This morning I was busy working at my computer when my wife raised the alarm: a snake had been spotted and I was called upon for protection. Sure enough, this guy was found trespassing on my lands. In fact, it looked like he was looking for a way inside the domicile:

Trespassing was one thing. Trying to sneak inside was quite another and that I could not abide. So I took up that serpent.

I placed him in a bucket with a lid to keep him contained and carried him to the borders of my land to a nice shady spot of the woods. There I admonished him to go on his way, with goodwill even, but to steer clear of my home.
As I walked back to the house I remembered statements in the Bible and BoM about taking up serpents. Moroni says:
And these signs shall follow them that believe—in my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover;
Mark says it the exact same way in the Bible. Now granted, that corn snake is pretty much completely harmless to humans other than the alarm it caused so I didn’t exactly pull a Paul and not die from a viper bite. But they never said I would have to take up a venomous serpent. Just a serpent. And that I did.
As for the other signs, I don’t think I can say unequivocally that I’ve done those except maybe a healing or two back in my Mormon days. I will at least check off the serpent from the list (in pencil), however.
So beware, serpents! Here is one who will take you up should occasion arise!
WJT
I saw this post as I was preparing to draft an email to an American friend I haven’t written to in a long time. In our last email exchange, he included a photo of him “taking up a serpent” under circumstances similar to your own, and I joked that he was a snake-handler. I’ll take the sync as confirmation that I need to get back in touch with him.
Nice post title, by the way. I might have to pinch it.
LEE
Pinch away!
WW
It is the things people say and write unknowingly that continue to fascinate me at the moment.
In WJT’s comment above, he compliments you on your nice title and suggest he will need to pinch it. Wasn’t even a question for permission – just “nice post title. . . I might have to pinch it.”
To pinch means to steal, and this is what I find interesting. Over on WJT’s blog, I had made specific reference to people stealing the titles that others use or were known by. The specific examples I had used were the Numenoreans taking titles for themselves that belonged to the Valar, and Satan taking on the title of “Only Begotten”.
These examples were given in response to the use of Elentari, and the observation that this is a title that Ungoliant could also adopt for herself, or desire at least, because it is a nice title having to do with a Queen up in the Stars and much better than other ones she has been called.
And here we have a statement of someone stating their intent to steal a title someone else has used. Now, someone might argue it was the post title he was referring to, and I would say yes, consciously, but those words also mean something else if read alone, and this is where it gets even more interesting looking at the phrase “Post Title”. Again, this is just looking at the words people use and what they can mean.
If you look up Post, you get references to things like Door/ Doorpost and Position/ Station, among other things. Doors, and position or station of managing them, have been associated particularly with one person in my story – Thomas Marsh, and therefore Peter by extension. It was Marsh who wished to keep for himself the title and position of Usher, meaning a Doorman or Porter, when he debased himself in front of Brigham Young, and I have argued that this has something to do with the Keys that Peter still holds, I believe.
Thus, one can read WJT’s comment alternatively as one noticing a position and title having something to do with a door that he would like to steal.
He won’t like that interpretation, obviously, and it is noticing things like this that got me banned on his blog, but I am just reading what people are saying, and noticing that they mean more or differently, sometimes I think, than what they intend. No different than you using “Spicy”, probably not a common word for you to use, I think, in describing my comments to WJT, and then having the Jimmy Kimmel/ Jay Leno thing come up later for you and Kimmel’s last name meaning “Spicer”.
Something seems to be influencing our thoughts and words in ways we don’t fully acknowledge, as well as potentially how we notice and interpret the words and actions of others.
Lastly, for evidence that WJT’s comment might have something to do with Peter/ Thomas Marsh’s title, it was only two days later that he did, in fact, invoke Peter in a post titled, “Last night I imagined San Pietro”.
That title is also quite remarkable given my thoughts above. “Imagine” comes from the same stem as Imitari, which means “to copy or imitate” in forming a concept in Imagine that describes creating an image, likeness, or representation of the real thing. With that in mind, and everything mentioned above, one can imagine someone saying they “imagined” San Pietro in a very different way than consciously intended.
WW
One addendum:
In further support of this alternative reading to the “I imagined San Pietro” blog post as something to consider, WJT actually made a typo in the title. He wrote Imagined with two M’s. So it reads “Last night, I immagined San Pietro”.
That typo really stood out to me, as I thought I remembered “Imma” being an Elvish word, but not remembering what it meant. I had looked it up back when writing about the Gim G’s, for example, specifically Gim Githil, and the addition of G’s to “I” words in the Gnomish language (e.g., Im becoming Gim).
Anyway, Imma means “same, self-same, same thing” in the form of a pronoun – meaning, someone or something is said to be the same as something else. Thus, throwing the Elvish double-meaning into the “imagined” word WJT used in his title, thanks to very fortunate typo, we can very legitimately read that phrase as someone saying that sometime ago (“last night”) they had represented or envisioned themselves to be the same thing as Peter.
As to what period of time “Last Night” might be, La Isla Bonita, or the Beautiful Island, could give a clue.
By the way, did anyone else note that Mexican ship colliding with the Brooklyn Bridge while going backward yesterday? Look up the name of the ship (the Descending Eagle, and a specific reference to the last Emperor of the Aztecs) and Brooklyn (the Broken Land) and tell me that doesn’t tie into this (though in my mind more having to do with the reversal or undoing of the breaking of Eressea by Pharazon, given what happened to the ship and what didn’t happen to the Bridge).
