In the Shadow of Giants

And I stood upon the sand of the sea... --Rev 13:1

This is the most ancient hand drawn porn from the 'sacred' archives. I was 19, a freshman at school. He's a muscular blonde with the Big Fella hanging out at the beach. My bronze god.

Driving back to Kirkland from Hood Canal (and a nice dinner of steamed clams) after the fourth, I crossed over the Narrows Bridge (twin bridges), which was the beginning of last year's Double H Ranch synch. I decided to get off the highway after 'crossing over' from the Olympic (hah!) Peninsula to Tacoma to find a viewpoint from which to ponder this remarkable construct. Unfortunately, no easy turnoff was to be had, and I found myself on the road to Pt. Defiance Park, which I hadn't visited since college, so I decided to continue on. The park includes a marina down at the shore, and I drove down to have lunch and stretch my legs. I walked and walked, down the rows of yachts, until I found a large sailing catamaran tied to an end pier - the Helios.

Helios is the God of the sun, the Greek equivalent of the Egyptian Ra. Helios was the God worshipped in the island kingdom of Rhodes, which built an enormous bronze monument to him in 292 BC after being saved from a Greek invasion - the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The giant stood 33m tall, lifted a torch in the air, and was crowned with the rays of the sun.

To you, o Sun, the people of Dorian Rhodes set up this bronze statue reaching to Olympus, when they had pacified the waves of war and crowned their city with the spoils taken from the enemy. Not only over the seas but also on land did they kindle the lovely torch of freedom and independence. For to the descendants of Herakles belongs dominion over sea and land.

The similarity to the Colossus of Manhattan is obvious, especially to her modern makers, who strove to echo the giant in Rhodes, though veiling him/her in Isis drag. Seeing the Colossus unveiled, I see two pillars (and a third), the mighty legs of Helios planted in the sea, which reminds me of the Narrows Bridge, and the mighty H.
Herakles has some pillars of his own: the Pillars of Hercules in Gibraltar, source of many a synch over the past year, most revolving around the lost Madeleine.

The Pillars of Hercules was the phrase that was applied in Antiquity to the promontories that flank the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar. The northern Pillar is the Rock of Gibraltar. A corresponding North African peak not being predominant, the identity of the southern Pillar has been disputed through history, with the two most likely candidates being Monte Hacho in Ceuta and Jebel Musa in Morocco.

"the pillars which Pindar calls the 'gates of Gades' when he asserts that they are the farthermost limits reached by Heracles." According to Plato's account, the lost realm of Atlantis was situated beyond the Pillars of Hercules.

The pillars as portals (stargates), to Atlantis, the Golden Age. Legend has Hercules and Atlas as rulers of Atlantis, from which I infer that the southern pillar represents Atlas. Two pair of pillars/legs standing in the sea - the double H.

In my lifetime, I've spent most of my vacation money pursuing the sun on some sandy tropical beach, as do millions. Seems to be instinctual for humans to haul ourselves out on the shore like a sunning seal colony.

The Gibraltar promontory is made of limestone, which is made of calcite crystals - the exoskeletons of countless hard shell marine organisms, ground into chalk. It seems that the legs of Hercules are made of seafood! Which brings me around to another mythical creature, Melusine, the siren, or bifurcated mermaid - the Merovingian Maiden. Thanks to Anadae for the reference.

Melusine agreed to become the wife of a mortal, which the bifurcated tail implies, thus circumventing "the mermaid problem". 'The Little Mermaid' is the Disney version of the Melusine tail, and given my love of fish and chips, the archetype seems to runs deep.
Hood Canal was famous for its Dungeness crabs before it became the Dead Sea, and my mother adopted the crab as her symbol of the beach, she has at least six crab glyphs at the cabin. The bounty was astounding (only male crabs are taken). Crabs resonate the octagon, and here is Cancer, from the ceiling of that old Mythraic cave - Grand Central Station.

Starbucks Coffee of Seattle is the current Melusine standard bearer, and Cancer like, it has slowly grown itself into every city of the world. I ponder why Melusine and "shade grown" coffee are now indelibly intertwined.

Back to the catamaran named Helios: a catamaran is a twin hulled vessel, planting two "legs" in the sea, powered by the sun (wind, the result of solar warmth).
Reminding me of our modern Atlas/Hercules - powered by the sun.

And this is where it gets kind of weird, because I was doing a bit of hotel research today, looking up where I had stayed in Santa Margherita, Italy, way back in the day as a designer visiting the Genoa Boat Show. Margherita means daisy, a heliotropic flower and near perfect glyph for the sun. I won't go down the daisy synch chain today, but it looks to be highly promising.

The list of hotels in Santa Margherita includes the Hotel Helios - HH. Aferrismoon has another hotel sync today.

Kirkland (Sunnydale North) is having a little festival this weekend - "Kirkland Uncorked" - a snooty wine tasting event, AKA a Bacchanal. It's an open air festival on the beach, and what should be tied to the end pier, but a big Sunseeker yacht.