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Saturday, January 23, 2021


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Cimmerian Shadows


I am the wanderer at the edge of reason.
I am the dweller in the realm of the shadow.°
I am the stone chained and venom scarred.°*
名可名,非常名
I am known & unknowable.
 𒁹𒀭𒌍𒋾𒀀𒅆
"Sha naqba īmuru"*
The One who saw the Abyss
易經的卦29: ䷜ “坎”

pulvis et umbra sumus.

"And when wind and winter harden
All the loveless land,
It will whisper of the garden,
You will understand."1


Certh rune no. 19 "G", used by Gandalf** as a personal sign or seal

Georg von Rosen, Oden som vandringsman,1886 (Odin, the Wanderer)

Gandalf's role and importance were substantially increased in the conception of The Lord of the Rings, and in a letter of 1954, Tolkien refers to Gandalf as an "angel incarnate". In the same letter, Tolkien states he was given the form of an old man in order to limit his powers on Earth. Both in 1965 and 1971 Tolkien again refers to Gandalf as an angelic being.

In a 1946 letter, Tolkien stated that he thought of Gandalf as an "Odinic wanderer". Other commentators have similarly compared Gandalf to the Norse god Odin in his "Wanderer" guise—an old man with one eye, a long white beard, a wide-brimmed hat, and a staff, or likened him to Merlin of Arthurian legend or the Jungian archetype of the "wise old man".

Marjorie Burns's comparison of Gandalf and the Norse god Odin
AttributeGandalfOdin
Accoutrements"battered hat"
cloak²
"thorny staff"
Epithet: "Long-hood"
blue cloak 玄披風
a staff
Beard"the grey", "old man"Epithet: "Greybeard"
Appearancethe Istari (Wizards) "in simple guise,
as it were of Men already old
in years but hale in body,
travellers and wanderers"
as Tolkien wrote "a figure of
'the Odinic wanderer'"
Epithets: "Wayweary", "Wayfarer", "Wanderer"
All 56 Epithets
Powerwith his staffEpithet: "Bearer of the [Magic] Wand"
Eaglesrescued repeatedly by eagles in The Hobbit
and Lord of the Rings
Associated with eagles;
escapes from Jotunheim
back to Asgard as an eagle

The Tolkien scholar Charles W. Nelson described Gandalf as a "guide who .. assists a major character on a journey or quest .. to unusual and distant places". He noted that in both The Fellowship of the Ring and The Hobbit, Tolkien presents Gandalf in these terms. Immediately after the Council of Elrond, Gandalf tells the Fellowship

Someone said that intelligence would be needed in the party. He was right. I think I shall come with you.

Like Odin in "Wanderer" guise—an old man with a long white beard, a wide-brimmed hat, and a staff: Gandalf, by 'Nidoart', 2013

° The "Dweller of the Threshold" (or "Guardian of the Threshold") as a literary invention of the English mystic and novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton is found in his romance Zanoni (1842). After the founding of the Theosophical Society in 1875, the term gained wide currency in theosophical circles. The Guardian of the Threshold is a spectral figure and is the abstract of the debit and credit book of the individual. "It is the combined evil influence that is the result of the wicked thoughts and acts of the age in which anyone may live, and it assumes to each student a definite shape at each appearance, being always either of one sort or changing each time" "This Dweller of the Threshold meets us in many shapes. It is the Cerberus guarding the entrance to Hades; the Dragon which St. Michael (spiritual will-power) is going to kill; the Snake which tempted Eve, and whose head will be crushed by the heel of the woman; the Hobgoblin watching the place where the treasure is buried, etc. He is the king of evil, who will not permit that within his kingdom a child should grow up, which might surpass him in power; the Herod before whose wrath the divine child Christ has to flee into a foreign country, and is not permitted to return to his home (the soul) until the king (Ambition, Pride, Vanity, Self-righteousness, etc.) is dethroned or dead." According to Max Heindel, the Dweller on the Threshold must be confronted by every aspirant—usually at an early stage of his progress into the unseen worlds—and is one of the main causes of obsession.

