Last year, we sold a book on precognition – Sensing the Future – and are nearly done with the first draft. Tonight I was trying to remember when I last had a precognitive experience of any kind. There have been a few about small things, mostly through impulses or remembered snippets of dreams. But nothing to include in the book or even blog a about.

Then I remembered that in October, during one of Rob’s meditation classes, I set an intention before the class. I asked to receive information about when my novel would sell. It had just started making the rounds with publishers that month. Toward the end of the class, when I tend to be in a really relaxed and receptive state, a date and several words popped into my head: around new moon, November 11. I knew that new moon would be in Scorpio, my rising sign, and felt hopeful.

New moons are always about new beginnings, new chapters, doorways opening. Opportunities often come out of nowhere. And when one falls in your sun or moon sign or in the sign of your ascendant, the opportunities that manifest themselves are usually really good ones. Two weeks after a new moon, there’s a full moon, the time of harvest and completion. We often receive news on or around the time of a full moon.

On November 11, I kept waiting for the phone to ring or for my agent to email me that the novel had sold. Instead, I received an email from my friend Nancy Pickard, suggesting that I write a short story for Ellery Queen magazine. So I did. I wrote about it here.

I submitted it, then felt annoyed that my apparent precognition had the sale of my novel hadn’t panned out, and wondered what the impression I’d gotten in meditation was really about. For the next few days, I remained hopeful since the new moon energy can manifest itself for a few days on either side of the actual date. But by November 14 or so, I started wondering what that impression I’d gotten during meditation was really about.

On the evening of December 9, about 36 hours before the new moon in Sagittarius, I received an email from the editor at Ellery Queen saying she would like to buy the story. What I learned from this is that my original impression was about a new moon sale, but not necessarily my novel. The November 11 date was important because that was when Nancy had suggested I write the short story that the magazine bought shortly before December’s new moon. But back in October when I’d had the impression, I didn’t have any intention of writing a short story. And because I’d specifically asked for information about when the novel would sell, it never occurred to me that the new moon hint might pertain to something else.

And that’s the tricky thing with precognitions. We don’t always have the full details when we sense the future and our left brains immediately intercede and start trying to connect the dots about what it may possibly mean.

So, here are the new moon dates for 2016, pegged to eastern time. If you’re going to pitch ideas, launch a website, submit manuscripts, do anything new, on or around the time of the new moon is when you should do it. The exceptions are new moon during Mercury retrogrades and solar eclipses. Full moon follow new moons two weeks later and are about culmination, completion, and often bring news.

February 8 – new moon in Aquarius, 9:39 a.m.

March 8 – new moon, 8:54 p.m. in Pisces, total solar eclipse 8:57 p.m.

April 7 – new moon in Aries, 7:24 a.m.

May 6- new moon in Taurus, 3:30 p.m.

June 4 – new moon in Gemini, 11:00 p.m.

July 4- new moon in Cancer, 7:01 a.m.

August 2- new moon in Leo, 4:45 p.m.

September 1 – new moon in Virgo, 5:03 a.m., solar eclipse 5:07 a.m.

September 30 – new moon in Libra, 8:11 p.m.

October 30 – new moon in Scorpio, 1:38 p.m.

November 29 – new moon in Sagittarius, 7:18 a.m.

December 29 – new moon in Capricorn, 1:53 a.m.

Eclipses tend to bring things up close and personal and are sometimes stressful because we have to move and decide quickly. Solar eclipses concern outer events and often bring double the opportunities of a regular new moon. Sometimes with a solar eclipse, though, you have to give up something before the opportunities flow in. A solar eclipse is followed about two weeks later (depending on your time zone) by a lunar eclipse, which occurs during a full moon and concerns inner states, emotions, buried stuff, news, relationships.

The solar eclipse on March 8 is followed by a lunar eclipse in Libra on March 23. The solar eclipse in Virgo on September 1 is followed by a lunar eclipse in Pisces on September 16.

We received a strange letter the other day from a man in prison in New Mexico. He read The 7 Secrets of Synchronicity and said how much he liked it. He also said that the concepts have changed him as a person. I’ll take him at his word.

In his hand-written letter that was stamped in red as ‘Inmate correspondence’ and included his inmate number, the writer – Sixto Castillo – spelled out the seven secrets, then said he has discovered an eighth one.

