From the Narrow Desert

Last night, curious about John Dee and Edward Kelley's vision of a many-eyed whale which I had heard summarized by Jason Louv on a podcast, I searched the Internet for john dee whale and found on Google Books the part of Louv's 2018 book, John Dee and the Empire of Angels, where this vision is related. Louv gave the date of the vision as April 27. That date struck me as significant or familiar somehow but I wasn't sure how.

Then I looked back at my recent post "The many-eyed whale shows up again," and saw that it begins, "Back in 2014, in the early hours of April 26, I had a dream . . . ." But my original post describing that dream, "A beast with many eyes," didn't give the date of the dream itself but just said, "On Friday night (actually, very early Saturday morning), I dreamed . . . ." For some reason, I had thought it was important to mention the date of the dream in my recent post, so I checked a 2014 calendar for the Saturday before the date of the post.

I went back and checked the date of the post. It was April 27, 2014.

I had checked all this on my phone just before going to bed. It was late, so I told myself that in the morning I would look it up again and post on it.

In the morning, I got up and went into the study. I found that my wife had left her laptop on so she could charge something in the USB port. Whatever version of Windows she has shows a picture when the computer is on but you haven't signed in yet. It's generally some sort of exotic scenery, with something you can click on to get more information about that place. Today, the picture was this:

On my own computer, I went to Google Books to find and transcribe the passage that gives the date of the whale vision, only to find that I was no longer able to do so: "You have either reached a page that is unavailable for viewing or reached your viewing limit for this book."

Fortunately, Louv's source material, Meric Casaubon's A True & Faithful Relation of What passed for many Yeers between Dr. John Dee (A Mathematician of Great Fame in Q. Eliz. and King James their Reignes) and Some Spirits, is available online. I found the whale bit, which starts on p. 102, but it is dated only "Friday, Cracoviae, Aprilis." However, looking back at the date of the previous entry, on p. 93, we find "Wensday, Cracoviae, Aprilis 25," so Louv's date of April 27 for the whale vision checks out. As for the year, the vision took place in Kraków. Dee went to Poland in September 1583 and returned to England in 1589. The only year in that range in which April 27 falls on a Friday is 1586.

(Update: I had for some reason checked June 27 instead of April! The actual year was 1584, as given on p. 73.)

Here is the account as given in A True & Faithful Relation.

The Firmament and the waters were joyned together, and the Whale CAME, like unto a legion of stormes: or as the bottomless Cave of the North when it is opened: and she was full of eyes on every side.

The Prophet said, Stand still, but they trembled. The waters sank, and fell suddenly away, so that the Whale lay upon the Hill, roaring like a Cave of Lions, and the Prophet took them by the hands, and led them to the Whales mouth, saying, Go in, but they trembled vehemently; He said unto them the second time, Go in: and they durst not. And he sware unto them, and they entred in, and he lifted up his voyce, and cried mightily, Come away, and, lo, they stood before him richer than an Emperours Throne, for unto him that was naked, were clothes given: unto him that was a child and a man, were 12 gates opened. And the Prophet cried mightily, and said, This Whale cannot die; and lifted up his voyce again and said: Within this Whale are many Chambers, and secret dwelling places, which I will divide betwixt you on the right side (unto the which was a child, and now a man) there are twelve opened, but unto thee that hast provided strange Garments for thy self, and not such as men use to wear, I will give thee head, hart, and left side, whose places are 46. You shall enter, and be possessed this day together: And behold, the son shall return again 21 times, and in one year, but not all at one time. You shalt depart hence into a dwelling that shall be all one: where there is no end, the place of comfort and inspeakable glorie.

After this, Dee says, "As you have delivered us a parable, enigma, or prophesie, so I beseech you . . . to expound what is meant by the Whale, the naked man, the Child, &c."

The angels Gabriel and Nalvage reply, "The naked man is Dee, The Childe is Kelly, . . . The Hill is the World, The waters are the bosome of God, . . . The Whale is the spirit of God, The Chambers are the degrees of wisdome . . . ."

