As a follow-up to my post earlier today about Glorfindel, I now view Gildor as the son of Finarfin and Earwen as well.
This makes both of the Stone Couriers their children, and thus brothers. It also helps explain the inclusion of Gildor in this story, who otherwise is a relatively obscure character from the LOTR.
As I covered elsewhere, when Gildor introduces himself to Frodo, Sam, and Pippin, he uses the name "Gildor Inglorion of the House of Finrod". In that earlier post, I also mentioned some of the confusion that has existed relative to the name Inglorion and Finrod, and the resulting confusion about who Gildor is.
While both of those names have ultimately come to be associated with Finrod Felagund, who is also considered the son of Finarfin, they were in the beginning names that belonged to Finarfin himself. Finarfin's mother, Idril, gave him the mother-name of Ingaulare, which means something like 'top gold', or in its other form of Inglor, also "Heart of Gold", apparently. Early on, Tolkien interpreted Inglor as referring to Finarfin, but ultimately found this problematic, one of the reasons being that Finarfin never came to Beleriand and potentially been known broadly by Sindarin or Noldor forms of his name (at least in his recorded history... I, of course, have other ideas which involve Finarfin's roles and visits to Middle-earth).
In addition to all of this, in the first edition of the Lord of the Rings, Finarfin was still at that time referred to as Finrod. That would change in later editions, but Gildor's name, including those references, would remain the same.
All this is to say that it is not out of the realm of possibility that when Gildor refers to himself as Inglorion and of Finrod's House, he may be, in both cases, saying that he is the son of Finarfin.
I think this is so - fairly strongly at this time - based on how other elements of the story are coming together in my head.
The implication is that the Gildor that Frodo runs into in the forest is a far more important character than is let on in the account that we have, and even in how Gildor presents himself. But it is he that names Frodo as Elf-Friend, a designation that others will both notice and honor in his interaction with other Elves. The power and ability to do this, or to at least recognize the Being of Frodo (who, again, I have as Earendil), speaks to someone who seems to me more than an obscure Elf who is the son of some random Inglor.
His relation to Glorfindel may be partially alluded to by Glorfindel himself when he meets up with Aragon and the Hobbits on their Flight to the Ford (as I just wrote Ford, I realized that the picture of the red emblem of Glorfindel that was the subject of my post yesterday was on taken from the back of a Ford F150 truck). He says that his 'kindred' had alerted Elrond of the Hobbits' wanderings, and thus Glorfindel was sent. It was Gildor who sent the message, and so Glorfindel is at the very least acknowledging some family tie.
Further, it was Gildor who alerted both Tom Bombadil and Aragorn to the plight of the Hobbits, and thus enabled Tom to be on the lookout for them as they passed into his land, and later for Aragorn to find them at Bree. This wasn't some random Elf.
So the plot thickens. In my mind, I now have Glorfindel and Gildor as brothers from the Valinor days, with Finarfin and Earwen as their parents. Again, this will matter for why they seem to be charged with the Anor Stone / Elanor in the first place and ultimately why they will accompany or usher Faramir-Eonwe home. The story gets stranger in my head, and yet clearer, all at the same time.
In Tolkien's Legendarium, the parentage of Glorfindel is left uncertain.
Tolkien himself suggests that Glorfindel was both born in Valinor during the Years of the Trees, and that he was also one of the exiled Noldor. His later association with Turgon in Gongolin (as one of the Chiefs of the Twelve Houses there) would seem consistent with this.
Interestingly, in looking into Glorfindel, I found that this character occupied quite a lot of Tolkien's thinking during the last year of his life. In the final book of the History of Middle-earth, which Tolkien's son Christopher arranged and commented on, titled "The Peoples of Middle-earth", the last section of that book is called "Last Writings: of Glorfindel, Cirdan, and other matters". I haven't looked through the entire thing yet, but there are interesting little nuggets in there, such as Tolkien's guess that Glorfindel may have returned to Middle-earth from Valinor in his reincarnated form aboard a Numenorean Ship, which has interesting implications.
Also of interest for our story here is Tolkien's efforts to connect Glorfindel with Gandalf, in terms of making Glorfindel his friend and follower. This is potentially relevant due to my placing both Gandalf and Glorfindel among these parties and their activities in my 2020 words. Tolkien even went so far as to consider whether Glorfindel was one of the Five Wizards, so closely did he view this connection (But Christopher notes that in the last year of his life Tolkien admitted to suffering from memory problems, and Tolkien would ultimately conclude that the Five must have all been in the form of Maia at that time, and not Eldar no matter how powerful).
