away from the location analysis, and to the Ithil Stone and to its owner, Eowyn.

It was then I realized the last name Spears tied into very recent commentary regarding Eowyn.  In my post "What is even more amazing than a talking dog?  A spelling bee!", I used my son's homework assignment to go on some paths that led toward Eowyn and the story on her Ithil Stone, the story being one way in which she is a Spelling Bee (Spell being a Story).

William would go on to also analyze my son's homework assignment in his post "There's more than one way to spell a bee" and he came up with a few other creative references to the Bee symbolism.  I left a comment on that post saying that a Bee could potentially be said to skewer (based on the German word "speil") someone if their stinger was large enough, and then proceeded to make the analogy between the Sword that Eowyn (as Izilba) carried and to the Word or Story that she possesses on her Stone:

A bee could definitely prick someone, and if its stinger was big enough, skewer them. In Words of the Faithful, Deseret-Izilba was known for her sword, which she skewered a few folks with, and which she drew out of beeswax like Arthur pulling Excalibur out of Stone.

"Izilba walked to the cube, ran her hands over the bee's wax. . . her hands grasped the sword's hilt, and she pulled it from the wax with ease, and the sword sang as it came forth, laughing that it's restful incarceration had come to an end, and the evil of this new day would by its steel be stung, shivered, and sliced"

We've compared the Word and Stories to a Sword, so could be a link there with Spell/Speil.

To spear someone would be the same thing as skewering them, or piercing them.  

So Brittany Spears, the name from this morning, seems to point back to Eowyn, even if the complete rationale for the different spelling of the first name isn't completely clear to me (or perhaps it was just to be a clever play on the France-England theme and that is all).  Even my first dream with the word Nyarna, which means Story or Tale, now seemed to tie directly into this line of thinking.  As you will see, and as I hope to explore or understand better, those November words I mentioned earlier and which I will cover next seem to be about Eowyn and the story she had been compiling.

So, Brittany Spears may in the end have something to do about locations in France - I don't know or have any good ideas on that - but it seemed to definitely point back, very specifically, to Eowyn and her Story.

One other interesting thing that occurred that might just support this line of thinking.

I mentioned Bruce Charlton and his French words that unknowingly tied to my English-French theme.  I went over to his blog later in the morning after I had been thinking of some of this, and making or expanding on some of these connections with the Brittany Spears-Eowyn-Ithil Stone connection, and saw that his latest post had the title "It only takes One side to make a war".

Ha!

I laughed because this is a paraphrase of one of Eowyn's lines from LOTR.  I think it is sufficiently well known or referenced that I imagine Bruce either purposefully used it in his title knowing its source, or it was unconsciously there from his knowledge and readings of LOTR.  I scanned the post, but didn't see any specific callout to Eowyn.  It seemed to be about WWIII or impending calamity or something and I wasn't very interested.  I was just concerned with the title.

In LOTR, while in the Houses of Healing, Eowyn asks the Warden of any news regarding the war.  The Healer tells her what he knows, and then says as a Healer he just patches the holes made by swords and that there is enough trouble to go around without any wars to make more trouble.  Eowyn replies:

"It needs but one foe to breed a war, not two, Master Warden," answered Eowyn. "And those who have not swords can still die upon them..."

Anyway, that was an interesting little sync to have tied the Nyarna and Brittany Spears references back to Eowyn and her Story, and here we have Bruce on fire again with an Eowyn paraphrase for his title.

UPDATE:

In my hurry to get the post out, I forgot to mention the interesting fact that Brittany, or at least a town within it, is strongly connected with Rohan in LOTR.  Rohan is actually a place in Brittany, and Tolkien mentioned being aware of it when he wrote the book.  So, another interesting tie to Eowyn since she was Rohirrim.  You can reference the comment I left below for the letter excerpt where Tolkien mentions Brittany's connection to Rohan, and Rohan's linguistic connection to both the Celtic/ Brittany/ Germanic heritage as well as Elvish.  

Crazed Fathers

In my last post exploring the strange and not-completely-thought-out idea of Peter being the same Being who was Pharazon, I mentioned that some passages from Doug's writing at least hold open the door that this is possible.  Pharazon is never mentioned in the passage, but as you will see, his assault and the Beings involved are and they tie very specifically back to Elvish "Fathers".

I am not sure if the excerpts I include here are in Doug's third book.  I haven't read it nor intend to at this time.  They may be.  In any case, there are some draft stories that he sent out, written very much in the same style as Words of the Faithful and Words of Them that have Slumbered.

In those drafts, there seems to be an Elvish speaker on Eressea (what I believe would be Eressea #1 in our story here) discussing the events surrounding the invasion of their land by the Numenoreans, with the interesting detail that among these Numenoreans were their own Fathers (Elves reborn as Men).  