Okay, but the most interesting part of his letter was this sentence: “I believe the true value of the coincidence has to do with the 7 chakras. This concept has come to me through an entity named – or I call her – Connie. She has opened a door to a vast region that is new, of an old concept, which is or has to do with cycles.”

I’m not sure what all that means, but it’s interesting that he cited the name Connie, and we have a regular here on the blog – Connie J. Cannon. So I wrote Connie and sent her the above lines from the letter, since I found those comments somewhat mysterious.

Connie, for her part, had an interesting reply.

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“I’ve had some dreams recently in which I am somehow ‘connecting’ with a male who is familiar to me, but whom I don’t overtly know. In these dreams, we are conversing about spiritual matters. In the dream before I woke this morning, he was standing on one side of a door, leaning against the door frame, and I was close to him but was standing on the other side of the door. I’ve been trying to remember our discussions, however they have buried themselves in my mind. I do recall that this man has VERY blue eye and is tall. He is attempting to get me to do something and I am telling him I cannot.”

Connie also noted a number of synchronicities, regarding names and numbers, including the fact that she lives a few miles from the Castillo, a Spanish fort in St. Augustine, Florida. I’ll let Connie expand on these synchros, if she likes.

She wrote back a few minutes later and said that when she wrote about her dreams, she had overlooked the point that she and Sixto both made reference to a door or doorway. Sixto wrote that Connie “has opened a door to a vast region that is new…” Connie, meanwhile, noted that the man she dreamed about was “leaning agains a door frame.” She was on one side, he was on the other.

I’m going to write Sixto, knowing of course that prison authorities will read the letter, and tell him about Connie and find out more about his ‘Connie,’ and ask what the eighth secret is that he has discovered. Interestingly, some mystics speak of an eighth chakra, as well, an energy center of divine love, of spiritual compassion and selflessness.

I’ll also ask him where he found a copy of The 7 Secrets of Synchronicity. The prison librarian might have some mystical leanings!

Spam. When I was in college, it came in a tin can, was cheap, and I ate a lot of it. Today, I can’t even stomach looking at a can of spam, much less consuming it. But the 21^st century version of spam is, in some ways, more palatable for me. It’s often funny and even brings synchronicity with it.

There seem to be 4 types of spam: compliments; condemnation; self-help; and general info.

Here’s an example of a compliment:

Good web site you’ve got here. It’s hard to find high quality writing like yours nowadays. I truly appreciate people like you! Take care!! And then the link leads you to something like a plumbing company.

Here’s an information type of spam:

My programmer is trying to convince me to move to .net from PHP. I have always disliked the idea because of the expenses. But he’s trying none the less. I’ve been using Word Press on several websites for about a year and am worried about switching to another platform. I have heard fantastic things about blogengine.net.
Is there a way I can transfer all my word press posts into it? Any help would be really appreciated!

Self-help, which I have apparently deleted, usually revolves around a product or service like vitamins and herbs that help you lose weight, find a healthy and optimistic outlook on life, maintain an erection, look 20 years younger.

And here’s a condemnation, from someone who is spelling and grammar challenged:

The next time I read a website, I am hoping that it doesnt disappoint me around this one. I mean, I know it was my decision to learn, but I actually thought youd have something interesting to say.

Recently, we’ve gotten a lot of sexual spam under a static page setting for my book Unlocking the Secrets to Scorpio.  Since Scorpio is the most sexual sign of the zodiac, I’m amused when I see a spam here for live porn videos, live threesome, raw sex…. These blatant sexual spams don’t ever appear elsewhere, just under the Scorpio entry, so I’m taking that as a synchro. The rest of the spam is irritating but also amusing.

PS Usually, spammers go to older posts to leave their stuff. So perhaps it’s a synchro that today’s post brought a spam right here  – a rather benign spam, but spam nonetheless!

Instant Site Creator One of the best software to create an unlimited number of websites. Easy to use and very professional.

Years ago, we published a fascinating triple synchronicity story offered by novelist Tony Vigorito, author of Nine Kinds of Naked. It was called Eyes of a Blue Dog and we included it in The 7 Secrets of Synchronicity.

