The importance of "Ten", and the Strait-Straight line home

 Just a quick follow-up to my post regarding my dream of The Case of the Stolen Pumpkin Money.

I realized $10, in being the exact amount I thought this friend needed, lines up with Mach 10 from the Top Gun:  Maverick scene.

In Top Gun, Maverick is told that it is Mach 10 that is the contract threshold.   He has to get to Mach 10, but he is warned about going over it.  The exact statement from his flight director is:

"Now remember:  The contract threshold is Mach 10.  Not 10.1.  Not 10.2.  Mach 10!  That should keep the program alive."

In the movie, Maverick of course doesn't heed the warning.  He sits there at Mach 10, and then decides what the hell, I am going to go Mach 10.1.  It is at this point that he loses control of the ship, and everything blows up.

So the warning was valid and should have been heeded.  Mach 10.  Maverick's experience validates this.  Bad things happen both below and above this magical number.  It has to be 10.

In that Top Gun post, I translated Mach 10 phonetically into Elvish (because again why not?) as Makten, and proposed that this could mean something like "Sword cut straight to arrive-come".  My dream from this morning might seem to validate my interpretation here, and I think perhaps adds some additional clarity.  

It is "Ten" that I am worried my friend has in his hand, and that something below or above this amount isn't what we agreed on and is somehow bad.  I, at least, was very concerned that he have $10 - that exact amount - and even more concerned that when I gave him what I thought was a different amount (I think more) he lied about how much he ended up with and walked off.

I have guessed that it is through these Stones that Asenath created by which she will raise her family to Shine once again as a gathered group back in Aman.  Somehow, these Stones allow for this to happen for all who have and use them, or at least the Stories that come from them - they end up where they need to be.

In my previous Makten translation, I emphasize the "to arrive, come to" aspect of Ten, that second syllable.  But Ten has a few other meanings that complement this one, as well as add additional perspective to the exactness that seems to be emphasized around this word and what it signifies.

Here are some other selected meanings of Ten, and see if you find a pattern here:

• Direction, Point (toward); end (in sense of point aimed at)
• Indicate, signify, show, represent, betoken, mark, to point at
• Line, direction

Ten represents a specific direction, as represented by a line of travel.  So, based on my thoughts now, I would modify my earlier translation of Makten above to be something like:  

Sword cut straight line to arrive-come

This straightforward translation makes a remarkable amount of sense for so many reasons based on my thinking right now, and as I will get to at the end of this post, gives us a bit of a connection with Lehi and Nephi's (and Joseph Smith, Sr.s!) vision of Beings following a path to arrive at some destination.

In order to reach where we need to go, there are obviously infinite points and directions that we could go off on.  Only one of those lands in the right place.  Thus, the importance of Ten, signifying "the line or direction" - anything "less or more" than this, or different, in our analogy, doesn't land us in the right spot.

One can think of Tolkien's analogy or use of the Straight Road in thinking of this meaning of Ten. Similarly, pulling some of these other elements together, one can think of the straight and narrow path that leads to eternal life, attributed to Jesus in the New Testament, but also expounded on by Nephi (son of Lehi) in his some of his own closing words before handing the record to Jacob:

Wherefore, do the things which I have told you I have seen that your Lord and your Redeemer should do; for, for this cause have they been shown unto me, that ye might know the gate by which ye should enter. For the gate by which ye should enter is repentance and baptism by water; and then cometh a remission of your sins by fire and by the Holy Ghost.

And then are ye in this strait and narrow path which leads to eternal life; yea, ye have entered in by the gate...

Ten may represent both the line of travel that this 'narrow path' represents, as well as the destination it leads to.  This then gets to the vision I mentioned above regarding the Tree of Life, and so that destination is the White Tree.  I have written about this White Tree before, and even given it a name based on some of my own dreams:  Galathilion, the White Tree of Tirion.

This reading supports why Ten is symbolized so emphatically in my dream following its mention in Top Gun yesterday  - I don't think that is by accident - and the illustration in that movie of what happens if we don't stick to "the line or direction", which is the exact definition of Ten in Elvish.  Maverick (meaning a Calf, who is being led up to a stall or Holy Place) was doing just fine sticking to Ten.  He got in trouble when he decided to push past it, and was no longer on the "path".

I think this ties in pretty nicely, and seems like a fairly good interpretation of my being so concerned about the number Ten in my dream - that my friend walking off with (it turns out counterfeit) money have Ten.  This also brings me to the fact that I interpret Lehi's dream as being much more literal (though still spoken through symbols) than most Book of Mormon readers in that I see it as representing an actual journey, from our world to another, where the White Tree resides and will at some point Shine like a beacon welcoming all of the Family of Light home.

A path must be created for us to follow, as per Lehi's dream.  The "Sword" and the Swordsman might allude to the means by which this path is created, in that someone and something must cut and mark a path home.  I am going to get into this with another post on this Swordsman, though as we've mentioned before, bearing a different kind of Sword.  A Sword in the shape of Balls, or the words that come from those Balls (i.e., the Brittany Spears)

We see it also symbolized, I think, however, in the image of Hermes or Mercury, and his famous staff, the Caduceus.  It is this I want to write about next, and it will tie back (again, I believe) to the two sticks I was wondering about yesterday when Maverick was called a "Stick Jockey".  It comes together pretty well, actually, at least in my initial thinking, so I will try to get that down, and we will see how it looks at that point.