Amethyst and Garnet

I want to make some notes here about a few things, and I don't really have time right now to check and see how much of this I have or haven't said before. I am participating in NaNoWriMo, and I'm trying to get my word count as far ahead as I can earlier in the month when I have the most time for writing. Perhaps it's best that I not go back and read older posts on this right now anyway. I sometimes like seeing later how my mind explored the same topics at different times.

I know I mentioned reaching the point in the Lovecraft Index books where the shining trapezohedron came into play. And that spawned my doing a little bit of looking things up (not even what I'd call "light research") about garnets. I may or may not have mentioned wearing the ring I've had for many years that has an amethyst set with a small garnet on each side of it.

Okay. That brings things up to where I am today. I have some work coming up that relates to the shining trapezohedron, amongst other things. I have my small raw garnet to use in that work. The approach of the work has me thinking about my ring. I decided to check the words "amethyst" and "garnet" with the ToA gematria.

Some of the words and phrases with the same value as "amethyst" that got my attention are:  knowledge, Ech Pi El, the gate, far is near and near is far, key and gate, forbidden fruit, the ocean, dead but dreaming, secret of secrets.

There are other interesting phrases, but these are the ones that really grab my attention and resonate with me. Some of them, the reasons why would be pretty obvious if you know me well enough personally. Or...the reasons might seem obvious. Some people who know me wouldn't recognize any mystery in why "the gate" and "key and gate" would get my attention. Oh, but even there they would be missing something!

It's about the design of the ring. Years and years ago, when I first saw the ring, I had misguided and naive ideas about magical jewelry. I was in a very beginner place in my occult practice. I thought I had an actual practice when all I was really doing was collecting information. (An important step, but not the practice I thought it was back then.) I had ideas about and plans for the ring that, by the time I could have actually done any of that, I understood the big flaws in those ideas. Still, though...tye ring meant something to me. I didn't know what and I didn't know why, but it was important and I couldn't just sell it or give it away. It sat in a box for years. I would look at it now and then and wish I had a reason to wear it, but it wasn't what I thought it would be when I bought it and didn't match my everyday style.

I pulled it out when I was reading about the garnets because it has garnets. I accepted the amethyst. When I bought the ring it was the amethyst I wanted. I just accepted the garnets. This story goes in strange and very appropriate circles. Looking at the design of the ring and seeing the value of "amethyst" aligned with phrases about the gate is... there's an experience here that I can't quite describe right now. And some of the other phrases call back to things I misguidedly thought the ring could be for at first. Those phrases are like more mature versions of those younger, foolish intentions. They make more sense. They might work.

"Ech Pi El" grabs my attention because I know it to be one of Lovecraft's joking nicknames used with his writing friends in their letters. It's a Greek-inspired way of spelling out HPL. I have thoughts about that, along with the problems with the name "Abdul Alhazred" and the history of the name, that I'd like to write about another time.

A sentence from Lovecraft's writing that has the same value as "amethyst" is, "And I am still dreaming." This has great personal meaning for me. I may need to take some time to look at why I have always been so drawn to amethyst.

That's the one that had surprises for me. I'm sure I looked at "garnet" before, as the results seemed familiar. There's nothing there that grabs me so personally as "amethyst", but I do see that several of the results seem related to the work I will be doing. It supports for me the idea of the garnet as the shining trapezohedron.

Maybe I wasn't as wrong about the ring as I once thought I was. I just had no idea which path this would take back then.