Now Tony has a new story about synchronicity that he tells in his deeply personal way. He’s got a great voice and his self-deprecating humor keeps his story from descending into a lengthy ego trip.

One of the best parts for me was his story of meeting a beautiful woman at a music festival, talking to her for hours, then pulling one card out of his tarot deck. It was the card for courage (pictured above), that shows a small plant growing out of a crack in a rock. The woman was just going through a break-up of a relationship so the card was meaningful to her. Tony told her to keep it, thinking – and hoping – that he might see her sometime later and retrieve it. He never saw her again, and now every time he open his tarot deck he realizes that it lacks the courage card, which he says is reflected in his own life.

That’s just one of many anecdotes you can find here if you read his story called The Cathedral of Eternity.

https://www.tonyvigorito.com/blog/chaos-synchronicity-technology-magic/

Yes, I realize that a lot of people think Mercury retrograde is silly, that it doesn’t apply to them, that it’s just some nutty designation astrologers create. Well, it’s not. If you pay attention to what’s going on in your life during the three Mercury retros each year, you’ll find that things don’t run as smoothly as you would like.

Computers go haywire, appliances break down, toilets back up and overflow, creating chaos in your basement. Relationships suffer from miscommunication, travel plans go awry, you get locked out of your house, your manuscript is rejected, your car breaks down on a highway at night, the bank errs and it’s not in your favor. For Geminis and Virgos, which are ruled by Mercury, these periods tend to be really annoying. But everyone experiences Mercury retrograde in a unique way and the first retro of 2016 starts on January 5 in Aquarius at 8:04 a.m., slips back into Capricorn, and turns direct again in that sign on January 25, at 4:50 p.m. eastern time.

To give you an idea of the global scale of a Mercury retro, look back to November 7, 2000. Mercury had been retrograde since mid-October – first in Scorpio, then it slipped back into Libra and at 9:20 p.m., it turned direct in that sign. When Mercury stations – which means it’s about to turn retrograde or direct – the potential for miscommunication is strong. But for that date, the station caused bedlam because it was election day in the U.S.

Astrologers were predicting chaos and, sure enough, at 7:49 p.m., NBC decided they had enough data from exit polls in Florida and Tom Brokaw called the state for Al Gore. With Florida’s 25 electoral votes, it meant he had won the election.

However, shortly after 10 p.m. – less than an hour after Mercury had turned direct – Brokaw backtracked and said that George W. Bush had won the state and the election. We all know what ensued after that – the endless dispute over the chads on Palm Beach County’s ballot and the eventual decision by the Supreme Court that Bush was the 43^rd president of the U.S.

On a personal level, your best way to navigate this period is to follow the rule of the 3 Rs: revise, review, reconsider. Don’t start anything new, don’t sign contracts, don’t move or travel, don’t take anything for granted, don’t assume. In fact, if you can get away with it, just hang out at home for a few weeks, sleep and eat and indulge your fantasies. Yeah, sure. Like any of us can do that without feeling totally guilty and anxious about what we should be doing or must be doing or…well, something.

Our daughter, Megan, is going to be moving and when I was looking at charts for January, I suggested that she be moved into her new place before January 5, when Mercury turns retrograde. As a Virgo, she’s now well-versed enough in this Mercury retro business to know what it means. She readily agreed.

These periods, despite how they seem in the external world, really aren’t negative. They give us a chance to lay low, to mull over, to move within and rearrange the furniture of our inner lives. People we haven’t seen in years often resurface. Old opportunities surface with new faces and possibilities. If we happen to travel during these periods, then our itineraries change without rhyme or reason, but we will undoubtedly revisit our destination in the future.

Mercury is about communication, travel, our conscious mind, how we learn and absorb, the stuff of our daily life. It can be a trickster planet, for sure, but it’s also the messenger, our most immediate and direct conduit to our left brain, our reasoning self, our ego. It’s smart to honor the retro with a gesture, a ritual, an intention: I’m going to quit eating desserts, stop smoking, start a regular exercise regimen. And well, if your toilet backs up and floods, so it goes. Take a deep breath. This, too, shall pass!