This is a bit different from Louv's summary ("they meet God, and God is a whale"). The whole thing is clearly framed as a parable, and God is "what is meant by the Whale."

Specifically, the whale represents "the spirit of God" -- i.e., the Holy Ghost, whose more usual symbol is the dove. This is interesting because entering the mouth of the whale is a reference to the story of Jonah, and the name Jonah means "dove."

Our English word dolphin comes from the Latin delphinus. This in turn comes from Greek delphis (genitive delphinos) and ultimately from delphus, "womb," presumably because the dolphin was thought of as the "fish with a womb." Delphus, "womb," is also the source of adelphos, "brother or sister" (literally "from one womb"), whence for example Philadelphia, "city of brotherly love."

"Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn," writes Isaiah, "and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged." Then, explaining his metaphor, he adds, "Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you" (Isa. 51:1-2). Thus is the womb from which one is born assimilated to a pit from which one is dug. The Old English word for "to dig" was delfan (whence our modern delve), and the past participle (as would be used to translate Isaiah) was dolfen.

Less than a century after his time, Adolf Hitler is already well on his way to becoming a mythical or legendary figure. In the future, when the details of 20th-century history have been lost in the mists of time, philologists will assume that his name has a similar derivation to that of dolphin, with Adolphus coming from Adelphos, and they will consider him to be essentially the same figure as his English counterpart, Big Brother.

In fact, though, the true etymology of Adolf is not a-dolf but ad-olf -- from Athalwolf, "noble wolf." Isn't it a curious coincidence, though, that Germanic names ending in -olf always seem to end in -dolf, even though dolf is not a morpheme? Besides Adolph, there are also Rudolph ("fame wolf," but sure to be misinterpreted by future etymologists as Rudelaph, "red deer"), Bardolph ("axe wolf"), and Randolph ("shield wolf"). Randolph is especially noteworthy, as it derives from Old Norse Rannulfr, with the d added later for no apparent reason other than some sort of magnetic attraction between the wolf and the dolphin.

Apollo was closely associated with the wolf and was given the epithet Lyceus, "wolf-like." He also had a close connection with the dolphin, though, and it is from this animal that Delphi presumably takes its name. Apollo himself once took dolphin form to guide Cretan sailors to Delphi, and it was after singing a hymn to Apollo that Arion was rescued by dolphins.

René Guénon, in his essay on the meaning of the Arabic letter nun, writes that the whale plays a womb-like role in the story of Jonah and notes the relevance of the etymological link between dolphin and the womb. I have alredy mentioned (here) that the "big bad wolf" plays a similar role in the story of Little Red Riding Hood. And just as Jonah must have been swallowed by a whale, a dolphin being much too small, so I have conjectured that the "big bad wolf" of the fairy tale was actually a bear. (Bear, by coincidence, is also the verb associated with the womb.)

Coming back to -dolf names, there is also the Italian Gandolfo -- of Germanic origin and meaning "spell wolf," but suggesting Tolkien's Gandalf, in which the latter element means not "wolf" but "elf." Do elves, like wolves, have a dolphin connection? It is interesting to note that Tolkien's orcs came from elves and represented a monstrous distortion of elf-nature. And what do we call the most "monstrous" member of the dolphin family, scarcely recognizable as a dolphin at all? Orca.

Yesterday, I posted "The curious incident of the cock at dawn," in which I wrote as if from an alternate timeline and used the story of Peter's three denials before cockcrow to explore questions of agency and fate and whether Peter could have acted otherwise than it had been prophesied that he would act. For reasons related to the "alternate timeline" conceit, I modified the biblical text to say that the cock would "call out" rather than "crow."

This morning, I checked Synlogos and clicked a few of the links. Both Dark Brightness and Vox Day had posted links to a long article called "How to Build a Small Town in Texas." I didn't read the whole article but skimmed it a bit and noticed this illustration: a map of a Belgian town, with a caption inviting the reader to imagine "the invigorating call of roosters in the morning."

