Welcome to The Mystical Underground

A time travel story to start the new year:

In 1911, a book called An Adventure was published by Anne Moberly, an English schoolmistress, and Eleanor Jourdain, about an experience they’d had a decade earlier at Versailles, a palace near Paris that was once the home of French kings.

It was the summer of 1901 and the two women traveled to Paris for two weeks of sightseeing in and  around the city. On August 10,  they traveled to Versailles by train for two weeks of sightseeing. It was Moberly’s first trip to Paris and Jourdain’s second. At the time, Moberly was head of a women’s residential hall at Oxford University and Jourdain was considering a job as her assistant. The women felt the trip would allow them to get to know each other.

In Versailles, they toured the palace and then decided to walk to the Petit Trianon, once home to Marie Antoinette. The Petite Trianon and its park are indelibly linked to the memory of Antoinette.  According to the Versailles website: “She is the only queen to have imposed her personal taste on Versailles. Sweeping away the old court and its traditions, she insisted on living as she wished. In her Trianon domain, which Louis XVI gave her in 1774, she found the heaven of privacy that enabled her to escape from the rigours of court etiquette. Nobody could come there without her invitation.”

The day was breezy for August and the two women set out and strolled through the tremendous formal garden and then headed into a wooded area. They had a guidebook with them, but even so, when they emerged from the woods,  they found themselves at the wrong building – the Grand Trianon. After consulting their guidebook again, they started up a path that appeared to lead to the Petit Trianon. Moberly noticed a woman shaking a cloth from the window of a building they passed, but didn’t stop to ask for directions.

The grounds were curiously empty of tourists, but the women came upon two somber-looking men  in green coats and three-cornered hats. They appeared to be gardeners; a wheelbarrow and spade were nearby. Jourdain, who spoke French, asked which path led to the Petit Trianon and the men answered.  But their reply was so mechanical that Jourdain repeated her question and received the same answer.

A woman and girl were standing in the doorway or a nearby cottage and Jourdain noticed  their old-fashioned clothes. She didn’t say anything to Moberly and they continued along the path the men had indicated.

At this point, Moberly suddenly felt deeply depressed and her depression increased by the moment. She didn’t say anything to Jourdain,  who was experiencing a profound sense of loneliness and felt like she was sleepwalking. She didn’t say anything about how she was feeling, either.  They followed the path until it intersected yet another path. Directly ahead of them, in the shadows of a dense wooded area, stood a kiosk, where a cloaked man was seated.

Oddly, it was no longer breezy and the air felt strangely ominous and claustrophobic. Moberly later wrote that everything around her “suddenly looked unnatural, therefore unpleasant; even the trees  behind the building seemed to have become flat and lifeless, like a wood worked in tapestry. There were no effects of light and shade, and no wind stirred the trees. It was all intensely still.”

The man looked at the women but Jourdain felt he wasn’t really looking at them. Moberly felt the man’s face was repulsive, odious. They hurried on and eventually caught sight of the Petit Trianon. Moberly thought it looked more like an elegant country house rather than a royal establishment.  Near a terrace that wrapped around the house, Moberly saw a woman who appeared to be sketching.  She wore old-fashioned clothes – a broad-brimmed white hat and a low-cut dress with a full skirt.

They reached the terrace  and made their way around the courtyard and into a French wedding party – where everyone was dressed in 20^th century clothing. Their somber moods and the oppressive feeling in the air dissipated.

The two women didn’t discuss their experience until a week later, when Moberly asked Jourdain if she thought the Petit Trianon was haunted. She said she did think it was haunted. Once they began discussing their experiences, they were shocked to discover that Jourdain hadn’t seen the seated woman sketching in the garden. Even more startling was their discovery that August 10, the day they had visited, was a pivotal date in French history – on that day in 1792, revolutionary forces had arrested the royal family. That arrest was the beginning of the end for Marie Antoinette. This could explain the feelings of depression and oppression both women experienced.

They later wrote up their individual accounts of the experience and uncovered other discrepancies about what each of them had seen or not seen. They tracked down dozens of documents, including a map drawn by the queen’s architect that suggested a cottage had stood where Jourdain had seen one.  An architectural record from 1780 noted a small columned structure that the women though might have been the kiosk they’d seen.

