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12/21/12. It looks like some strange mathematical algorithm, doesn’t it?

It’s the end date for the Mayan calendar. It’s the date that made Jose Arguelles famous. It’s what sent true believers to some mountain in France to await pickup by the space brothers. It’s why I asked our daughter to come home for Christmas on 12/20 – not because I believe the world will end, but because wackos might believe that. Wackos with guns, eager to accelerate Armageddon. Wackos with  road rage in their hearts and nothing to lose.

Remember Y2K? All those dire predictions about computers everywhere crashing, the electrical grids going down, chaos and Armageddon? What happened? Not much. The new year was celebrated as it always is around the world, with cheers and champagne and resolutions that usually vanish within a week or so.

12/21/12 is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, when the hours of darkness outnumber the hours of light. That’s what bothers me about this date. And why does the Mayan calendar end on this date, at 11:11:11 UT? Given the power of these numbers, it’s a synchro at the very least.

But let’s say the Mayan elders are correct, that the date simply marks the end of a very long cycle – nearly 26,000 years. None of us can say for sure what life was like 26,000 years ago;  even history about time that far back is somewhat speculative. But perhaps history isn’t the point. Perhaps the real importance of this date is where we go from here.

It’s obvious that immense change is happening. Every industry and institution we once took for granted is altering in some way, transmuting, or dissolving altogether. On a planetary level, this means we’re struggling to deal with climate change that is happening in spite of the deniers. It means our oceans are rising, our sun is changing, and what we once believed to be true and inviolate may be based on lies. After what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School, it means America’s love affair with guns must change.

That’s what a paradigm shift is, a mass awakening, a realization that we, the people, have been duped, bought into an artifice that is breaking apart, breaking down, collapsing.

Who doesn’t remember the movie The Matrix? Keenu Reeve in his coolest role, his most genuine role. Well, science is beginning to think there may be something to it.

So is 12/21/12 our chance to bust free of the matrix?

Right now as I’m writing this, detritus from the March 11, 2011 tsunami in Japan is washing up on Hawaiian beaches – tons of stuff, refrigerators and shoes, plastic bottles and kitchen cabinets. A disaster in one part of the world doesn’t occur in isolation. It impacts all of us, everywhere, we are that connected externally and internally.  Radiation from the meltdown at Fukushima has entered the food chain upon which we all depend – not just fish, but the very essence of the ocean, down into its most intricate textures, into the complex interplay between water and air, oxygen.

Whatever it is that 12/21/12 portends, it’s already here. We are living it, seeing it, we are witnesses to monumental change. And how we, as a species, adapt to it – or don’t – may determine the quality of our lives from this point forward.What worries me most quite frankly, is a government blog I ran across recently that is supposedly assuring us the world WILL  NOT end, then they spelled it out.  At 12 minutes past midnight on the 21st, our version of why the world won’t be ending will be posted.

The other day, I ran across something on my simple gestures that encapsulates where we are now as a species, a global community. Take a look.

It’s like an updated (and shorter) version of Desiderata, which was a kind of blueprint for the Sixties, but fits even now:

Go placidly amidst the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its shams, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful.

Strive to be happy.

Let’s take that with us into 2013 and beyond. See you tomorrow, on December 21. And  we wish all of you happy holidays and a prosperous, healthy and insightful new year!

With all the hoopla of the upcoming end to the Mayan Calendar, it’s not surprising that the ‘end-of-the-world’ scenario has turned up in Doonesbury. In doing so, Gary Trudeau has exposed readers to a bit of knowledge about the Mayan calendar and today (Tuesday) he mentions the Harmonic Convergence, the last major dates of significance in the calendar – Aug. 16-17, 1987.  On those two mornings, millions of people worldwide – including Trish and me – showed up at sacred sites and places in nature – from beaches to mountaintops – at sunrise for the two-day celebration – an awakening with the promise of great changes in the offing for the world.