°* Loki, a name likely related to Proto-Germanic *luką (“lock”), from Proto-Indo-European *lewg- (“to turn, bend”), his name would then be connected with entanglement.

Loki had always been more of a burden than a help to the other gods and goddesses. But after his contriving the death of Baldur and ensuring that that fair god would remain in the underworld until the cosmos is destroyed during Ragnarok, he went about slandering the gods at every opportunity. At last, the gods decided that his abuse had become too much, and they went to capture him.

Loki ran far away from Asgard. At the peak of a high mountain, he built for himself a house with four doors so that he could watch for his pursuers from all directions. By day he turned himself into a salmon and hid beneath a nearby waterfall. By night he sat by his fire and weaved a net for fishing for his food.

The far-seeing Odin perceived where Loki now dwelt, and the gods went after him. When Loki saw his former friends approaching, he threw the net in the fire and hid in the stream in his salmon form so as to leave no traces of himself or his activities. When the gods arrived and saw the net smouldering in the fire, they surmised that the wily shapeshifter had changed himself into the likeness of those he intended to catch for himself. The gods took up the twine Loki had been using and crafted their own net, then made their way to the stream. Several times they cast their net into the stream, and each time the salmon barely eluded them. At last, the fish made a bold leap downstream to swim to the sea, and while in the air he was caught by Thor. The salmon writhed in the war-god’s grasp, but Thor held him fast by his tail fins. This is why, to this day, the salmon has a slender tail.

Loki was then taken, in his regular form, to a cave. The gods then brought in Loki’s two sons and turned one into a wolf, who promptly killed his brother, strewing his entrails across the cave floor. Loki was then fastened to three rocks in the cave with the entrails of his slain son, which the gods had turned into iron chains. Skadi placed a poisonous snake on a rock above his head, where it dripped venom onto his face. But Loki’s faithful wife, Sigyn, sat by his side with a bowl that she held up to the snake’s mouth to catch the poison. But every so often, the bowl became full, and Sigyn would have to leave her husband’s side to dispose of its contents, at which point the drops that fell onto the unrepentant god’s face would cause him to shake violently, which brought about earthquakes in Midgard, the world of humanity. And this was the lot of Loki and Sigyn until, as fated, Loki will break free from his chains at Ragnarok to assist the giants in destroying the cosmos.

“Loki” by Mårten Eskil Winge (1890)

* 𒁹𒀭𒌍𒋾𒀀𒅆 md30-TI-ER2 Sîn-lēqi-unninni (Akkadian) was a mašmaššu (ašipu, also āšipu or mašmaššu, were scholars, experts in white magic and practitioners of diagnosis and treatment in Tigris-Euphrates valley of Mesopotamia around 3200 BCE. At the time, ideas of science, religion and witchcraft were closely intertwined and formed a basis of ašiputu, the practice used by ašipu to combat sorcery and to heal disease). He lived in Mesopotamia, probably in the period between 1300 BCE and 1000 BCE. He is traditionally thought to have compiled the best-preserved version of the Epic of Gilgamesh. His name is listed in the text itself, which was unorthodox for works written in cuneiform. His version is known by its incipit, or first-line "Sha naqba īmuru" ("He who saw the deep" or "The one who saw the Abyss"). The extent to which his version is different from earlier texts is unknown; Andrew R. George argues that Sîn-lēqi-unninni "gave [The Epic of Gilgamesh] its final, fixed form".

The prologue features the only instance of first-person narration by Sîn-lēqi-unninni. His version includes Utnapishtim's story of the Flood in tablet XI and, in tablet XII, the Sumerian Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Netherworld.

Sîn-lēqi-unninni's name means 'Sîn (the Moon God) is one who accepts my prayer'. It is also sometimes transcribed, albeit less probably, as 'Sîn-liqe-unninni', meaning 'O Sîn! Accept my prayer'.