In 1965, psychic researcher G.W. Lambert proposed that the two women had a genuine experience with retrocognition – backward knowing – but got the dates wrong. His research suggested they saw events from 1770 instead of 1789. A biographer, Philippe Julian, discovered that a flamboyant poet and his friends often rehearsed historical plays near the Petit Trianon and concluded the women had stumbled into one of these rehearsals.

The women willed the book’s copyright to to Dame Joan Evans, an art historian who believed Julian’s theory. She refused to authorize any more English editions of An Adeventure.

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This story has fascinated me ever since I first read it as a kid. Then, as now, it seems to be that the women actually walked back in time.

David Wilson at Crossroad Press recently emailed us his latest story bundle. This is a term used for ebooks that are bundled together and sold for an incredibly low price. Murder of Mysteries is a compilation of 20 novels, including several of ours, for $2.99. In order to get exposure, we put it o our Facebook pages, tweeted it, and so on. I also asked my friend Hilary Hemingway and her husband, Jeff Lindsay, if they would put the flyer on their Facebook pages. Now, here’s the synchro:

Jeff wrote the Dexter novels. Dexter is a blood spatter expert who works for the Miami Dade police department. He’s also a serial killer. For anyone who hasn’t seen the TV show or read the books, Dexter’s full name is Dexter Morgan. He has a sister named Deborah Morgan. If you look at the list of authors on the flyer, you’ll see the name Deborah Morgan. Rob and I got a good chuckle over that. I emailed Hilary about it and she replied: Wonder how often she is asked about her bro?

Name synchros. You gotta love them.

  Megan and her dog, Nika, came home for the holidays, much to our delight, but Noah was particularly pleased. It meant he could run on the wild side again, that he could indulge in his wildest fantasies – squirrel! – with his sister and best bud, Nika. It meant he and Nika could spend a few hours on the porch at night when Rob fell asleep on the hammock and the door would be propped open for them just in case squirrels dared to scramble through the mango and avocado trees.

Their days usually begin on that porch if Rob is out there or on the family room couch, where they sleep butt to butt, or in our bedroom, where they sleep cupped like spoons in a drawer. They often wake up Rob before the sun rises, nudging him with their cool, moist noses, asking if the porch is an option, please oh please.

Once Rob gets up, they prowl around the kitchen, hoping some morsel of his breakfast drops on the floor. Or they head out into the backyard to chase each other, hunt lizards and squirrels and then run into the house with old bones they’ve dug up. They don’t worry about paying bills, when they will eat, or about much of anything else except – where’s Rob? He’s the Preferred Human for them, the guy who tosses the Frisbee or a ball. When he does this in the front yard, it’s a special treat –   because our neighbors’ dog, Fergie, might magically appear, wriggling and racing and ready to romp and play!

When we go to the gym, they go along for the ride and spend a restful hour in the backseat of our car. We usually park in the shade of a tree, so perhaps they watch for birds and squirrels. Maybe they sleep and dream. I don’t know because I’ve never hung around to observe them.

But when Rob and I return an hour later, they are happy to see us  and Nika perches on the console between the two front seats and helps Rob drive.  And yes, this is pretty shameless for a synchronicity blog, but hey, sometimes we detour.

Noah often tries to nudge himself into this same space, but he’s such a large dog (100 pounds plus) that he usually manages to maneuver just his big  head on the console, below Nika’s belly.  On the days that Rob goes biking with a friend, I walk out into the kitchen and see the dogs curled up together on the couch. As soon as Nika sees me, she tears into Rob’s office and leaps, barking, at the door, to be let out.

In this way, she is very much a focused border collie. She nearly always follows the same path out that door, curling behind some bushes that parallel the fence, her path now so worn into the ground there’s an actual groove. She leaps up at a nearby tree where once upon a time she saw a cat, hiding, and at this point, Noah will often join her. From the mysterious tree that once harbored a squirrel, the two of them sniff their way through the jungle of our yard, and finally return inside the house for another nap.

These two always know when it’s time to go to the park. Between 3 and 4 p.m., they get antsy, and Noah leads the way by coming into my room and nudging me with his big snout. Pay attention, Trish. It’s time.   When I say that word, park, it’s as if I’ve actually uttered the truly magical word squirrel. Noah howls, Nika barks, out come the leashes, and suddenly, we are all there, pulling into a parking space at the dog park.

