Oregon and the symbols around us

I'm going to use an example from a bottle of Oil of Oregano to illustrate a broader trend right now with respect to symbols.

I haven't been feeling super great the last couple days - a bit sick, actually - and last night my wife had pulled out a bunch of concoctions for me to take.  She prides herself in being somewhat of an apothecarian with natural herbs, potions, and whatever when someone in the house gets sick.

On the counter this morning were the bottles sitting there in a group, and as I looked at them, the only label that was visible from my perspective was the Oil of Oregano bottle.  But, it was partially obscured to cover the last letter, so the label read "Oil of Oregan".

In seeing this, I thought that I should look this up in Elvish.  In hindsight, it must have been the Ore that jogged the Elvish thought, coupled with the fact that Oregan looks very similar to Oregon, where I lived and grew up, had me interested in the word in that moment, I guess.

I knew Ore meant something even as I was looking it up.  That word had come up early in my 2019 words and I had mentioned in here in context of a Stone and what I thought initially was some mention of "Juice", but waffled and also thought of "Honeycomb", but now I think it could be either/ both.  I don't know.  But, this isn't about the in any case.  In those words I had translated or took Ore in the context of that sentence to mean "Rising" or "to Rise" (or also "Perceive"), and this was in the specific context of Rising to Aman with a Stone.  Here are those words from Nov. 1, 2019:

sardi ar dyenido starerios aman-ore

We've covered Starerios before and penciled him in as representing Faramir.  So, that last part of the sentence - Starerios aman-ore - would mean something like "Stareriors-Faramir Aman to rise", or more clearly "Starerios to rise to Aman".  The first word of the phrase, Sardi, can mean something like "With Stone".

And this concept of rising to a place not on this world (i.e., Aman) with the use of a Stone has been around in my mind for quite some time - it wasn't long after these words and looking them up back in November that this story of a Being or Beings either traveling to another place with aid of a Stone or seeing or perceiving that place took shape in my mind.

With that as a reminder or backdrop, I then preceded to look up the other part of Oregan, Gan.  There, I got something like "young" or possibly "to play on a stringed instrument" (based on the word root NGAN), though Gan more directly means "Harp".  So, we have "To rise and play harp", maybe.  I did think of the scene just now from the Chipmunk Adventure where Alvin takes a Harp from one of the Greek statues and begins playing it:

However, at the time, none of these really clicked, and I decided since the word already looked so much like Oregon, and phonetically it isn't that different than how an Elf might pronounc Oregan, with the long A sound, I would look that word up.  They would probably make it sound like everyone out here in Minnesota makes it sound when they brutally assault the pronunciation of my home state in saying OR-EE-GONE.  It is OR-UH-GUN, really short u sound, folks, almost like you are slurring the G and the N.  Please.

Therefore, I looked up the word as if it were Oregon.  I should have known this, but Gon can mean a couple things here, both very relevant.  It can either mean "Stone" or it can mean "Prince, Nobleman".  

OK, so what that means is that Oregon, in Elvish, would mean "Stone [and] Prince to rise", which fits very well, if not exactly, with the concept that I interpreted from those November 1st words.  I mean, like exactly.  Starerios, as Faramir, has been called in those 2022 words an "Heir of Yavanna", with Yavanna being known as Queen of the Earth, making Faramir in this particular case rightfully called a prince, I suppose.  And my story, which has come out in multiple ways here, involves him rising to Aman (Tirion, specifically).

And so this got me thinking about these words and symbols that we find around us, in everyday life, and how they seem to support or speak to this story or certain aspects of it that I have been trying to work through in my writing here.

I'll give you some examples of symbols from my own personal life to illustrate, some of which I've already mentioned on this blog.

We just covered Oregon, where I grew up.  I was born, as I mentioned, in San Ramon, California, though we moved up to Oregon before I was 2 years old.  I've already covered San Ramon in a previous post.  San Ramon is considered part of the San Francisco Bay Area, and when I tell people where I was born, to keep it simple and just say San Francisco.  Francisco is the Spanish form of Francis, and therefore goes along with this French theme, or Free Man.  France.

A significant part of my writing has focused on Twins, whether with actual Beings, or with Cities.  The Book of Mormon, through the prophet Ether, mentions two very specific cities, and only two, that are these Holy Places I write about here:  Jerusalem and New Jerusalem.  Two Cities, or Twin Cities.  My family and I currently live in the Twin Cities metropolitan area of Minnesota, which consists of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Minnesota is said to come from the Dakota language, and combines Water (Minne) and the Sky (Sota).  Per a Dakota language professor at the University of Minnesota, there are a few meanings, all having to do with comparing Water with the Sky.  From a Star Tribune article:

When Mní Sota is pronounced with a hard "s" sound — the way the state's name is typically spoken — it means clear.

"A literal translation would be clear water," Šišókaduta said. "But what it ... really refers to is where the waters reflect the skies, because the water is clear and still."

In other words, to put my own spin on it, the water appears to be the sky (as a reflection), or the water could be mistaken for the sky, and vice versa.  I have spent quite a bit of my time on this blog writing about how when we read about people crossing Waters they are actually cross the Sky.

I have written about Stones and the fact that they are Keys, and that these Keys will open up a straight road for people to ascend and go on a Sky Walk.

The road my house is on is named Keystone.  Or, rather, it should be named Keystone, but just a little north of my house as you would travel from the North to the South, maybe half a mile up the road from my driveway, the road bends and takes on a different name, but only for that small section.  After passing my home (the last on that differently named road) it hits another county road, where it does a dogleg and gets back in it's original alignment to once again become Keystone.

In other words, as you look at the road from a satellite view, it looks as if this straight road bends and then breaks in a section, so that what should be one continuous road running North-South, is severed.  The place or address at which that Straight Road bends belongs to a man with the last name of Young.  His first name isn't Brigham, but you get my point, and the symbolism suggests that thanks to Young, a House is left with a broken road and no Key Stone.

I use these examples to say that I find myself surrounded in my own life and story by symbols and meanings that are also found in this other story.  Forget reading the backs of Cicadas, everything around me becomes some kind of symbol or reference to a story.  

I read an article this morning of a man who lost his wife and twin children in an Israeli airstrike.  He had left to go pick up the birth certificates (his children were 4 days old), and while he was gone the apartment building was shelled, with his wife, mother-in-law, and his twins inside of it.  It is a heartbreaking story, and I can't even begin to imagine what he is experiencing right now.  Here is the picture I saw in reading the article:

He is wearing a ChristianDior shirt, but it is only the Dior that is visible.  Dior, recall, is another name for Joseph of Egypt.  One very unique aspect of my story here is that Joseph is a Twin, with Eowyn-Ilmare as his sister.  And here we have that name Dior, bracketed on either side by birth certificates for twins.  Joseph and Eowyn are obviously a boy-girl twin set in this other story.  I guessed the genders of these man's twins before even looking it up, and yes, they were also boy-girl.  Dior himself was also the father of Twins, and he lost them in the events at Doriath, by the way, also at the hands of Brigham Young-Dairon.  That just came to my mind, and I thought I should note that here as well.

So even in this tragedy, my eyes are drawn to symbols that seem very relevant and completely unmistakeable, and it is happening all the time now, whether in things I see or in thoughts I have.  That is just where I am at this particular point of riding whatever wave I am on at the moment.