Later I brought up the app I have been using to listen to the entire Bible read aloud. It was at the beginning of John 14 -- that is, just a few verses before the one highlighted by BibleGateway, and immediately after "The cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied me thrice." I wrote my "cock at dawn" post well before reaching this point in my Bible listening, and an earlier draft even included a reference to John 14:1: "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me."

In my last post, "Dove and serpent," I mentioned reading in the Wikipedia article on Jonah about a possible link, proposed by Joseph Campbell, between Jonah and Gilgamesh. Campbell also made another link:

Campbell also noted several similarities between the story of Jonah and that of Jason in Greek mythology. The Greek rendering of the name Jonah is Jonas, which differs from Jason only in the order of sounds—both os are omegas suggesting that Jason may have been confused with Jonah

So Jason and Jonas are anagrams, both in English and an Greek. There is a third such name, in English anyway: Sonja. In yesterday's "Look who's still showing up in syncs," I quoted a passage from Unsong about Jonah. In last December's post "American politician spontaneously combusts," I quoted a passage from the same novel that prominently featured the name Sonja.

"[. . .] But with the help of all the brave people in different government departments and all around the country working on this case, we’ve got Alvarez on the run and are tightening the noose around his neck. Some of these people are here with us tonight. People like Robert Mueller, director of the FBI. Like Michael Gellers, a police officer who successfully defused a BOOJUM bomb in Philadelphia. Like Sonja Horah . . .”

President Bush spontaneously caught fire. “HELLLPPP!” he screamed as the entire executive, legislative, and judicial branches watched on in horror. “HELLLPPP . . . HELL . . .”. By the time Secret Service agents reached him at the podium, he was already a charred corpse.

In the novel, the reason Bush caught fire was that the name Sonja Horah contained the sequence Jahorah, a magical "name of God" that causes anyone who pronounces it to die on the spot.

What does the name Sonja mean? It's a Russian diminutive of Sophia -- so, wisdom, but a lesser wisdom. This is precisely what William Wildblood ascribes to the serpent in his recent post "The Serpent and the Dove":

The dove is the Holy Spirit, and the innocence of the dove is true spiritual wisdom compared to the earthly, even if it is occult or esoteric, wisdom of the serpent. The serpent represents the wisdom of experience or evolution. In a way, it is the wisdom of matter. But the dove symbolises the wisdom of purity and innocence and truth that comes from God.

Jonas is the dove. Sonja is the serpent. What about Jason? Etymologically, Jason means "healer" -- but in English it sounds like "son of the jay," and I've known several Jasons who went by Jay or even Jaybird. Jason is a corvid, then -- perhaps even the solar crow ("jay-sun"). Jesus paired the dove with the serpent, but Noah (who is also part of the Joan/Jonah pun) paired it with the raven.

And what is the dove? For information on that we can go to John the Baptist who was the first to recognise the adult Jesus as the Messiah and who proclaimed when he baptised him that he saw the Holy Spirit descend on him in the form of a dove. The dove is the Holy Spirit, and the innocence of the dove is true spiritual wisdom compared to the earthly, even if it is occult or esoteric, wisdom of the serpent.

Joseph Campbell suggests that the story of Jonah parallels a scene from the Epic of Gilgamesh, in which Gilgamesh obtains a plant from the bottom of the sea. In the Book of Jonah, a worm (in Hebrew tola'ath, "maggot") bites the shade-giving plant's root causing it to wither; whereas in the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh ties stones to his feet and plucks his plant from the floor of the sea. Once he returns to the shore, the rejuvenating plant is eaten by a serpent.

I have recently been reading Scott Alexander's novel Unsong. One of the running gags is "biblical pun correction." One of the characters mentions Joan of Arc and is "corrected" by another: "Jonah whale; Noah ark." Later in the conversation, someone says "to no avail" and receives the converse correction: "Noah ark; Jonah whale."