Nika often whimpers and barks before we even open the doors. I grip her leash so tightly my hand aches.  Noah often gets away from Rob and tears across the parking lot – then stops and looks back at  Nika. Well, you coming or not, slow poke? Meanwhile, Rob is telling Noah to come over to him, his voice stern and loud, and Nika is practically pulling my shoulder out of joint. Quite often, I just let go of her leash and she races after Noah.

And always, it’s a moment to savor – even though it violates all the dog park rules. They move with the wind, these two. They try to climb trees that hold squirrel scents. Their leashes flap along the ground as they race each other from one tree to the next and finally to the dog park gate.

In the holding area between the free world and the fenced dog park, we remove their leashes. Nika, whimpering and barking and chafing at the bit, is trying to dig her through the gate. Noah is howling. Then I throw open the gate…

… and they are gone, already at the far end of the park, where the trees are known to harbor squirrels. Symmetry and grace are their hallmarks, they are fully immersed in the moment, in the omnipotent now, and Rob and I are merely caretakers. But in the end, isn’t that what we actually are for our animal companions? And for each other?

In the end, dot; we all end up like this, eager to seize – well, if not squirrels, then something else.My new year’s resolution for 2014 is taken from the lives of dogs: I am determined to live more in the moment, the eternal NOW, and to have goals that prompt me to seize that moment.

And I also resolve to give gratitude about the parts of my like that work beautifully:

Happy 2014 to everyone!

Recently, our friend Carol Bowman, author and researcher of past lives (Children’s Past Lives, Return from Heaven) , was hired by a couple in Jacksonville, Florida, to regress them. They flew her to their hometown, and she regressed the husband on Saturday afternoon. Then they suggested they all drive to Cassadaga,  a Spiritualist community just north of Orlando that we’ve written about before, and made the trip.

Usually after Carol does a regression she takes a brisk three-mile walk or takes a nap to rid herself of the client’s energy. But this time, she didn’t do either. She went straight from the regression to Cassadaga.  It turned out that the couple had been to Cassadaga on numerous occasions and directed Carol to Kathy Adams, with whom they’d had great success over the years.

This referral in itself is a synchro. There are dozens of psychics in Cassadaga, both within the Spiritualist camp and outside of it. We found it intriguing that the couple she regressed referred her to Kathy, from whom they’d gotten readings on numerous occasions and about whom we’ve gotten readings and have written about.

Carol was surprised that her clients directed her to Kathy Adams.  So Carol went into Kathy’s room for a reading.  “Her session began with some general thing that could have been true. But then her reading veered off and I felt that the things she said didn‘t apply to me. I told her that I thought what she was saying applied to my client, who was waiting outside, not to me. She was as perplexed as I was.”

When Carol went outside, she told J and M what Kathy had said and J exclaimed, “Those things pertain to me, Carol!”

Since she hadn’t taken her customary walk or nap after the regression, she was still imbued with J’s energy – which Kathy had read. “It was a lesson for me in disengaging myself from a client’s energy,” Carol said.

 Before the reading, when J, M, and Carol were having lunch, she had jokingly mentioned to J that she wanted a ghostwriter for her next book book.  “After all, we were in Cassadaga, surrounded by spooks just waiting in line to come through all the mediums there.  Well, J, who is a writer, took it literally.  After I emerged from my reading he went in to talk to Kathy.  Then, about a minute later he came out and said he asked Kathy if he should ghostwrite my book.  Kathy came running out and said, “Wait, I know a ghostwriter for you.”  

 She went to her car, grabbed a book and handed it to Carol. “This lady can write your book.”

 The book was Aliens in the Backyard. “Kathy said Trish could ghostwrite it for me.  She had no idea that I knew Trish!   The trip was worth that moment. “ 

This is the sort of synchro that defies the odds. First, there’s the fact that the couple who had hired her for a weekend of family regressions decided to drive her to Cassadaga for a reading with our favorite psychic. We had told Carol about our readings with Kathy. Then there’s the book, Aliens in the Backyard. We had given Kathy a copy because she’s in the book.