Anyway, even with all of that late thinking on Tolkien's part, the question of Glorfindel's parents remained unanswered.
I am going to give my guess here in this post that Glorfindel is the son of Finarfin and Earwen. This makes sense for elements of my story, but it also opens up or supports some interesting thoughts and implications that I have had for a bit but haven't put down. Maybe I will need to walk down that line of thinking and see how it looks in future posts.
This would make Glorfindel a brother of Galadriel. Both are known for their Golden Hair, with Glorfindel's name being all about his hair (Glorfindel seeming to mean, literally, "Golden Hair"). The question would be did they know this in LOTR? There isn't any indication that this is acknowledged by either of them, or anyone who knows them, so I am not sure. The fact that no acknowledgement or reference exists in the story might be evidence this guess is wrong, but there may be reasons why this state of affairs was as it was, with the most obvious reason that Glorfindel's parentage was meant to be obscure and unknown.
In any case, if this is correct, Glorfindel, like Galadriel, is unique in that in him is represented all 3 of the major Houses of the Eldar of Valinor. Finarfin, as the son of Finwe, was Noldor, but also Vanyar through his mother Indis. It is through Indis that the Golden Hair entered into the Noldorian line through Finarfin, and thus another reason to suspect that if Glorfindel was Noldor, it would be as part of Finarfin's House. His mother Earwen was Telerin, rounding out the 3rd house.
Anyway, this guess is new (as of this morning), but some of the implications and story elements it supports, as I said, are not. In a future post, I will explore why this guess, if correct, gives additional meaning to Glorfindel's role as Chief of the House of the Golden Flower, why he was a natural steward of the Anor Stone, and why him ushering Faramir-Eonwe home as part of a gathering effort makes complete sense. It involves some strange story elements that I had been exploring for quite some time, and that I couldn't quite see to make them work (and still can't fully in some instances), but in which the existence and role of Glorfindel in my tale here seems to support.
On Tuesday night, my kids convinced me to go pick up Jet's Pizza. It isn't close, it was later in the evening, and I really didn't want to go, but they put their charm on and I found myself driving across town to go get it. It was on the way to go pick up this pizza that I had my run-in with the Red Star on the back of a truck, which got my mind working in a curious way.
But I will back up and provide some background before we go down that road.
Over the last several days, I've been looking a bit more into Glorfindel, since I've identified him as potentially one of the Stone Couriers a couple weeks ago.
He appears, I believe, in these May/June words that I have been looking into since I got them again just last week under the code name Leonidas Golden Flower. The Golden Flower reference is the primary giveaway that this is who is meant, in my opinion, because Glorfindel was the chief of the House of the Golden Flower at Gondolin. This fact also strongly ties to El-Anor, or the Sun Star. Elanor, as has been pointed out before, besides referencing the Liahona-Palantir, is also the name for a golden flower found in Middle-earth (after which Samwise named one of his daughters). Remember, also for example, the woman who came to my door asking for a Sun Flower.
In other words, the House of the Golden Flower may have additional levels of meaning, and might be one of the reasons why Glorfindel had played a role, multiple times it seems, in possessing that Stone and gifting it to others for their use. In my story, it would have been him (along with Gildor) that delivered it to Lehi and his family in their escape from Jerusalem-Tirion and journey to Eressea. And it was these same two who brought it with them in search of Joseph, it seems (if we have that story right).
Anyway, all that is to say, that I had been looking into some ties between Glorfindel, the Golden Flower, and El-Anor these past few days.
The House of the Golden Flower had an emblem that was described as simply a rayed sun set on their shields - I don't believe there is much more of a description of it than that. Here is an artist's rendition of what this might have looked like that Tolkien Gateway, one of the more popular Tolkien sites, uses on their webpage:
I started writing a post on Glorfindel, and it is this image I was going to use to tie him and his house to El-Anor. In looking at the time stamp, I began writing it this week on Monday, July 1st, but a bunch of other stuff came up that day and I threw in the towel on completing it. By the next day, Tuesday, I was thoroughly distracted by William Tychonievich's Shoe Cubbies, and I spent some time also just relaying a couple dreams related to footwear.
It was on this same Tuesday evening, so the day after I started my Glorfindel post but didn't finish it, that I found myself driving to go get this pizza. Which was curious, because it is not something I would have usually done on a weekday, nor something the kids would have put such a full-court press on to have. But here I was.