From 1950 to 1956, I think it was, our family lived in an oil camp in Maracaibo, Venezuela, where my dad worked for a Standard Oil subsidiary, Creole. One of my clearest and earliest memories is from late 1952, when my grandmother – my mother’s mom – arrived from Tulsa, Oklahoma. My mother was very pregnant with my sister and my Nana was there to help her out after the birth.

My grandmother was an entity – no other way to describe her. Born in Odessa, Russia, she had emigrated to the U.S. speaking nothing but Russian, and had somehow made a life for herself in the States. She was large, matronly, kind of intimidating, and had been widowed for years. She was also infinitely kind, a lover of animals.

In those days, of course, no one knew the gender of their unborn child. But I had a feeling this child, my sibling, would be a girl. I think my parents had a feeling about it, too, because they had already settled on a name – Mary Margaret. I’m not sure who was honored by the Mary part of this, but the Margaret was my dad’s youngest sister.

At 12:30 p.m. on January 3, my sister, Mary, came into the world. My mother brought her home on the second or third day – this was back when they didn’t kick you out of the hospital the day after! I was five and a half, had been in kindergarten for a few months, had learned to read comic books and was now moving on to real books. I remember sneaking into the baby room after everyone else had gone to bed and staring down at her, this little thing all curled in on herself, beneath a swath of blankets.

And suddenly, her eyes opened. Huge eyes, dark chocolate eyes. And I thought, Wow, where did you come from? We just stared at each other, Mary and I, and in those moments I sensed some sort of strange connection that went through many lives, many relationships. I didn’t have any context into which to fit these feelings, so I quickly hurried back to my own room and crawled into bed.

The photo above was taken in our living room in Maracaibo. I remember that I was initially barefoot and my mother insisted that I put on socks and shoes. I’m not sure why, except that my mother was sometimes a stickler for conventional details. Everyone in a family photo wears socks and shoes!

Today, that little thing next to me in the photo is 63 years old, an R.N. who has overseen an assisted living facility for more than a decade. In February, she will become the regional nurse for a new company in Georgia that owns several facilities. She has three grown sons and, more than a year ago, met a new guy, Neal, who, as she puts it, is the guy she’s been looking for her entire life.

Mary and I, like many siblings, have had our ups and downs. But the blood link is stronger than any disagreement you encounter through the years. In a larger, cosmic sense, it may be why we are born into a particular family at a particular time. I still remember looking down at that little thing all those years ago and thinking, Wow, we really are in this together!

Happy Birthday, Maruja!

Here’s a peculiar and somewhat ominous synchro that ironically is linked with Christmas. It comes from Jane Clifford of Wales, a psychic healer who is a magnet for synchronicity.

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Three years ago on Christmas morning, a little bird tried to fly in through a slightly open window. I stood up to close it and at that moment, a sparrow hawk swept down and captured the bird inches from the window. It carried off the screaming bird.

I interpreted it a warning. The startling incident happened behind my son’s head. Within days, he had the anguish of discovering his partner had been sleeping with his best friend and was moving in with him! Ouch!

So this Christmas day, the morning began with the screeching of a distressed bird. A few feet from the house a sparrow hawk had caught the bird and was busy killing it. The screeching  went on and on until the hawk finally carried the screeching bird away. This time, it was my daughter who had noticed it. So something challenging is coming her way, I think.

There’s never been another attack by a sparrow hawk near the house…just those two, both on Christmas morning.

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One thought occurred to me about the story. The sparrow hawk is having it’s ‘turkey’ dinner, but with a small species of bird! The symbolism, of course, is another matter, and hopefully nothing too distressful will happen to her daughter.

FROM US TO YOU!

I was looking around in a website called INSPIRING QUOTES for something appropriate for the new year. What do I come across, but a quote from Trish! A New Year’s synchronicity.

I’m not sure how inspiring it is, but it certainly fits our world today where multiple realities seemingly co-exist…sometimes under the same roof. It’s all part of the paradigm shift as old ways die and some struggle to keep the past alive…while others move on to a new reality, hopefully a better one and a better world.

“Most of us suffer from a kind of myopia. We see only the things that fit in with our beliefs about the world.”

Here’s a good example of the law of attraction. In this case, it’s siblings who didn’t know the other existed who ended up in the same town, at the same job, and finally driving around together making deliveries in the same truck. That’s when they got suspicious as one person after another said they looked like brothers. Notice how they’re even wearing similar glasses. Here’s the story.