Jesus calls himself "greater than Jonah" and promises the Pharisees "the sign of Jonah", which is his resurrection. Early Christian interpreters viewed Jonah as a type for Jesus.

My first mention of Joan of Arc, which set off the present chain of synchronicities, was a reference to "biblical pun correction" in Unsong: "One of the characters mentions Joan of Arc and is 'corrected' by another: 'Jonah whale; Noah ark.'" That is, one of the characters deliberately "mishears" the name "Joan of Arc" as "Jonah ark."

The first mention of Jonah in Unsong is when a girl meets a rabbinical student in a bar and gets him to agree to kiss her if she knows something about the Bible that he doesn't. She then asks him, "How long did Joseph spend in the belly of the whale?" -- and he walks into the trap, replying "three days and three nights" without noticing that the question is about Joseph rather than Jonah.

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The more usual form of this joke is "How many of each animal did Moses take on the ark?" And the punchline, more often than not, is, "None. Moses wasn't on the ark." But of course Moses was in an ark. Here is Exodus 2:3-6.

And when [the mother of Moses] could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink.

And his sister [Miriam] stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him.

And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river's side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it.

And when she had opened it, she saw the child: and, behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews' children.

Ark -- flags -- maid -- remind you of anyone? Many of my recent posts about Joan have centered on her distinctive banner or flag, and I have even had occasion to write (without any thought of Moses), "The word flag, of course, can also refer to a lilioid flower." In fact, when the word flag occurs in the King James Bible, it always refers to a riverside plant, never to a banner.

Joan's flag bore the names Jhesus and Maria. While the intended referents were of course Jesus Christ and his mother, these are also the New Testament forms of the Old Testament names Joshua and Miriam, respectively. Joshua was Moses' lieutenant and successor; Miriam, his elder sister who watched over him while he was in the ark.

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But the main biblical ark is the Ark of the Covenant, created under the direction of Moses. Like Joan's banner, it features God between two angelic beings. Here is Exodus 25:22.

And there I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubims which are upon the ark of the testimony, of all things which I will give thee in commandment unto the children of Israel.

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In the previous post, I mention my pleasure in discovering that Joan of Arc has had what is described as a "boat-shaped church" built to her name in Rouen (even though the church itself is an outrageous eyesore), because it recalls the joke about Joan of Ark being Noah's wife.

And then I realized that, if a boat-shaped church counts as an ark, "Jonah ark" isn't a mistake after all. Check out Chapters 8 and 9 of Moby-Dick. While the chapel Ishmael visits isn't technically "boat-shaped," it's certainly much more boat-like than your average house of worship. The pulpit is made to look like the prow of a ship, and is ascended by means of a rope ladder "like those used in mounting a ship from a boat at sea." The preacher begins by shouting out nautical commands to the congregants -- "Starboard gangway, there! side away to larboard -- larboard gangway to starboard! Midships! midships!" -- and then, addressing them as "shipmates," proceeds to deliver a sermon on -- Jonah.

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While I was in the process of writing this post, and had already made the Moses-Joan connection, Frank Berger left a comment on my previous post: "Check out my comment from your June 17, 2019 post in which you linked a gallery of your sister's fine drawings. The gallery featured thirty drawings, yet I comment on only one . . ."

The one drawing he had commented on was, of course, the portrait of Joan of Arc.

As for myself, in the 2019 post referred to, I had selected two of my sister's drawings as my favorites: one of an unidentified young woman, and the other titled Moses in the Court of Pharaoh.

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After writing all of the above, I suddenly had the idea that I should check Bible passages numbered 20:21 to see is they had any applicability to the year that has just begun. Remembering how my uncle William John had based his interpretation of 9/11 on Revelation 9:11, I thought I'd try Revelation 20:21 -- but there is no such verse. Psalm 20:21, then? No such verse. Genesis? No such verse. Exodus, then? Jackpot.

And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.

You and me both, Moses.