Those days marked  a planetary alignment with the Sun, Moon and six out of eight planets – a grand trine – as well as the culmination of 22 cycles of 52 years each in the Mayan Calendar. In Trudeau’s strip, he jokes about the H.C. – it’s a comic, after all. Yet, he is so wrong in his denigrating what followed this event.

Change typically doesn’t happen in one day, but unfolds over time. For example, if assault weapons are banned in the U.S. as a result of the recent devastating school shooting, it will take weeks, months, maybe years for all the necessary changes to take effect. So in the aftermath of the Harmonic Convergence – that promise of great change – what took place?

Oh, how about the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the instigation of democratic institutions in Eastern Europe, the merging of the two Germanys into one nation. And, probably most amazing of it,  it was all done without firing a single weapon. No war, no violence. It just happened. Although skeptics, of course, quickly dismiss any connection between those dramatic world-changing events and the Mayan Calendar, they can’t deny that indeed astonishing changes took place in the months following the Harmonic Convergence.

This bit of mystical history, though, seems to have happened in an alternative universe, because most people don’t recognize it – or even know that it occurred. I was astonished on one recent Sunday morning while listening to a public radio puzzle program that included a question of the relationship between 1987 and 2012. (I mentioned this in an earlier post.) There is some numeric relationship between the two years, which I can’t remember, and several hundred listeners wrote in with the right answer. But a couple of dozen people provided an alternative answer – the significant link in those years related to the Mayan Calendar. Surprisingly, neither of the hosts – smart people – had ever heard of the Harmonic Convergence. So, of course, they would not have a clue about any link between the celebration and ensuing events that aligned directly with the promise foretold.

Seeing the Doonesbury mention of the Harmonic Convergence was a synchronicity for me because  – besides reading the comic page – I’m editing and rewriting my first novel, Crystal Skull, which will be coming out as an e-book through Crossroad Press. In the novel, the Harmonic Convergence is the ticking clock in events leading to the reunion of two sacred crystal skulls and the battle to possess them.

It’s actually a mystery novel with a private detective as protagonist, but it veers away from traditional mysteries, as you can see by this summary that will be used to describe the book.

Possessed by a myth, a killer will stop at nothing to re-unite two ancient crystal skulls at a momentous date in the Mayan calendar — the Harmonic Convergence. He intends to complete his quest, at whatever cost, to seal his quest to achieve immortality. But Nicholas Pierce, a private detective, is just as determined to find out who killed his client, the caretaker of one of the skulls. 

So, of course, taking a break from editing the final chapters of a story taking place in 1987 that focuses on the H.C., I couldn’t help but see a meaningful coincidence in the Doonesbury strip today.

I also noticed that Australian futurist-mystic Marcus Anthony, who has been a denier of the significance of 12-21-2012, has changed his mind in a new post. He offers an interesting perspective from Down Under.

I have to say I’m looking forward to the ‘end of the world’ and hoping it will bring a new vision for humanity in the days, weeks, months and years to follow with concrete results even more ambitious than the massive changes for the better that followed the Harmonic Convergence.

Here’s an essay by Stace Tussel that strives to link thought to mass and synchronicity to physics. You could say that it’s a rather weighty issue.

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An old friend asked me if I thought there might be a connection between fractals and synchronicity.  As we spoke I realised that our conversation was “fractalising,” or creating related branches of thought from which other little branches of thought sprouted, and so on.  I suddenly realised that our thoughts are capable of sending out dynamic neural impulses, resulting in cascading, near-infinite whorls of information exhibiting both independence and connectivity.

Now, in order to imagine how a “thought fractal” could be implicated in the seemingly-spontaneous creation of reality – which I think synchronicity quite effectively represents – we must agree that thought has mass, which is something we can’t prove, but we can imagine.  A thought fractal, or for that matter, any information fractal (e.g., in Mike’s post, one created and/or maintained and/or grown via the internet) would naturally increase in area, if not so much in size, just like any fractal does.