Awhile back, we wrote about the Kardashians and their interest in UFOs and Area 51. Their interest seemed like a publicity ploy. But Alejandro Rojas of Open Minds TV (and magazine) recently traveled to Area 51 with the Ks, and shares the experience via You Tube. His take on it is interesting.

Here’s another story from the journals of ‘Sandy,’ a retired veterinarian, who has experienced decades of encounters with a variety of seemingly benevolent alien beings. Synchronicity has played a large role in her life and this story highlights one such event. This story dates back to 1996, the year she began her journaling.

“I had a wonderful massage at the health fair and afterward I was just wandering around, looking at the alternative medicine displays, when a woman sitting in the corner of the room caught my eye. Her table was set up for Egyptian Oracle readings and I felt very drawn to her. She introduced herself as Geralyn and I sat down and immediately began telling her about Gabriel and the ETs working with me who claim to be from Sirius. She smiled and said Gabriel works with her often and is the Angel of Courage.

“I told her about the meditation vision I recently had where I was standing beside the great pyramid looking down, knowing there was something I needed to read there, and when I looked up and to my left, there was a large UFO hovering in the sky at the level of the top of the pyramid. Geralyn smiled at me, and then picked up her book on the Egyptian Oracle; this is a book explaining the metaphysical meanings of the hieroglyphs of the Egyptian-style runes she uses for readings. She opened to a chapter and covered the title with her hand and turned the page towards me to show me the picture of a rune hieroglyph and asked “Sandy, what do you see here….?”

“It was a rune hieroglyph of a triangle with a small star or stick-like figure drawing of a person next to it, and above it was a half-circle disk I was absolutely stunned! ‘That’s me,’ I said. She nodded and removed her hand from the chapter title, which read: “Sirius the Dog Star.”

The rune signified change that one may greatly benefit from, a new cycle as the appearance of the dog star indicated for the ancient Egyptians. She said, “You have important work to do. ”  Then she started the reading and said that I needed to talk more openly about the ETs.

“She laid out some cards and the first words out of her mouth were “Beware of false prophets.” She said there is someone around me whom I have instilled great trust but that they do not walk their talk and are very destructive, and that I will be quite disappointed to learn this. She also said to be careful in Florida, not to get distracted from my mission or everything will be chaos.  She also said I have gone beyond the veil.

“As she spoke I constantly saw orbs of soft light hovering around her. She said I have a lot of work ahead of me and she smiled warmly at me. She also said that I need patience, that I want everything all at once, patience. We hugged and I know we will be in touch.

“Years later, I bought the Egyptian Oracle runes that Geralyn used so I could copy the chapter title page mentioned above for my journal entry. Below is the scanned page that she showed me:”

This video was sent to us by Judi Hertling, our friend from British Colombia. It’s a winner!

To all of you from the MacGregors, Merry Christmas!

 Last month, Daz reviewed a book by Stanislav Grof, When the Impossible Happens: Adventures in Non-Ordinary Reality. I went over to Amazon, read the free excerpt of the book, bought it and have been reading it on the treadmill at the gym.

Part I is about synchronicity and what’s particularly intriguing about this part – and the entire book – is that Grof – like Carl Jung, like Bernard Beitman, is a psychiatrist. A shrink. A physician who studies the human psyche. Whenever shrinks write about synchronicity, I feel that the entire concept is somehow bolstered. These people, after all, are the ones who help to define the medical paradigm about what’s normal – and what isn’t.

When Grof worked at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, his personal friend, mythologist and author Joseph Campbell, was a speaker at one of the institute’s many workshops. On one particular occasion, Campbell was talking about his favorite subject – Carl Jung’s contributions to the understanding of mythology and psychology. He made a brief reference to synchronicity and one of the participants, who wasn’t familiar with the term, interrupted and asked Campbell to explain what synchronicity was.

As Grof writes,  Campbell gave a practical example. But instead of retelling Jung’s scarab story he gave an example from his own life  – about a preying mantis that appeared outside his 14^th story New York apartment while he was writing about African Bushmen. Campbell wrote that the creature’s face looked like that of a Bushman. This is the first time I have run across this synchro told by someone who actually heard Campbell tell it.

The book is filled with stories like this – first-hand accounts of Grof’s friendships with people like Campbell, Michael Harner (the most famous western shaman) and British biologist Rupert Sheldrake. Campbell officiated at Grof’s wedding in Iceland, an event reconstructed from an ancient Viking wedding ritual that hadn’t been performed in Iceland since the Christians had arrived – i.e. , deeply archetypal and filled with synchros.