I pulled off on the exit where the pizza place was, and found myself waiting at the stoplight behind a truck. It was raining pretty strongly, but I looked at the tailgate of this truck and I saw an image of a red star that seemed to me to be an exact copy of the Glorfindel / House of the Golden Flower star I had been looking at the previous day. I didn't have the Glorfindel flower in front of me, but as you can see it is a fairly unique interpretation of a 'rayed sun' and so something that is more noticeable or memorable than just a standard star.
As I looked at this image, and thought that this appeared to be exactly like this other star image, but just red, the strangest thought/ question came into my mind, which was "I wonder if the Sawtooth Stone is red?", but it was almost like a rhetorical question, in that I now thought the Stone was Red. I had never had this thought before, but looking at this truck star decal or painting made me think that perhaps this is so.
I ended up taking a picture before the light turned green. Unfortunately, the driver of the truck noticed that I took a picture. As we pulled onto the overpass and then stopped at the next light, he pulled over to get beside me and rolled down his window. I pulled up, and rolled down mine. The pizza place is in kind of sketch area of town, and if I could have kept driving I would have, but this next stoplight was red.
He was upset and asked if I took a picture of his truck. Assessing the situation and the mood of this guy, I straight up lied and said I didn't take a picture. I guess I didn't think that this was the time or place to tell him I was just interested in his star decal because it reminded me of the Elven Lord Glorfindel's shield emblem. My gut told me this wasn't going to be the right play.
In hindsight, I believe his plates were expired and he was worried I was turning him in or something. Anyway, I felt bad about lying, so after I pulled into the pizza place, I deleted the picture so that I was retroactively truthful in my statement, I guess, in not having a picture of his truck.
When I got home, I looked up the emblem on Tolkien Gateway again, and I was almost positive this was an exact copy of what I had just seen, though I now didn't have the picture I had taken.
I recovered the picture, by the way, fast forwarding to that part of this narrative. This morning, due to some other things I will get to, it was still on my mind. It turns out iPhone has a photo recovery feature where all deleted photos go into an album and are held there for 30 days, before being permanently deleted. I didn't know this. So I said screw it, I'm going to restore it. Here it is zoomed in (so we don't get a shot of my friend's expired plates):
It was raining, so the image is a little blurry through my windshield, but you can see that it is the exact same star design. The only two differences are that this one is red, and a red circle in the middle where the Golden Flower image has a flower in the center that replaces the circle. Other than that, the design and proportions are identical. Here they are side by side:
So why was I so interested in resurrecting this 16-pointed Red Star and including it in this post?
Yesterday, William relayed a dream or vision he had in which he saw a cup with a Ruby placed in it. A box turtle approached the cup, got on its hindlegs in an effort to look at the Ruby, and as a result fruit started to overflow from the cup as soon as it had done so.
I left a comment there because there were a few interesting things that stood out to me, in addition to what William had mentioned.
First, the color of the Ruby itself, being a Red gem, reminded me of this Red Star on the back of the truck.
Second, Rubies are the birthstone for the month of July - our current month - and the notion of a birthstone also brought to mind some of the symbolism I have noticed and referenced in prior posts related to the numbers associated with my own July birthday (see here for an example).
Third, William referenced my short story about Herbie the Hamster who was able to scale a wall using a seed, which grew into a plant and allowed Herbie to climb over the wall. I have, for some time now, viewed this story and specifically the seed as symbolic of the Sawtooth Stone. William saw in the turtle a similar character to Herbie, and the Ruby as a similar object to Herbie's seed (the Sawtooth Stone).
And lastly, some elements of the dream, perhaps it was the element of fruit overflowing a cup, brought to mind a dream I had back in 2022 and briefly relayed in my Part 1 post about my January and February 2022 words:
I stood in a room. In the corner of the room was a large basket of fruit hanging from a long rope of some fashion that led up to the sky. As I walked toward the basket, it began to rise up as if being pulled up the rope.
Along with that dream, came the following words: Gorash minu istuli Kementari. I've interpreted that phrase to mean something like "to counself first peak he to come Yavanna". The reference of Yavanna seems to tie in very well with the basket of fruit, as she is known as the Queen of the Earth and is responsible for all growing things. In fact, her name translates as "Giver of Fruits", and is literally "Fruit gift".
All this being said, I connected the Ruby of William's dream with the Sawtooth Stone, and consequently, the appearance of this 16-point Red Star.
In effect, it gave me the impression that perhaps my random thought of the Sawtooth Stone's color being red when I saw this image on the back of the truck wasn't so random, and that there was something to it.