If we accept that thoughts have mass, we’ll also accept that a fractalising thought’s gravity would increase correspondingly.  The entire system of ideas or thought, and of each fractal “arm” within its matrix, would be an expansive area onto which outside information may be drawn by gravitational pull.  In other words, the more massive the thought fractal (i.e., the more complex – like an intense series of thoughts leading up to an epiphany, for instance, or the internet’s ever-growing reach and effect), the more likely that synchronicities, which are among reality’s most enigmatic creations, would result….

Synchronicity truly is a natural result of the scenario I’ve imagined, for all fractals return again and again to their original form. A Mandelbrot set, for example, starts out with a relatively simple shape, which becomes more complex through a series of chaotic manifestations of curves and angles, ultimately coming back to the exact form from whence it started, continuing on infinitely.  What I’m suggesting is that fractalised thought, through a similar process, draws toward it the very “ideas” or thoughts with which it began – thus, synchronicity.

As a very brief example, today at work I came across the last name “Roos.”  I often see names that are new or unusual, but in this case I spent a few extra moments thinking about the name – adding a bit of mass to the thought, perhaps – imagining that the surname might be pronounced “Rose.”  When, just this evening, reading a book published in 1966, considering this article that I’ve been so focussed on writing for hours, to read about an out-of-body experience by one Miss Roos didn’t come as a true surprise.

Once a thought begins to compartmentalise and branch off into new connections (much like the activity that takes place on the internet) it is thus “fractalised.”  The concept thereby becomes more massive, and its gravitational pull correspondingly strengthens – and sometimes this would conceivably result in a domino-effect cascade.  The source of the pulled-in information to which I refer is unknown; I can only imagine that it’s the product of some form of intelligence, innate or acquired.

That said, if we hold the concept that synchronicity may be a product of what we might call “the mass of thought,” we wouldn’t necessarily have to agree that synchronicity is exclusively caused by the gravity of dynamic information fractals, but only that gravity appears to play a role in some cases of synchronicity.

Likewise, intention isn’t a part of the equation.  Chaos reorders itself quite effectively without outside intervention.  I strongly feel that intention may distort or even completely disable, via an artificial attempt to insert order into chaos, a tendency toward synchronicity.  Yet, unlike mere coincidence, the unexpected collision of events in a meaningful way seems to involve more than mere chance.  Gravity seems to be a likely causal factor – but again, only if we allow ourselves to imagine that thought has mass.

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I wonder if some thoughts are heavier than others or is it all hot air? I guess the problem I would have with this modest theory is that it attempts to link synchronicity to causality, ie gravity in this case. In other words, Stace is looking for a way of explaining meaningful coincidence as part of our everyday world in which cause and effect, linear time, and three-dimensional travel rule. We prefer the concept of an underlying reality that exists outside of the everyday world, where everything is inter-connected in a great web of reality that doesn’t rely on the ordinary rules of physics.

But maybe I’ve got it all wrong and am fractally-impaired, and weighed down by my musings. If you found Stace’s essay interesting, you can read the second part here at Inter-Intelligence Communications.

I’ve been trying to figure out if the weird energy worldwide now is due to the approach of 12/21 and the end of the Mayan calendar. Or whether it’s due to an acceleration of time and an evolution of consciousness. Or if it’s because humanity has reached a significant tipping point where we realize the old ways are just that – old, they don’t work any longer. Or if it’s due to all of the above. Or none of the above.

Rob and I watched Obama’s speech this evening to the families of victims at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. There were more than 900 people in the audience and another 1,300 in a spillover area. His speech was moving, touching the right notes as commander in chief but also as the father of two young girls. He said something that gave us hope: this was the fourth time during his administration that he has comforted the families of the fallen, spoken at memorial services for the victims of mass shootings, and something, he says, has got to change.

“If there’s even one step we can take to save one child, or one parent, or one town from the grief that has visited Tucson, and Aurora and Oak Creek and Newtown and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that, then surely we have an obligation to try,” the president told the auditorium.

“In the coming weeks, I’ll use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens, from law enforcement to mental health professionals to parents and educators in an effort to prevent more tragedies like this,” he said. “Because what choice do we have?”