Another link involving a ship colliding with a bridge
WW
About the ship and bridge:
The fact that the ship was going in reverse is pretty remarkable, given the other symbolism and characters we’ve explored.
Apparently the NTSB is looking into all sorts of different leads and factors into what caused the crash. They might want to check first on whether Mr. Mxyztplk was driving it. Doing things backwards or in reverse is his thing.
WJT
That comment was a joke, referencing the fact that Leo had in fact pinched the title of one of my posts.
WJT
Also, “immagined” was not a typo but a reference to the Italian tweet.
LEE
I am utterly dismayed at the blog banning move, WJT. You already know what I think since I told you directly and posted a comment on your blog (although I guess it has yet to pass through “moderation”) but I will state here as well that I find this to be snowflake behavior and it has come as quite a surprise. I just never would have guessed this.
As for the post title, your joke was lost on me. I was unaware that you had also quoted Mark/Moroni for a blog title and thought you were planning an upcoming post with that title. I just now read your old post and see some interesting connections to Moses from what Mark/Moroni say. I don’t think I had ever connected those serpent themes. Moses later uses his serpent-staff to create something like an inverted bridge to cross the Red Sea, which calls to mind Bill’s bridge comments above.
It is odd how just over a year ago a ship completely destroyed the France Has Got Key bridge and then this year a ship going in reverse gets destroyed by the Broken Land bridge. That’s quite a reversal in fortunes for both ships and bridges in the span of a year.
WW
WJT,
I am sorry for getting the reasons you wrote those things wrong.
Please read my comment again where I’ve noted that your actual reason for writing something is not relevant, so spending your time and energy worried about that isn’t probably the most productive thing.
As Leo noted, it is interesting though that you read his title and referenced him stealing it from you. It is a fairly common scripture, you didn’t make anything original in using it in your title, so it is odd that your joke would be that he stole it from you in a post from back in 2023. It is literally a phrase from Mark that describes what he did – picked up a snake.
In Leo’s case, he wrote the title because he did, in fact, literally pick up an actual serpent. That is what the post was about.
In your case, however, you picked up an image of a serpent. Your phone screen had magically changed to the image of a rattlesnake. Not an actual serpent, but an ‘imagined’ serpent. You then spent the rest of the post exploring the phrase in more or less metaphorical terms, even including, what else, a reversal or inverse of the metaphor to consider.
How has the metaphor been working for you? Do you feel that you’ve been able to pick up your slippery syncs and make something solid with them yet? From the outside looking in on your thought process, it still seems story-less and chaotic. Not solid yet, but that is just my impression based on what you write. The reality could be different in your mind.
The fact that the image on your phone in your own serpent post was a rattlesnake stood out to me. When Leo shared his story, the first association I mad was a strange one, involving an old Mormon video I remembered watching involving a rattlesnake. Like Leo’s story, it involved moving a snake from one location to another. I found the video this morning, and it is pretty dated. I actually thought I remembered the video featuring an eagle carrying the snake, but it turns out it was a Native American boy who carried down the snake, at least in what I found.
“You knew what I was when you picked me up” is the classic line.
Here is the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQJJ1lzoUZ0
I suppose if a rattlesnake was missing its tale/ tail, it would be harder to tell the difference between it and another common snake. The rattle is what gives the rattlesnake away. We might not actually know right away what we picked up.
Looking up Rattle right now, I note that it has has to do with sound that is not “sonorous”, meaning it is not resonant. If it were resonant, it would be called Jingling.
Etymonline uses that exact word in describing what a rattle is not. Remarkable, right? You just wrote about Kris Kringle and the Jingle associated with him.
So, Old Kris Kringle brings the Jingle, according to Stan Francis, and the Rattlesnake brings the opposite – the rattle or the discordant/ not resonant sound. I guess Kris Kringle would need his sleigh-bells though, and the Rattlesnake would need his tale, in order to be able to hear them and tell the difference.
Stan Francis, of course, is a name that literally gives us a Stone associated with France/ a Free Man. Right on the nose.
WW
I am going to follow up with two more general comments, not to anyone in particular. This is the first one:
The presence or absence of resonance to compare a Jingle with a Rattle really stood out to me, as that exact word was used in describing the Anor Stone/ Liahona back in my 2020 words. The Stone Couriers, as I referred to them, described the Liahona by its resonance:
“A Palantir it was; a globe or crystal, metallic-seeming, royal ancient sunlight beaming . . . Resonant it was, echoing thought, commissary needful for instruction, eggs bearing”
In my story, the Stones are a means of communication, a store for information and stories, and also, strangely, a method of transportation. Thus, it well could be that Kris Kringle’s resonant “Sleigh-bells” are another analogy for these stones. Both something that produces a resonant Jingle, and also travels, with a sleigh being a vehicle equipped with runners to travel on ice and snow – much the same as ice skates, or their dry land correllary, roller skates. The sleigh carrying presents would also be analogous to the stories or treasures contained on the Stones, and meant to be given to those who they belonged to.
WW
Actually I am going to nix the second follow-up comment for right now, and leave it at that.