It also made sense of the dream I related in my post "C'est Moi", in which someone simply identifying themselves as "C'est Moi" sent a message to "Ali", saying it had "been awhile". I interpreted that dream as perhaps alluding to the future connection between the Sawtooth Stone and the Ithil Stone. In the dream, I saw a tree flashing with a red-pink color, which brought to my mind the flashes one sees when data transmissions are being sent and received over ethernet, as I thought through the various symbolism afterward.
I didn't have a good reason for why the tree would have been flashing red, though (vs. some other color - red seemed unnatural or not typical in this setting) so I didn't have much to say about that. However, given all of this, my strong guess is that that it was red because the transmissions were sent from the the Stone, and it is in fact Red. Seems straightforward.
I guess it doesn't matter what color the Stone is, per se, but I cite these various observations to just log that they may suggest we are on the right path with some of this thinking. Further, the fact that I saw the Red Star on the back of the truck in the exact same design as Glorfindel's House emblem suggests to me that my guess that it is he who was the courier of, and perhaps ultimately the current steward for, this Red Sawtooth Stone may also be accurate. I mean pick-up trucks are meant to transport things in their beds, and here on a truck tailgate was an image that potentially represents the Sawtooth Stone.
The 16-point star is also often used as a compass rose. My story has Glorfindel and Gildor as knowing the way - the direction and location - of where the Sawtooth Stone is currently housed, so that might be another element for the use of this symbol.
I coach my youngest son's soccer team, and we had our final game of the season on Monday night. It was a crazy late game for 8 and 9 year olds, with a start time of 8:30pm. Usually he is going to bed at that time.
The game was also all the way across town, a little under an hour away. Games last about an hour, so this meant that we weren't getting home until 10:30pm or so.
I thought my son was going to be super tired on the way home since it was so late, and I told him to try to go to sleep while I drove home. He was in the back with his eyes closed, and I thought he might be nodding off. I had the radio playing quietly, tuned to Kool 108 which plays 80s and 90s songs.
"The Final Countdown" came on, and my son started singing along to it with his eyes still closed, or at least the chorus part where they say "It's the final countdown", and then you get the classic synthesizer riff. When the song was over, he asked me if I could play it again. I initially told him no for two reasons: it was on the radio, and I can't replay those songs, and he really should be trying to sleep. He said he wasn't tired anymore, though, and really wanted to listen to that song again.
After hearing arguments from both angels on either shoulder about what to do in this situation, I said screw it, why not jam to some Final Countdown on the way home? So, I pulled it up on Spotify and we spent more time than I'd care to admit blasting Final Countdown. My son pretty much views it as one of the greatest songs ever now, right up there with his other top hits of "Right Now" by Van Halen and "It's Raining Tacos" by I don't even know (he is a man of varied tastes). We did let Spotify take over for a bit. "Take on Me" by a-ha was next (covered on this blog before). "Thunderstruck" from AC/DC came on, and that was a big hit for a bit, but he said that Brian Johnson's voice had gotten a bit scary for him and was going to give him nightmares (I can see that), so we moved on. Anyway, The Final Countdown was the clear winner. At one point he asked if we could get him a lyric sheet so he could learn all of the words, and not just the chorus part.
I tend to pay a bit of attention to where his mind is going with certain things, particularly after our discussion about Francis Scott Key. In this case, I didn't pay as much attention to the song since we were just jamming out, but the next morning (yesterday) I went for a run and kicked it off with The Final Countdown, because why not. In listening to the song, I remembered my son asking about getting a lyric sheet, and so I payed attention a bit more to what the words were actually saying.
I think we have a pretty good fit here with recent storylines, actually, including the gathering off of this world to somewhere else. I am not going to go into line by line analysis, but just posting the song here for anyone interested.
In putting together the phrase "Behold, God's Gift! Peter-Pharazon to come back together with John", I used the word-names from the photo that William Tychonievich shared (because that, of course, makes complete sense and isn't crazy at all).
Because I was focused on Pharazon-Peter in what I was thinking through, and the realization that he may in fact be going back with John, I interpreted Jessie as not representing a name or Being, but rather an introductory phrase to the action of Peter returning with John.
However, in pulling this sentence together, I had a thought that perhaps Jessie represented a person, and in exploring this further, I think this thought was, in fact, correct. Thus, I am amending my earlier phrase, and we will have Jessie as a character.
That person, as I mentioned in my response to Leo, is the Holy Ghost. This works out fairly well in my story, and I feel better about the whole thing in making this change (as good as one can feel divining stories from shoe cubbies).