Does this portend, at the very least, a ban on assault weapons? Renewed funding for mental health facilities?

Twenty years ago, Adelita Chirino  and her husband produced  the video at the top of this post, about America’s love affair with guns. That, in itself, is shocking. 20 years. What has changed? Adelita, a dream student of Robert Moss, has called upon all Dreamers to change the status quo through heir dreams. A heady  challenge, for sure, but not impossible.

During one segment on MSNBC’s coverage this evening, an interview with the family of 27-year-old Vicki Soto, I heard what sounded like a synchro, communication with a loved one who has passed on. Vicki Soto used her body as a shield to protect her first-grade students. Her family talked about her love of teaching, of winter, Christmas, the color green, and snow. Her sister mentioned that when the snow started falling the day after her tragic death, everyone in the family felt it was a “signal” from Vicki that she was with them.

Is this akin to the white feathers that our blogger friend from the UK, Mike Perry, has  reported about communication with his deceased daughter? Is this similar to the red cardinal that Sharon Catley reported about what she felt was communication from her deceased father? Is snow going to be a communication motif for the Soto family?

In this community, Obama was – as far as we could see- the only person of color in a crowd of nearly a 1,000 people. If this is the tipping point, there’s a certain irony that the tipping point may have been reached because this is a wealthy, white suburb outside of NYC, where young kids were killed, and not some inner city gang war where young kids are killed daily.

You second amendment advocates? Fine. Keep your guns. But no more assault weapons that fire with a rapidity intended only for combat zones, for war. Personally, I would prefer to see the 2^nd amendment die altogether. The amendment was created in a time of muskets and slaves and has no place in 21^st century life. That probably won’t happen, but I can dream, right? I can dream of a time when we humans actually live in peace with each other despite our differences about religious and political differences and do what is right for the greater good of the American people.

But watch what’s going to happen if Obama signs an executive order for an assault weapons ban. Every 2^nd amendment wacko will emerge from his or her dark cave and scream that Obama is trying to take away their weapons. Really? With more than 270 million guns in the hands of private citizens in this country, guns aren’t likely to vanish any time soon.

Even our neighbors, Christian folks who are nice people, head to a shooting  range on weekends with their two kids to shoot – doves.

Yeah. Doves. The birds that symbolize peace.

This stunning story about spirit communication is from Sharon Catley of Canada. It’s long, but well worth the read!

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My friend Karen was diagnosed with lung cancer about two years ago.   She was feeling scared and lonely so asked her parents who were both deceased for a sign that everything would be okay.  Several weeks later she was walking across the rug in her living room and stepped on something sharp.  She looked in the rug and found the little silver faith, hope and charity charm that her parents had given her years ago.

She could not figure out how the charm got into the rug as the last time she saw it was in a box, within another box in her underwear drawer.  She asked her partner Tim if he had brought it out but he did not know what she was talking about. She had not told him about her request for a sign from her parents.  As it was a mystery how the charm they had given her was in the rug she took it as a sign to have hope and faith.  She felt reassured.

Because I believe that things like this can happen she told me about it.  My father had just passed on. She knew I was missing him and encouraged me to ask for a sign that he was okay.  That night as I was going to bed I made my request. “Dad, if you are okay let me know.  Please send me a sign.”

Nothing happened for a few weeks and I had almost forgotten about my request.  I was visiting my mother in Calgary and helping her clean up the basement when the series of coincidences that I now believe were communications from my father began.

At this position in my story I have to digress back to a time when my Father was still alive.  He had multiple sclerosis and spent a great deal of time in his bedroom resting, sleeping and watching television.  He did not have enough energy to do anything else.

He was always very hard to buy gifts for but my daughter Lisa is very good at such things.  Before his illness my father spent little time indoors and she knew how much he pined for the contact with nature that he had previously enjoyed.  He especially missed watching the birds and squirrels that came to feed in the backyard.  On one of Lisa’s visits she installed a little shelf right by the head of his bed.  On the shelf she put three realistic china birds.  She put down some bird seed in the middle of them.  It looked as though they had just landed and were preparing to feast on the golden seeds.