“The Icelandic adventure was a fascinating experience of archetypal energies breaking into everyday life and creating astonishing synchronicities,” Grof wrote. “However, it taught me an important lesson. I learned not to trust unconditionally the seductive power of such experiences and the enchantment and ego inflation that they engender. The ecstatic feelings associated with emergence of archetypal forces do not guarantee a positive outcome.”

That marriage, in fact, didn’t work out.  We’ve probably all had synchros like this – where all the signs look so promising, but whatever it is doesn’t work out the way we thought it would.

Grof also has a fascinating story about working as a special consultant on the science fiction film Brainstorm, starring Natalie Woods and Christopher Walken.  I remember seeing it in 1983.  The movie is about a pair of scientists who develop a helmet that can record and transmit human experiences. When the scientist played by Louise Fletcher suffers a heart attack and knows she’s dying, she dons the helmet so that her death experience will be recorded. 

Grof and his wife at the time, Christina, spent time on the set with Natalie and her husband, Robert Wagner, and talked about the yacht that Natalie and her husband owned.  It turned out that they knew many of the friends of Christina’s stepfather, who was also a sailor. The discussion of the yacht, Grof writes, “in retrospect, seems uncanny and foreboding in view of the tragic events that followed.” Not long afterward, Natalie, her husband, and Christopher Walken were sailing on the yacht, apparently had too much to drink, and at one point Natalie left them alone, boarded a dingy and tries to reach nearby Catalina Island. She never made it.

The book is an intriguing journey through synchronicity, memories of prenatal life, past lives, the paranormal, shamanism, encounters, and tapping into the collective unconscious. It’s like an old friend with whom you sit at the kitchen table, sipping coffee and telling tales.

              Nika and Noah inspecting Murphy the pup

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Our daughter, Megan, recently moved into a new apartment in the same building in Orlando where she has lived for the last two years, and we drove up there  to help her out. She doesn’t own a lot of stuff – bed, dresser, desk, chair- and she and a friend were able to move the large items before we got there. We were left with the minutia – everything else!

While we were there, Megan had to tend to her dog-walking business, and many of her clients are either in her building or nearby. The concierges at the front desk are continually handing out her card, touting her as the best dog walker in downtown Orlando, with the best prices. Only this morning, one of the concierges told Megan she has been able to convince nearly everyone who asks about dog walkers to contact her, except for the owner of a small terrier who uses Megan’s competition. Megan has never met her competition, but knows of her. She’s more expensive, doesn’t live in the building, doesn’t even live downtown.

So this morning we left her building with Noah and Nika on leashes and walked across the street so Megan could pick up Murphy, a golden retriever/gold lab mix pup. While she was picking up Murphy, Rob and I walked Noah and Nika up the street, to a patch of grass shrouded in magnificent oaks with Spanish moss flowing from them. Both dogs found a spot near the base of a tree that probably smelled of squirrels, and were busy sniffing when Nika’s head suddenly snapped up. Her tail started wagging. A little terrier pup hurried up the sidewalk, yapping noisily, while its walker struggled to contain it.

I let Nika move toward the dog, to sniff and do whatever it is dogs do that constitutes a greeting. The terrier was beside himself with joy, greeting Nika, then Noah, whose head is the size of the terrier’s body.

“How old is your dog?” I asked the young woman, a brunette wearing a jacket and boots because yes, winter has come to Orlando.

“We think he’s a year old, but I’m not sure. I’m the dog walker.” Then she rocked onto the balls of her feet and brought her hands up as high as her head, fingers hooked like claws. “He’s like a frickin’ squirrel,” she laughed. “I’m gonna climb your legs and head and make you crazy.”

After she moved on down the street with the terrier, Rob remarked that he saw her in the lobby of Megan’s building earlier that morning and we realized she is Megan’s  competition.

The odds on this one aren’t impressive until you factor in the timing. Megan had just told us the story about her competition – and about five minutes later we met the  woman. The meaning? No clue. But when Megan emerged from the building awhile later with Murphy, Rob said, “Synchro, Megan, and listen to this.”

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Happy Winter Solstice to everyone