Numenorean Pandas, Finn-iest adverts, and never say no to a panda

I couldn't pass this one up.

Yesterday, Bruce Charlton, one of William Tychonievich's blogger friends, wrote a post titled "Never say no to a panda...", in which he included a link to advertisements from Egypt featuring a panda who terrorizes people who choose not to eat his cheese.  Here is a screen capture of his post, and you will see at the end of my own post why I wanted to capture the image in case he went back and changed it.

Well, there are definitely some things to look into here.

It should strike any reader here that we are dealing with a "pied" animal in the mighty Panda.  Pied as in the classical term of Black and White.  While not really mentioned too much lately on this blog, we can go back to the Pied Piper of Hamelin for some symbolism here.  The Pied Piper first showed up here on my birthday post just a little over a year ago now, titled "National Rat Catcher's Day", because apparently my birthday does indeed fall on that illustrious holiday thanks to the poet Robert Browning.

I didn't know that Pied meant Black and White, however, at the time of that post.  That realization would not come until earlier this year in March, and I included this in part of my post "The Pi-ed Piper".  In the post, I also tied this back to Pi (the symbol), the Kirtland Temple, other Pied Animals, Steve Miller's Abracadabra, and a whole host of other random things - the works, basically.  Later posts brought in the WWE symbolism of The Rock dressed up in his Pied Vest, and that whole storyline with Roman Reigns was fun to follow.

 

Throughout this, I have associated the person of Faramir-Eonwe as this "Pied Piper" character, sometimes very explicitly so, also bringing in other Pied things that connected in various ways (e.g., Orcas, Black and White Rabbits, Oreo cookies - you name it).  Later, I would also include Peter-Pharazon as potentially being represented as a Pied Being. 

I went through that background just as a reminder that pied animals have been symbolically linked to the Faramir-Eonwe character for some time - this isn't something I am just doing now because of this recent post by Bruce.  Anyone ever watch Braveheart, by the way?  I have this urge right now to go full-on William Wallace (another WW) and start calling him The Bruce...

Back to things that matter like psychopathic Pandas.

I am going to suggest - shockingly - that this Panda we see here represents Faramir as well.  I know, you didn't see that coming. 

The fact that this is a Panda from Egypt is our first clue.  In addition to the long standing association of Pied things with specific characters here on this blog, Egypt is right up there for being also consistently associated with something else:  Numenor.   Tolkien himself associated Egypt with Numenor, and I have been pretty clear in various thoughts and writings that in many instances when we are dealing with things such as Joseph Smith's Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language (GAEL), in my opinion by Egypt we really mean Numenor.

So, we have this Numenorean Panda.  We know Numenor is associated with Peter-Pharazon for sure, but does Numenor have anything to do with Faramir?  It sure does.  Not only as his former role of Eonwe in helping to establish that land, but also later he would be explicitly tied to it by both Gandalf and Eowyn (beyond just the general fact that Gondor was established by Numenoreans, and thus many of its people were their descendents, from various lines and houses).  Gandalf would acknowledge the strong Numenorean "blood" running in him, as well as in Denethor (but strangely not in Boromir).  Eowyn would refer to him as being of the race of Numenor after she let him out of the friendzone.

Panda is an interesting word.  It's French, apparently. or at least a French take on a Nepalese name, from what I gather.  I had a hard time following the explanation I had read, actually, so we are going to treat it as Elvish for right now, because we can.

Panda as an entire Elvish word means "Enclosure", but not just any enclosure - on Eldamo, it is classified under "circular enclosures".  Further, Panda is awfully close to Panta, which one meaning has "to write a book", and also something like "to open".  Beating this horse further to death, breaking Panda down into parts of Pan and Da, we get something like "to arrange or set in order high".   Fairly relevant terms or actions for Faramir, at least in terms of what we have explored here.  I am not going to go into all of them because they are here on this blog, but take "Enclosure".  Faramir (since he is Zhera') will loosen or enlarge the girdle of Arda, whatever that specifically means.  Per Etymonline, Girdle comes from the root Gher which means "to enclose".  And there has been mention of writing books, and setting some things in order in a high place, etc., in some of my other posts.

Nonsense, you say.  This is a too much of a stretch.  Well, I will point you to my strongest evidence that there is something here to help us see a story, and it comes from Bruce's own typo.

You'll note that it appears he meant to type "Funniest" but instead wrote "Finniest".  Well, you should all know what Finn or Fin means in Elvish by now - yes, hair, but more specifically, this is a name for Finwe.

I have not yet written the post that I said I would try and get to (maybe this is a nudge?), but have stated in a few instances recently that my guess is Eonwe would become Finarfin while still in Valinor (i.e., incarnate as an Elf), and this might be important to our story for a few reasons, not least because he is able to operate outside of the Ban or Doom of the Valar with respect to his House for the rest of the story of this Creation.

Finarfin has Fin appear twice in his name, once at the beginning and then again at the end.  His name would actually loosely be translated as "Finwe, Noble Finwe".  This is a fairly Finn-y name, right?  In fact it is tied for the Finn-iest name in Tolkien's stories, since Finarfin's brother Fingolfin also sported two Fins.  

Anyway, this is all to say that I support the message of these advertisements.  It might be in our best interests to say yes to any Numenorean Pied Piper Pandas showing up.

Note:  I just went back to Bruce's blog as I was wrapping this up and noticed he corrected his typo, so I am glad I took the screenshot above. . . that would have totally wrecked everything!