The brightest and most noticeable of the birds was a vibrant red cardinal.  For many years these little creatures kept Dad company in his room and they would be the first thing he saw on arising and the last thing he saw before he went to sleep at night.

When Dad’s health deteriorated to the situation that Mom could no longer look after him at home he had to go into a facility where medical care was always available. Mom took his birds in with him so that he would feel more at ease in the strange new surroundings. Then my daughter came from Toronto for Christmas and she bought something else to brighten up Dad’s room.  It was a large stained glass piece depicting a group of stunning red cardinals which she hung in the window.  Everyone visiting commented on how beautiful they were.  The sun shining through them made a rosy glow.

We lost Dad in March and on his passing we collected up his belongings and put them in Mom’s basement.  After the funeral, before she left for home my daughter asked for the little birds and the stained glass cardinals to save as a remembrance of her Grandfather, so they were packed up and taken to Toronto.

While I was growing up I would never have described my parent’s relationship as romantic.  Although undemonstrative in public they cared deeply for and were devoted to each other.  When Mom was asked what was the happiest day of her life she said it was the day she married my Father.  When he was gone there was a big lonely hole in her life.  The day my Father died was also the day my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer.

I have now arrived back to the place in my story from which I had regressed – the point from which I believe I started to receive my sign. As I said I was helping Mom clean up the basement in Calgary a few weeks after my Father’s death.  I was walking across the rug and stepped on something sharp.  Looking in the rug I found a tiny piece of bright ruby red glass that could only have come from the stained glass cardinals.

After this cardinals started showing up everywhere in my life.  I would open a magazine and there would be red cardinals.  Looking around in a store or browsing a catalogue I would see red cardinals adorning scarves, towels, cups, napkins, t-shirts, wall hangings and dishes.  Every one of them I saw reminded me of Dad.  I just thought that maybe there had always been cardinals everywhere but that I had never noticed them before or that they had somehow just become a popular decorating item.

It was not until the first Christmas following my Dad’s death that I knew for sure that the cardinals were deliberately being sent to me.  That year I received about eleven Christmas cards.  Seven of these had red cardinals on them.  I thought this must be a trend – that red cardinals were in fashion that year.  To test my theory I went out to the reception area of the company I work for.  At Christmas my company receives about two hundred cards from other businesses and my friend, our receptionist Marilyn tapes them up on the wall there.  I perused the cards.  There was not one red cardinal on any of them – only my cards had red cardinals.

Then a week or so after Christmas I was walking by the front desk where my friend Bonnie was opening the early morning mail. There was a pile of cards that had not arrived in time for Christmas. She called me over and said “Come see how cute this card is”.  The card showed a grove of birch trees in the snow.  Nestled in the branch of one of the trees was a tiny red cardinal.  Up to this point I had said nothing to anyone about Dad’s cardinals but on my next trip to Calgary I decided to tell Mom about them.

My Mom was a very practical lady – things like this make her uncomfortable.  Then the cardinals started showing up in her life too.  At first I had to point them out – the little cross stitch bird on the wall of her Doctor’s office, on a free notepad that arrived in her mail, cardinal wind chimes hanging in a waiting room, on the side of a wish box from my cousin.  Over the next months during our daily phone calls she would often mention a bird that Dad had sent.

Mom’s cancer took a turn for the worse and over the next year she was in hospital after hospital.  Always there was a cardinal somewhere close, in pictures hanging in the hallway or on keepsakes sold in the little gift shops.  It cheered her up when I told her when and where I found them.

Then Dad stopped sending the birds.  A few would show up here and there but not in the quantity or with the regularity that I had previously experienced.  I thought he had perhaps moved on to some other phase of the afterlife as he did not seem to be around anymore.