As mentioned in that earlier post, Jessie has a few meanings attached to it. If Jessie, the female form of the name, it is short for Jessica. This name apparently means "Foresight" or "To Behold", which is why I included it in that form in my first sentence rendition. This is actually the name that had me first thinking that this could perhaps be a reference to the Holy Ghost. Remember in my story that the Seer that Joseph of Egypt himself foretold of is the Holy Ghost (Faramir). Seers foretell things, and they use Stones with which to do this.
If Jesse, the male version of the name, we have either "the Lord exists" or "God's gift". These phrases are also descriptive of the Holy Ghost, in a few ways. According to Abinadi, it will be prophets as Beings standing on Mountains and publishing words with "Beautiful Feet" who proclaim to Zion that "Thy God Reigneth!". Abinadi, who again I also have as this same reincarnated Holy Ghost, is one of these Beings, and recall that I have him standing before Noah exercising one of the exact missions that is associated with the Holy Ghost: bearing record of the Father and the Son, which Jesus at Bountiful would later specifically teach as that Being's role.
The Gift angle of Jesse brings to mind what the Holy Ghost will bring and which must be 'received', what is often referred to as the Gift of the Holy Ghost, which I think is probably not really interpreted very accurately in modern Mormon theology. A Gift, interestingly, also refers or points to the Seer of Joseph's prophecy that I just alluded to.
When Ammon found the people of Limhi, Limhi asked him if he could translate Ether's 24 plates which they had found. Ammon replied that he could not, but Mosiah could, because he had the 'interpreters'. In explaining what a seer was, Ammon says this:
And behold, the king of the people who are in the land of Zarahemla is the man that is commanded to do these things, and who has this high gift from God.
And the king [Limhi] said that a seer is greater than a prophet.
And Ammon said that a seer is a revelator and a prophet also; and a gift which is greater can no man have, except he should possess the power of God, which no man can; yet a man may have great power given him from God.
There is no greater gift from God, in Ammon's opinion, than that of being a Seer, and in this story the Holy Ghost is sent back to this world as part of his mission to take on that Seership (and, again, part of the definition of being a Seer is the possession of Stones).
Lastly, with respect to the name of Jesse-Jessie and why I think it may allude to the Holy Ghost is the nature of the name itself. It is a gender-neutral name that can apply to both a boy and a girl, we we've just seen above. In the strange story element I have explored here, I have the Holy Ghost being something of a dual entity, comprised of two Beings, a set of Twins comprised of a man and a woman, who are in this case, Faramir-Eonwe and Asenath-Nimloth. Thus, the choice of a name applicable to both a man or a woman makes sense.
OK, so with this change, we now have a phrase that reads:
Holy Ghost and Pharazon-Peter to come back together with John
With the addition of the second name and companion of Peter, even the translation of yoyo makes a lot of sense, particularly the use of "together". Yo definitely means 'together' in Elvish, but the translation on Eldamo suggested that this sense of together refers to 3 or more things or individuals. I didn't think it was a big deal, and even with just Peter and John I thought it worked fine, but now we have 3 individuals and it fits even better, perhaps.
The other things I really like about this change, and the update in my story, is that these two Beings I also have identified as Gim Guru and Gim Githil: The Gim G's, as I have referred to them as. This phrase now has them returning home together.
What of the Two Elves, Glorfindel and Gildor? They are Beings I have identified as ushers, perhaps specifically for Faramir, or one of the Gim G's. I don't think that changes. They know where Tom's House is, having found it before, and so they lead the Gim G's to its location in France. They may also accompany them further "West", but even if so, it seems that John is going to take the lead on that particular leg of the journey, perhaps. So, I think we are still good, but we will see how things unfold.
It does, however, if true, eliminate Pharazon as a candidate to be the "Man among the Gentiles" who sails across with a corrupted book. That doesn't work here. We've first tried Brigham, and now Pharazon, but neither seems to fit for different reasons. I am down in the count at two strikes. So, that spot opens up for another Being to step into, and we'll just have to see how that plays out, and wait for the right pitch to swing at.
To conclude, the picture of the two Pandas on the sandals in Yoyo's cubby has me thinking this is a wink that this new interpretation of having both Gim Guru and Gim Githil return with John make sense. We have two Pied Beings together, and this Black and White reference has seemingly been a theme or reference for both individuals.
So, I think the shoe cubby reading works better this way: Gim Guru and Gim Githil accompany John back home.