The one who saw  the Abyss, a word derives from the Greek word ἄβυσσος, meaning bottomless. At depths of 3,000 to 6,000 metres (9,800 to 19,700 ft), this zone remains in perpetual darkness. It covers 83% of the total area of the ocean and 60% of the Earth's surface. The abyssal zone has temperatures around 2 to 3 °C (36 to 37 °F) through the large majority of its mass. Due to there being no light, there are no plants producing oxygen, which primarily comes from ice that had melted long ago from the polar regions. The water along the seafloor of this zone is actually devoid of oxygen, resulting in a death trap for organisms unable to quickly return to the oxygen-enriched water above. This region also contains a much higher concentration of nutrient salts, like nitrogen, phosphorus, and silica, due to the large amount of dead organic material that drifts down from the above ocean zones and decomposes.
The area below the abyssal zone is the sparsely inhabited hadal (named after the realm of ᾍδης Hádēs) zone. The zone above is the bathyal zone.

Sha Naqba Imuru

Name:

全知なるや全能の星シャ・ナクパ・イルム

Owner:

Gilgamesh (Child) (Caster)
Sha Naqba Imuru: The Omniscient Omnipotent Star (全知なるや全能の星シャ・ナクパ・イルムZenchinaru ya Zen'nō no HoshiSha Nakupa Irumu) is the mentality of Gilgamesh sublimated into a Noble Phantasm, said to have "spread across all corners of the world as if the brilliance of the stars, seeing through all creation."
It is a "continuously active-type Noble Phantasm" that does not require its name to be invoked, but it is assumed that Gilgamesh keeps it intentionally restrained. Possessing tremendous efficiency, it can discern heavily concealed truths with a single glance, from that of the opponent's True Name and Noble Phantasms to possibly even seeing through a piece of the truth of the demise of human history in the Grand Orders of Fate/Grand Order. Upon releasing its True Name, it will work as a form of "instruction" for him to guide others with the most optimal tactics, simultaneously increasing the attack power and defence power of his whole team near his position.

Gilgamesh is a clairvoyance user with a "sense of 'sight' several levels above the ordinary." When facing him in a game like chess, he claims that even someone making advanced predictions and reading the flow of the game will have already lost at that moment. He does not read the future of the chessboard, but instead gazes down upon and oversees it, allowing the correct move to always be visible to him. Even in something like a card game, the very minimum requirement to play against him on equal terms would be to draw the precise hand required. He can also see the possibilities of various parallel worlds should he so choose, but, as a Heroic Spirit, the Throne of Heroes normally adjusts his memories and knowledge to the world in which he is summoned in to keep him from being confused by multiple sets of memories. Even with this ability, his personality would cause him to reject certain world lines as nonsense, such as using clairvoyance to see something like a possibility of a world where he is swallowed by the mud of the grail.

 Horace: Odes - IV.VII.15
Andrea Mantegna, Odes, Horace
15
"Quo pater Aeneas, quo dives Tullus et Ancus,
Pulvis et umbra sumus."
Where good Aeneas and wealthy Tullus, and Ancus [have]
Are dust and shadow.


1 “To my wife” - With A Copy Of My Poems by Oscar Wilde

I can write no stately proem
As a prelude to my lay;
From a poet to a poem
I would dare to say.

For if of these fallen petals
One to you seem fair,
Love will waft it till it settles
On your hair.

And when wind and winter harden
All the loveless land,
It will whisper of the garden,
You will understand.