Before we get there, though, the speaker seems to indicate that in the assault on Eressea, some of the invaders drank that light-pollen, and some did not.  Those that did not seem to have died and gone to 'hell' or some residing place of spirits.  They were full of regret for what they did.

These spirits, however, seem to have been sent 'outward' by Mandos at some point.  Here is the first relevant passage:

And hearing their cries, Mandos has sent such outward, in blessing, and not to mock; and now we upon Eressea’s Harbors, all decided, in relief of our own grudge’s to nursing, to abide their walking out, and setting-out lines, to drag some plow, and lay a line of seed, sacred-holy, from their soiled palms, a-dropping;

What does it mean to be sent 'outward'?  My guess is that that have been released from this place of regret and have been born again on our world as Men.  Could be. The Elvish speaker also indicates that the Eldar now on Eressea were OK with this, and had begun the process of forgiving these Beings for what they had earlier done.

It is also alluded that these Beings will help make restitution for what they had done.  Whereas the Lilies and their light were plundered and burned, those that participated, in whatever capacity, in this act will have opportunity to help replant new seeds and restore what was destroyed.  There is even an invitation for them to come and and watch the descent of these other Beings on Eressea (our Eressea #1).  This fits with our storyline in that Beings will go to Eressea #2 from this Earth, and after assisting the remnant on that land, will see the New Jerusalem (on Eressea #1) descend and join with that world.  So that is consistent at least.

The next bit is critical to understand how it might be possible for Pharazon to actually have been someone like Gim Githil in an age before.  The speaker will suggest that among the Numenorean invaders were their own "Fathers", meaning, I think, the very first Elves who were at The Awakening, or the Cuivienen - a group of the 144 I have touched on in previous posts.

Here is the excerpt:

our hearts as one, lastly, turned to those fathers, who upon Numenor came, in droves, and driven under Thu-Sauron’s Mists, steered where once they lofted high songs, to Valar’s cocking ears, tune-hungry; Those fathers! Our own, in time, to Numenor came, and thence to our ancestral palaces – theirs giving in lot, to we their children, faithful most! – lumbered fleshy, appetite-full slaked, in blood lust, murder, whore-molling, and worse; Our Fathers! Crazed were they, and we knowing them as Was-once-before, could not our “plows” set on their roads’ flesh, to harrow until tormented into Worst-Hell; No! We our Fathers, Fled….So may we again look to see in full-figure; not mere outline, of memory, or hoped-for time,

OK, so again, not very clear language, but the general idea, as far as I can tell, is that some of these "Fathers" or the original 144 were born as Men among the Numenoreans, and then came to Eressea among these invaders.  So, the children and descendents of these first Eldar recognized, in some fashion, that it was their very own ancestors (now reborn as Men) who were attacking them.

Further, the speaker suggests that these Fathers were 'crazed'.  They were not in full possession of themselves for some reason.  Rather than fight their own Fathers, they fled (and may died), and again this is where half of Eressea was split off and taken 'under' (Eressea #2) and the other half raised with Valinor (Eressea #1).  The speaker presumably is from Eressea #1.

Given this situation, it is not out of the realm of possibility to think of Gim Githil being among these Fathers.  He doesn't have to be there, but some of these Fathers, at least, are there and that puts him as a potential candidate at the least.

We know that Pharazon was there in the assault, leading the Numenoreans (including the Fathers and other Eldar born among them as Men).

It is therefore not impossible to have Pharazon actually be Gim Githil.  Whereas in the dawning of the age of the Elves, he led those first people to Aman, he might be now leading some of these same people, but now in a tragic and possessed state, attacking their own children and former homeland.  A House literally divided against itself due to Sauron's evil manipulations and potentially other factors that we don't have a clear idea about, at least I don't.

The mystery would still exist, then, as to how and why it came to that, and Gim Githil would have found himself in such a position.  That riddle would remain unsolved, but it does, if true, squarely suggest that Peter very well could have been (maybe even likely was?) among these invaders, and thus potentially Pharazon himself.

I don't know - sounds crazy to me, but at the same time it seems worth vetting it out.  It is currently the right kind of crazy. 

I was going to add one or two more excerpts, one which actually includes a reference to Peter ("Petering as Paulos..."), but I really don't want to go into any more of those writings right now.  I don't enjoy it.

The bottom line, though, is that in those story elements we find some backing for the idea that i) Gim Githil, as the High King of the Elves, may have been present in the Numenorean assault, ii) he may have actually participated in the atrocities on Eressea, iii) he may have done so under the identity or character of Pharazon, and thus iv) it is not impossible to think of Pharazon as Peter-Marsh.

The 'pride' and fear of Pharazon may also be understood better in this light, as an Elven Being clad in a Man's body and limited capabilities, and all that comes along with that.  It may have contributed greatly to both his rise, as well as his fall.