Just after Christmas my Mother entered the final phase of her life and was placed in hospice.  I was able to take three more trips out to see her before her death.  On the last trip, while I was on my way home to Vancouver, I stopped in at the little Virgin Records Store near my departure gate at the airport.  I don’t like to fly and it is my ritual to always treat myself to a new book to occupy myself with during the flight. I had about ten minutes of worth of “spare” time to look around and make my purchase before I had to be through security.

While I was browsing the books I noticed that the last three songs playing on the store’s intercom had all been older ones performed by the band “Heart”.  I was thinking there must be a new Heart “Greatest Hits” CD out as they usually play whatever they are currently marketing at the time.  I quite like Heart so thought I would pick it up while I was there.

Looking at the clock I noticed I had already used up all my browsing time but I did want that CD. So I quickly ran over to the CD section and looked through the H’s finding no Heart CDs at all.  So I looked on shelves above where the new releases were and at the other various free standing CD displays – no Heart CD.  There was still the bargain bin but I thought there would be little chance of it being in there as they usually play new releases but I gave it a shot.  My eyes are not that good anymore – the last two times I had my glasses replaced I was supposed to move on to bi-focals but then people would know my age for sure.  There was one CD I could not read the writing on so I put my hand in the bin pulled it out.  There it was – “Heart Greatest Hits”.

While he was ringing up my purchases, I told the cashier about the synchronicity of finding the CD (hearing the music, wanting the CD, picking a single CD from the bargain bin and it being the one I wanted.) He said there were no bosses around today so he decided to hook his personal IPOD to the intercom and listen to his own music.  The CD was from 1998 and he was surprised that they had it in their stock.

With the funeral and all I did not get around to playing the CD until Mother’s day which came three weeks after my Mother’s passing.  It was going to be a sad one for me this year so I decided just to stay home and clean the house.  Chores are always more pleasant with some music and I remembered the Heart CD.  I had not taken a really good look at it before as I was in such a hurry in the airport and as I said my eyesight is not that good anymore.  I knew there was a folk art painting on the cover but now taking a better look at it I could not believe what I was seeing and that I had not seen it before.

If you look below you will see what I saw.  To me it means my (red haired) Mom and my Dad are back together again and happy once more. Is this just the end of a series of co-incidences or is this a message from my Mom and Dad?   (p.s. lately the sightings of the cardinal are rare and when sighted he is usually accompanied by a bluebird or a golden cardinal whom we think is the spirit of my Mother)

Shermer & agent

Here’s an article about what many of our readers here would call an obvious synchronicity – a meaningful coincidence. But to arch-skeptic Michael Shermer, the fact that it’s an unusual experience, out-of-the-ordinary, is the very reason why he thinks there’s nothing significant about it. Read his synchro and follow his logic…or try to.

COINCIDENCES AND CERTAINTIES

The Catholic diocese of Milan, Italy started an exorcism hotline in November 2012, and doubled the number of exorcism-practicing priests from six to 12. The diocese hopes to keep up with an apparent increase in calls over the past 15 years.

“From the number of calls we receive, the need has doubled,” Monsignor Angelo Mascheroni — the diocese’s chief exorcist since 1995 — told the news website Incrocinews. “We get young and old, men and women, people with different levels of education, from school-leavers to graduates.”

Mascheroni also said that one priest was reportedly seeing as many as 120 people a day.

A special switchboard has been set up where people can call Monday through Friday between 2:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. for all their exorcism needs. Mascheroni gave out the phone number to Incrocinews. Beginning with the country code, it is: 39-02-8556457 (If dialing from the U.S., you need to add 011 as the first three digits).

But Americans shouldn’t expect much help from the Milanese crew. The exorcists don’t want to travel too far from their home base and their website is in Italian, suggesting that foreign folks should take their demon problems elsewhere.

Interestingly, Mascheroni says that the demonic forces aren’t necessarily getting stronger. Rather, he says, cases of mental illness are increasing. He also suggests that the rise in exorcist calls could be related to the number of parents having discipline problems with their children.

Yeah. That’s especially true when the kids spin their heads around, spew green pea soup, and turn the room into a refrigerator.