— Oscar Wilde

** The Old Norse name Gandalfr incorporates the words gandr meaning "wand", "staff" or (especially in compounds) "magic" and álfr "elf". The name Gandalf is found in at least one more place in Norse myth, in the semi-historical Heimskringla, which briefly describes Gandalf Alfgeirsson, a legendary Norse king from eastern Norway and rival of Halfdan the Black. Gandalf (Gandálfr) is a Dvergr (Norse dwarf) in Norse mythology, appearing in the so-called 'Tally of the Dwarves' within the poem Völuspá ('Prophecy of the Seeress') from the Poetic Edda, as well as in the Prose Edda. The name derives from the Old Norse words gandr (magic staff) and álfr (elf), thus a protective spirit who wields a magical wand.

Odin og Völven
Odin holds bracelets and leans on his spear while looking towards the völva in Völuspá. Gesturing, the völva holds a spoon and sits beside a steaming kettle. The text "V:14" in the bottom left corner refers to Völuspá stanza 14.

In his fictional writings, J. R. R. Tolkien eventually named his wizard Gandalf after the Dvergr but initially used the name for the head of the dwarf party (ultimately to be called Thorin Oakenshield).

➨ The Old Norse theonym Óðinn (runic ᚢᚦᛁᚾ on the Ribe skull fragment) and its various Germanic cognates – including Old English and Old Saxon Wōden, Old High German Wuotan and Old Dutch Wuodan – all derive from the reconstructed Proto-Germanic masculine theonym *Wōđanaz (or *Wōdunaz). Translated as 'lord of frenzy' or 'leader of the possessed', *Wōđanaz stems from the Proto-Germanic adjective *wōđaz ('delirious, raging') attached to the suffix *-naz ('master of'). Recently, an attestation of Proto-Norse Woðinz, on the Strängnäs stone has been accepted as probably authentic, but the name may be used as a related adjective instead meaning "with a gift for (divine) possession" (Old Norse: øðinn).

Other Germanic cognates derived from *wōđaz include Gothic woþs ('possessed'), Old Norse óðr (‘mad, frantic, furious’), Old English wōd ('insane, frenzied') or Dutch woed ('frantic, wild, crazy'), along with the substantivized forms Old Norse Óðr ('mind, wit, sense; song, poetry’), Old English wōð (‘sound, noise; voice, song’), Old High German wuot ('thrill, violent agitation') and Middle Dutch woet ('rage, frenzy'), where the original adjective turned into a noun. The Proto-Germanic terms *wōđīn (‘madness, fury’) and *wōđjanan ('to rage') can also be reconstructed.

The adjective *wōđaz ultimately stems from Pre-Germanic *uoh₂-tós and is related to Proto-Celtic *wātis (from an earlier *ueh₂-tus), which means 'seer, soothsayer'. According to linguist Guus Kroonen, the Latin term vātēs ('prophet, seer') is probably a Celtic loanword from the Gaulish language, making *uoh₂-tós / *ueh₂-tus a Germanic-Celtic isogloss rather than a term of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) origin. In the case a borrowing scenario is excluded, a PIE etymon *(H)ueh₂-tis ('seer') can also be posited as the common ancestor of the attested Germanic, Celtic and Latin forms.

➨ In the fictional history of Middle-earth, the original Certhas was created by the Sindar (or Grey Elves) for their language, Sindarin. Its extension and elaboration were known as the Angerthas Daeron, as it was attributed to the Sinda Daeron, despite the fact that it was most probably arranged by the Noldor in order to represent the sounds of other languages like Quenya and Telerin.

Although it was later largely replaced by the Tengwar, the Cirth was nonetheless adopted by the Dwarves to write down both their Khuzdul language (Angerthas Moria) and the languages of Men (Angerthas Erebor). The Cirth was also adapted, in its oldest and simplest form, by various races including Men and even Orcs.

Velar consonantsCerthCerth 18.svgCerth 19.svgCerth 20.svgCerth 21.svgCerth 22.svgCerth 33.svg
Transliterationkgkhghŋng
IPA[k][ɡ][x][ɣ][ŋ][ŋɡ]

² Cloak, from Medieval Latin clocca (“travellers' cape, literally “a bell”, so-called from the garment’s bell-like shape”)

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