Further, we may also have more insight into the tradition of Peter 'denying' Jesus 3 times before the cock crows.  There may be some truth to that story, but just as with other things we have explored here (like the prophecy of the Sun being darkened) this might be about or mean something completely different than we currently understand, and is a bastardized tale of something Peter might have told those on Earth when he came to visit them.  It may be that "Peter" in various roles would fail or deny Jesus and align with Evil, in some capacity and for some reasons that is obscured from us currently.  His experience as Pharazon would be one such time.  We have also looked at the life of Thomas B. Marsh, who ultimately abandoned Joseph Smith and at the end aligned himself with Brigham Young (though as mentioned, retaining some important things for himself).  That would be another time, potentially.

So, there might be a third time in another past experience.

As for rationale and how all this fits in for 'good', I don't know - maybe think Kobayashi Maru.  Spock's impossible choice and solution to an impossible game that was set by Evil Beings.

The cock crows to signify the rising of the Sun (symbolically - they actually crow all day, one reason we don't have roosters!).  Our story here suggests a Sun/Son will rise at some future point.  My guess is that Peter, if he is here now, will have already gone through whatever those 3 ordeals were (meaning I don't anticipate a 3rd yet to occur, if this story even is remotely accurate - that is in the past), and will likely have his own ascension as part of this, maybe with Gim Goru and/ or in his own separate way.

Who knows.  I may end up scrapping this whole storyline since I don't even know if this works out or not, but just writing it here to see how and where it goes.  I think it can make sense, though I am not 100% convinced.  Also, if this storyline holds, I don't think Captain Moroni is necessarily viable anymore.  You could still have Pharazon-Boromir-Alma-Marsh, perhaps.   I mean, I guess you could swap out Alma for Moroni - one of them has to go, at least, and who knows, maybe that whole chain doesn't work.  I had originally had Boromir as Captain Moroni due to some of the similarities and desires of Boromir, but I am not sure that story really goes anywhere anymore.   That was also intended to be redemptive in nature, but this other one definitely has a larger arc that isn't just about personal redemption and could be hiding a bigger story.

Anyway, a few things to keep picking at a bit in order to see whether this Pharazon-Peter connection has legs or not.

Good and Evil, and a large bird named Gregor

Last night, it was just the two younger kids and me for Friday night pizza and movie night.  My wife was with my oldest son at his hockey tournament game (where I am hanging out today).

The kids chose a movie called The School for Good and Evil.  They saw it a year or two ago, I believe, but thought last night was a good time to watch it again.  It is based on a novel I haven't read, so I am not sure how closely the movie does or does not follow the book.

I was thinking through some of the themes of the movie as we were watching it, specifically this notion of Good and Evil and how to tell which is which.  That was one of the premises of the story, is that one 'knew' whether one was Good or Evil (or an "Ever" or "Never", as the students in each school were called) by which School you ended up in.  The Schoolmaster never made a mistake, it was assumed, and so you could just tell an Ever or a Never by their school, and their corresponding appearance.

This concept or assumption will be challenged throughout the story, with things not remaining so Black and White and appearances not necessarily corresponding to the underlying reality of the nature of the Being or situation.

This was an interesting theme based on some of the things I have been writing, and as you might guess, my mind went to Pharazon since he has been so prominent lately.  In recent posts, we have gone from looking at the Evil that Pharazon and the Numenoreans did during the 2nd Age and which ultimately broke the world, to wondering just why that Evil was done, to exploring the potential that these various parties may already be on the path to restoration.  Again, I don't know if that is true, but the story has captured my imagination for the time being.

In the process of having this on my mind, a fairly recognizable sync came into the movie.

Gregor is a character in the story who is in the school of Good.  He is actually the son of Prince Charming, if I remember correctly.  The only problem is that he isn't good at anything they are testing for, and frankly doesn't want to be there anyway.  His dream is to run a Grocery Store, not learn magical arts and how to be a good fairy tale character.

Anyway, his ineptitude causes him to fail 3 times.  The rule at the school is that if you fail 3 times you are not only expelled from the school, but transformed into another Being and trapped there at the school forever.  One of the hints that even on the Good side, something is amiss.

We see Gregor painfully disappear after his 3rd fail, but we do not see what he transforms into at that time.

Later, one of the protagonists, Agatha, a Reader who was transported to this school by mistake in her opinion, makes a wish usingWishing Fish, with her simple wish being that everyone can go home.  The numerous Wishing Fish actually at that time transform back into a little girl, who reveals that she was one of the student who failed 100 years ago and was thus transformed into the form of these Wishing Fish.

Immediately after this, a giant, scary looking bird flies out of the forest and lands in the lake where Agatha is.  It looks like a vulture made out of bones, sinew, and feathers - at least that was my first impression.  It turns out the bird is a species called Stymph (I will get to that in just a second).  Agatha is terrified as well, but then notices something peculiar about the bird.  Upon close inspection, she sees that this Stymph is none other than Gregor!