This will also make more sense in the story, I think, after I go through a little of the evacuation from the May-June 2020 timeframe that I believe I see. 82 of the 96 Numenorean Elvish Fathers are apparently safely somewhere and accounted for. 14 are still not, and I believe these are the Vanyar, or the First. The numbers work out for it to be so, at least. They Firs shall be Last, it is said, and it is their group that still remains ungathered if my guess right now is correct. Gim Githil in my story is one of these 14, since he is Ingwe, the head of the Vanyar who led everyone back home to begin with, and so it makes sense that he has yet to go home if the others of his clan or group have not yet either.
Even though 14 are still left, 15 are mentioned as still needing to come home. The 15th is, in my view, Gim Guru, who will also return as part of this initial scene, potentially acting in the capacity of advocate and counsellor on behalf of the 96 as a story might potentially be shared that will change things in both Heaven and on our Earth, and the these Beings may be re-deemed, in the fullest sense of that word.
That is another post, though, but this alteration of my earlier guess to now include the Holy Ghost in this phrase leads nicely into it in my mind.
I was going to cover this dream from last night in the last post I just wrote, but felt it was too much of a tangent in terms of scope to drag that one on longer just to cover. So, I will do it here instead. The tie back to that post, however, just to keep in mind, is this concept of 'footwear' and slippers or slip-shoes, which extends all the way back to at least the Xanadu posts about needing new shoes to roller-skate on, and even a day before that over on William Tychonievich's blog where he had a reference to a running shoe called the Gel-Nimbus.
So, the dream:
I was with my two youngest kids at something like a shopping mall. I had to leave them in a store for some reason that I forgot, and I told them that I would be back to get them and they needed to stay there in the store until I returned. No wandering off. I went off to run an errand or something (I can't remember exactly where I went off to or why), and I eventually returned to the store.
Upon returning, I found my daughter walking around the store and she came up to me and said my youngest had not been really behaving as well as she thought he should have been. This wasn't surprising given my youngest son's energy and tendency to get into mischief (as well as my daughter's tendency to try and get him into trouble). I went to go find him, and found both him and a person I took to be the store owner. As the store owner saw me approaching, he turned to my son and simply said "You need to go now, [son's name]". He then turned and walked away into a back room. My first instinct was to think that my son really must have been misbehaving to get that kind of treatment (but I reconsidered this upon waking up, and felt that the store owner was just telling my son that since I was back, it was time for him to leave).
We left the store, and were a little way down the street when I realized I had forgotten my shoes. This is now the 2nd dream in the last few days involving shoes for me (maybe I will recount the other one here also, now that I think about it). As I was deciding what to do, two assistants from the store we had been at came running up behind us with my flip-flops (the kind of footwear I had been wearing). I thanked them for tracking us down and returning them, and then said something like "I wouldn't have gotten very far without these!".
The specific flip-flops I wear are OluKai brand, and it was these same sandals in the dream - this was prominently shown to be what they were carrying. The symbol for OluKai is the Makau, or fishhook:
Straight from OluKai's website, they say the Makau symbolizes "safe passage over water":
Regarded as a symbol for safe passage over water, the makau, or fishhook, brings good fortune and strength to those who wear it.
One of the assistants also had a single shoe in their hand, and I looked down and saw that my daughter was only wearing one shoe. The shoe the assistants were carrying belonged to her. My daughter is always forgetting things in real life, and I asked her how she could have both left her shoe and also failed to recognize this fact as we were walking ("How could you not realize you were walking with one shoe on!?"). She simply replied that she hadn't thought she would need it. I then told her to take the shoe from the assistants anyway, because a person really should have two shoes on, and even if she didn't want to wear it or think she needed it, we should bring it with us just in case.
I then woke up.
Alright, so there is some pretty obvious symbolism here that ties into other things noted on this blog, but also on William's. I am not even going to go into them right now, though, so am just logging the dream.
Here is the dream I had a few days ago also related to footwear.
I was playing football for my college team again, though not like back in time - just now and obviously older, or later in time. This was made obvious by my old defensive coordinator going out of his way to say to me "It is good to have you back!". The arrangement seemed strange, but I guess I got used to in in the dream-reality. And I actually had fun playing again, with the added benefit that I felt really young again, even if I knew I was older.
I ended up playing in multiple games, it seemed, or maybe it was during halftime, but I found myself in the locker room unable to find the cleats I had been wearing. I assumed someone took them by mistake, so I asked around and checked with the equipment manager.
I was directed toward a pair of cleats that, if I remember correctly, were suggested might be mine. They were white, like my missing cleats, and were my size, but that is where the similarities ended. I had been wearing Nike cleats, and these were definitely not Nikes. As I inspected the cleats closer, I saw that they were a brand I had never heard of before. Running along the back heel of each cleat was the brand name (or what I assumed was the brand name) "ACE" in all caps like that.