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After working side by side for weeks, two coworkers discovered that they are actually siblings brought together by a series of incredible circumstances.

Gary Nisbet and Randy Joubert, who share the same parents, were adopted and raised by separate families in neighboring Maine towns, never knowing the other one existed.  They attended rival high schools, moved to the same town of Waldoboro, Maine, and both wound up working for the same company, Dow Furniture.

The two rode side by side in a delivery truck and slowly put the pieces together.

“Something clicked with me,” Randy said. “So I got him up by the truck and said Gary, this is going to sound bizarre, but were you adopted?”

Gary, somewhat perplexed, confirmed that he was in fact adopted.  After comparing some notes — dates of birth, and finally birth parents names — they stared at each other in disbelief.

“This is such a small world,” Gary said.

Our friend and author Kathy Doore  died in the spring of  2015. She was an intrepid explorer of the weird and the strange, so it’s no surprise that she brought the ancient spiritual site of Markawasi, Peru to the western world in her book by that name.

Her memorial service in April 2015 was held on a boat and was arranged by Lynn and Bruce Gernon,  who were friends of Kathy’s. During that great boat ride, I mentioned to Bruce that I was expecting Kathy to put in an appearance of some sort. I think that appearance has finally happened. Today we received this email from Bruce:

Hi Rob and Trish,

Here is a Christmas ghost story for you.  On Tuesday the 22nd of December 2015 I had an interesting experience.  I was home alone when I got up at sunrise and had breakfast.  After eating I headed back to the bedroom and stopped in the living room because I heard a strange noise.  It was humming and vibrating.  It only took a minute to realize it was my large attic fan running on low speed.  At first I thought my wife Lynn must have left it on, but then I would have heard it the night before.  Then I thought I may have walked by it and the sleeve of my robe must have caught the switch and turned it on.  This has never happened before in 20 years so it seemed unlikely.  So I thought I will surly figure it out later and I forgot about it.

After going out and returning later that day I went into the front garage for the first time that day.  While I was in there I noticed that the garage outdoor lights were on.  So I turned them off and started thinking maybe the same thing happened as with the attic fan.  When I walked back into the house I realized that could not have happened because I would have seen the front garage lights were on the night before. 

As I walked through the hallway I stopped dead in my tracks as the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up and my entire body tingled.  I have never felt this strong of a nervous feeling before.  It was at this point I realized it was Kathy Doore letting me know she was out there.

Happy holidays,

Bruce

Note that Bruce’s experience happened right after the winter solstice and just before the full moon in Cancer on December 25. Both dates, I think, are important. While we traditionally confer Halloween as the time when the veil is thinnest between the living and the dead, the winter solstice is Pluto’s terrain, the time of the dark underworld, when Pluto ferreted Persephone away. The full moon in Cancer, though, got a friendly beam from expansive Jupiter, and that planet was critical to Kathy’s life and death.

In life, she lived Jupiter’s archetype – I’m nomadic, I live to explore where no one else has gone, and I bring you gifts from those places. The last time we met, at Macaroni Grill for lunch, I took a look at her natal chart and saw that Jupiter was coming to a beneficial place relative to her sun and chart. “Great year coming up, Kathy,” I said, and explained the specifics.

“Really?” she exclaimed. “I don’t feel it. I think I may be checking out.”

Checking out may not be the phrase she used, but it was what she meant. And when it came true, I recalled the advice from Renie Wiley, my mentor in astrology and many other facets of the paranormal, who passed on many years ago.

“A beneficial angle from Jupiter can also give the soul a way out, Trish. Never forget that. It may not predict an easy death, but it does give you a way to bow out spiritually.”

And that was what Kathy did.

And if Bruce is right, then she is now back.

Thank you, Bruce, for sharing.

A postscript to this story. Lynn and Bruce Gernon have several thousand of Kathy’s books in a closet, and are now selling them on Amazon, They “inherited” the books when Kathy died. The book originally sold for $35, but the Gernons are selling it for $9.99 because they are going to be moving and can’t take all these books with them. The book is a visual feast of a profoundly spiritual journey.