She tells Gregor that she will try and help him, but at that time Tedros, who is the son of King Arthur and thus in the Good school, rushes in to save everybody by killing Gregor with Excalibur.

Agatha is clearly mortified, while everyone can't understand her reaction because they assume that this was a good thing that Tedros did, saving her from the Stymph.  Here is the clip.

In a later conversation, Tedros will defend his actions by saying that the Stymph was Evil because he looked Evil - that is all he needed to know about the Being to both judge it and then kill it.  And by doing so, and approaching Evil in this way, he obviously did a terrible thing by killing poor Gregor.

Anyway, going back to the scene, as I am watching this really large vulture-like bird named Gregor, I thought to myself "Didn't William Tychonievich have a dream about a Vulture named Gregor?"  I remembered this because I had just written in my post on Boromir's Belt that it is possible that the Vulture from his dreams represented Pharazon.  I also left comments on William's post with this thought.  And here I was looking at a bird that resembled a vulture (to me) as I had been thinking of Pharazon, Good and Evil, etc.

I went over to William's blog, and searched for "Gregor", but nothing came up.  I had forgotten at that point that I had literally included the name in my Boromir post, so I then searched for vulture, I think, and found what I was looking for.

The name of the Vulture from his dream is Odessa Grigorievna.  So, Gregor was definitely involved, but just as the last name of this character.  Grigorievna is the Russian, female version of Gregor or Gregory.  

So this was interesting and had my attention, obviously.

I then looked up Stymph to see if that was an actual thing, and if so, what it meant.  I searched for Stymph, and after wading through a few movie-specific fan sites relative to the character, I found out, per Wikipedia, that Stymph is short of Stymphalian birds and that there are a thing from Greek mythology.

Stymphalian birds were large, man-eating birds who inhabited a swamp in Stymphalia, and so the name was a reference to this swamp.

Wait, did I just say Swamp?  

Yes, I did.  

Swamps have come up before in the form of Thomas B. Marsh and, ultimately, Peter, who I equated with this Marshy Being.  I arrived at this point by combining Leo's callout of Thomas B. Marsh on his own blog with William's references to his pokemon Swamp-creature Pokelogan on his.  And I can't remember all of the steps, but eventually arrived at Thomas B. Marsh as the reincarnated Peter.  It was a strange journey to get there, but somehow still holds in my mind and makes sense, even as WWE started to factor into that storyline and add on the additional identity of Gim Githil, the first father of the Eldar.

So then I had the strangest thought.  Could Pharazon have come back eventually - after several other roles, including Boromir - as... Peter?

Peter?

That is where my mind went.  Peter could be the same Being as Pharazon.  But it seemed kind of strange, obviously, and I ended up just letting the matter drop for the evening and didn't really think about it much more.

This morning, however, it worked on me a bit more, and I remembered this little detail of 'fail 3 times and you get transformed'.  Who else 'failed' 3 times?  Oh yeah, Peter.  He was told, in New Testament tradition, that he would deny Jesus 3 times before the cock crowed, and ended up doing so.

That was interesting.  In the movie, Gregor is the only person we see failing 3 times and turning into this Stymph creature.

There was another interesting detail, though, that I noted just as I was pulling up the clip above.  Gregor will land not on dry ground around Agatha, but rather on the lake itself.  He will then begin to walk toward her, which can give the optical illusion that he is actually walking on water.  Go back and check out the beginning of the clip above at the beginning and see if you see it also.  The camera makes sure to zoom in on Gregor's feet and show him walking "on" the water for several steps to reach where Agatha is.

This seemed interesting.  I mean, not interesting if Peter wasn't already on my mind relative to this bird.  It wouldn't have stood out at all.  But since I was already strangely thinking about this, it seemed to stand out quite dramatically that Gregor was, visually, walking on water.  And we know that is a theme with Peter.

Anyway, what does this mean?  I am not sure, other than I now have this strange thought in my head that Peter is the same Being that was Pharazon.  The strange implication is that since we have Peter as Gim Githil, that Gim Githil, the first father of the Elves, would have as Pharazon launched an assault on his own people on Eressea, unknowingly.  And Sauron's machinations would have driven the whole scenario.

Surprisingly, there are words from Doug that would support this narrative, of Gim Githil-as-Pharazon (one of the Fathers of the Elves) attacking his own people.  They also support that there was something seriously wrong with these people - they were sick in some way.  But I will get into that in a follow-up post.  Whether those words are reliable, I don't know, and even if they are, I am not sure they have to support this notion, but they do at least leave room to explore it.  

As of 24 hours ago I wouldn't have considered Pharazon as a candidate for Peter (or Gim Githil), but I am thinking that now it is at the very least a possibility.