I turned the cleats over to look at the condition of the actual cleats or studs themselves. What I found was surprising. While the shoes definitely had studs on the bottom, they were covered by a sheet of special material that was stretched over them, running along the whole sole of the shoe, so that for all intents and purposes the surface was flat (i.e., the sheet didn't follow the contours of the studs, but just was laid flatly over them). The material that covered the cleats looked like they were meant to run on something, for sure, but it didn't seem like it would be grass, given that the studs would not be able to provide any traction or dig into the ground with the sheet in the way. They looked like they were almost meant to slide or glide over something. Thinking that this must all be some kind of mistake, I set the cleats down, and then woke up.
Well, the shoe cubbies at William Tychonievich's language school have become a source of messages and stories. I guess we should have seen this coming.
In his original post titled Leo, Egbert, Peter, he noted that the order of name labels for 3 of his students' shoe cubbies matched up with the first 3 names the title of my post Leon Egbert, Pharazon, and Sun-Moon Time. This is only true, however, if we assume that Peter is another name or identity for Pharazon, which is of course what I have hypothesized here on this blog, and specifically in that post that William linked to, to no one's greater surprise initially than my own, honestly.
So, perhaps a wink that this guess has some wings to it.
It gets even a little more interesting though based on recent developments.
I left a comment on that initial post with respect to the types of shoes William mentioned that he has his students change into: Slippers. Rather than retyping it or just linking it, here is what I wrote so we have it here:
I wonder if the fact that these labels are on shelves that the students use to change their "shoon" before going upstairs is meaningful?
Slippers comes from the term slip-shoe. To slip can mean both to 'escape, or move softly and quickly', but also 'to glide or slide'. In this definition, it is somewhat of a synonym for 'skate', which also means to glide (as well as to escape, or get away with something), over ice with ice-skates, or along the ground with roller-skates.
Wearing new shoes that slip or glide in order to be able to go somewhere has come up before:
To summarize, when I saw the shoe cubby, my mind went to two things: William's earlier post regarding 'shoon' (shoes), and the movie Xanadu, where I have made a big deal in the past about people needing new shoes to go to Tirion-Jerusalem, as symbolized by people gliding around on roller-skates. I first did this in the post I linked in that comment, and then continued with the analogy in posts like "Ho!" and "X marks the spot" and in other posts as well.
I will touch on William's Shoon poem at the end briefly because of a dream I had last night, but I wanted to quickly touch on Xanadu and then bring it back to the latest image William shared of those shoe cubbies and the story I see there.
In Xanadu, my own view is that the character of Danny McGuire is meant to represent John-Thingol. As part of this role, and within the analogy, we actually see Danny-John as the one who leads the Xanadu procession on roller-skates at the end of the movie. He is the Master of Ceremonies, and gets everyone on their feet and following him as they skate around and slippers on their way to Xanadu.
Here is the video in case you haven't watched the spectacle lately.
It is Danny-John who is clearly leading the procession, as shown by the Gene Kelly zoom-in here at the outset, before he starts skating around and encouraging everyone to follow him:
OK, but why I am I bringing up John in this context - what does he have to do with William's shoe cubbies? Well, his name shows up there, based on the latest image that William posted.
In the images and commentary that William shared, we have 6 names: Jessie, Leo, Egbert, Peter, Yoyo, and Ivan.
So, let's see what this says, shall we?
William already covered the original 3 names, and combined those into one Being: Pharazon-Peter. I agree with this interpretation, so we'll leave that as is.
Turning to the top, or beginning, we have Jessie. Jessie is a name with a few different meanings. As a translation of "Jesse", you have a hebrew name like "Gift of God". It also, however, can mean "foresight" or "behold" if a short form of Jessica. So, I've lumped those all in together to have this word mean something will - certainly - happen in the future, and it is due to God's gift.
The object of God's gift and grace and this future event is Peter-Pharazon, as is captured in the next 3 words.
The final two words suggest what it is that God's grace and gift now allows.
Yoyo is the next word, and William mentions this is a common English name adopted by his students, thanks to the cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
William also connects this yo-yo with the yo-yo toy in his latest Animalia art reading. In seeing this, my mind instantly went to the function of a yo-yo. You throw it down, and it returns back up. It is hooked to the finger with a string, and all it requires is a 'pull' and the yo-yo comes right back to your hand. The yo-yo analogy was already going through my mind with respect to Pharazon and the rest of the Numenorean-Elvish Fathers relative to a 'return' when I looked up the word to see if it meant anything, which it does.
The yo-yo name apparently comes from the Philippines, where it means "come, come" (I pulled this from the Smithsonian website which has a history of the yo-yo). Other translations have it mean something like "come back" or "return". Any of these work for our purposes as we string these words together.
Interestingly, as a piece of trivia that might blow your mind given the subject matter, the yo-yo is cited as first being introduced to America by a Filipino immigrant in San Francisco named Pedro Flores. Pedro, of course, is the Spanish form of Peter.
"Yo" has also come up before in my Elvish words, however, sufficiently enough for me to know that it means "together, with" in that language. And that is how I also saw this word as I looked at the shoe cubby image, meaning we had a double word here in both Filipino and Elvish.
Lastly, we come to Ivan. Ivan is the Russian form of John, and this is where we see his name.
Interestingly and as somewhat of a tangent, given all of the Gorilla and Sasquatch references lately, there is a popular book and a movie based on that book called The one and only Ivan, about a Gorilla named Ivan who is freed from captivity at a shopping mall after remembering his life before captivity and making artwork conveying the word "home". I think relevant, but again, a tangent for this post.
Putting that all together in a sentence that might mean something, we have (as in the title of this post):
Behold, God's gift! Peter-Pharazon to come back together with John.
This is a remarkable sentence that we can easily derive from these shoe cubby words, and it is remarkable not only because of the Xanadu analogy. John, based on his role and mission, perhaps, seems to play a role in the collection of members of this Family and their return Home. It is referenced once in Doug's writings, as well as one time in my own words.
At the end of Words of Them that have Slumbered, Thingol (who is John, in my book) comes to the island of Tol-Morwen in order to get Nienor and take her home to Aman, where ills done to her and her house will be healed. At first, Nienor resists and tries to frighten away John, but he persists and tells her he isn't going anywhere without her:
... come, and see
In the waters, new hope, estel living come to thee, Daughter-Hurin
It is I, Thingol-Elwe Singollo....
Come daughter-Hurin, and find in my paddling, assuage
Of ill done to thee and thy house, I will bear thee
Far off, to lands where thy parentage proceeded,
And where thou may likewise enter a flame-bath
And among Vala-kind, take thy place
In my own words, it seems initially the plan was for Joseph to return home with Thingol back in 2020, as conveyed in words I received on January 19, 2020, and which I covered in an earlier post:
Benu au doriel mit Thingol luke elanor
Which, I have something like: "Husband away land-daughter with Thingol [and] enchanted El-Anor". In other words, Joseph would have El-Anor, the Darkened Sun Stone delivered to him by Heavenly Messengers, and Thingol-John to personally escort him home. Again, this seems very similar to both the account of the rescue and gathering of Nienor, as well as with an earlier finding and rescue of Joseph by Thingol in the depths as captured in Words of the Faithful.
This is also consistent with John's mission as Joseph Smith understood it, and as what seems to be captured in the analogy of Xanadu, which is the gathering of Israel.
In D&C 77, Joseph interprets John eating the little book (from Revelations 10), as him accepting his mission to gather Israel:
Q. What are we to understand by the little book which was eaten by John, as mentioned in the 10th chapter of Revelation?
A. We are to understand that it was a mission, and an ordinance, for him to gather the tribes of Israel; behold, this is Elias, who, as it is written, must come and restore all things.
And so, in our story, and in the analogies explored on this blog, it would be entirely consistent for Pharazon-Peter to return home in the company of John. Whether that is an individual escort, or as part of a larger group, I don't know, but William's shoe cubbies seem to suggest and support the point that not only is Pharazon the same Being as Peter, but that he will come home in the company of his old partner, friend, and Kin: John.
I actually think this will be an individual escort, honestly, as I think about it. If I am right that Pharazon-Peter is also Gim-Githil or Ingwe, and thus one of the original three who went back to Valinor, in the company of Thingol (John) and Finwe (maybe the Being we know as God the Father), then I think it is a nice touch in the story for those three to be reunited in Aman, with Thingol escorting him there.
I don't know - we'll see how that works, but that is how the story plays out in my mind at the moment, partially thanks to those shoe cubbies.
Also, I do want to note, but not get into, the presence of the Black and White pandas - another Pied animal - on the sandals of those shoes in the Yoyo cubby.
OK, this post turned out long enough, where I am going to cover my dream in a separate post right after this one, just to keep the scope and message of this one a bit tighter. So, that is a wrap.
