FlashForward and 137

Posted on September 27, 2009 by Trish and Rob

We posted a story about the #137 on February 21, when our blog was just two weeks old. We’re summarizing it here as context for what follows.

To recap: Wolfgang Pauli, a physicist and Nobel laureate, was an early supporter of Jung’s theory on synchronicity and investigated the phenomenon as well. He had a rather striking experience with a set of numbers. Pauli was confounded by one of the unsolved mysteries of modern physics, the value of the fine structure constant, which involves the number 137.

A prime number can be divided by 1 and by itself. Or, put another way, a prime number is a positive integer that cannot equal the product of two smaller integers. That makes 137 a prime number and a particularly baffling one. In Deciphering the Cosmic Number: the Strange Friendship of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung, Arthur I. Miller provides a brief, but fascinating history about the number 137 in the world of quantum physics.

It was ‘discovered’ in 1915 by Arnold Sommerfield, who was Pauli’s mentor when he was still a student. “From the moment 137 first popped up in his equations, he and other physicists…quickly realized that this unique ‘fingerprint’ was the sum of certain fundamental constants of nature, specific quantities believed to be invariable throughout the universe, quantities central to relativity and quantum theory.”

The number became so baffling to physicists that the great Richard Feynman, who won the Nobel Prize in 1965 for his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, said that physicists should put a sign in their offices to remind themselves of how much they don’t know. The sign would be simple: 137.

Not only is 137 “the DNA of light,” as Miller puts it, but also is the number associated with the Kabbalah. In a system that sounds very much like numerology, Miller explains that in ancient Hebrew, numbers were written with letters, and each letter has a number associated with it. “Adepts of the philosophical system known as the Gematria add the numbers in Hebrew words and thus find hidden meanings in them.” In Hebrew, the word Kabbalah has four letters that add up to 137. Not surprisingly, physicists began referring to 137 as a mystical number.

Pauli certainly found this to be the case. He wrestled with its implications most of his life. When he was admitted to the hospital at the age of 58 and learned he would be in room 137, he supposedly said, “I will never get out of here.” And he was right. He died shortly afterward.
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So: ABC has a new series that started September 24, called FlashForward, based on a novel by Robert Sawyer. Premise: for 2 minutes and 17 seconds, everyone on the planet blacks out and sees a scene from their own lives six months in the future. Now people have to figure out what it all means in terms of a global picture about the state of the world six months from now (April 2010). As one character put it, “Why did 7 billion people black out exactly at the same time, for 137 seconds?”

As soon as we heard that 137, we decided to TIVO for the second episode.

Posted in 137, flashforward, Numbers, Pauli, TV | 18 Comments

Largest Crop Circle

Posted on September 26, 2009 by Trish and Rob

When this photo appeared in our Synchronicity Google search, my first thought was that it was a photo shop crop circle.

Then we saw the video:

It’s not. Whether it’s man-made or not is another question. But it’s huge. It’s been referred to as the Human Butterfly Crop Circle and as the DaVinci Crop Circle.

It comes from the Netherlands. Here are the original comments that were posted with the video and photo.
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A Gigantic Butterfly Crop Circle formation (530 Meters x 450 Meters), the Biggest Crop Circle Ever … appeared in Netherlands near a town in southern Holland called Goes, on the 8th of August 2009. It is an incredibly large butterfly with Da Vinci’s ‘Vitruvian Man’ in the center, depicting the metamorphosis of the Caterpillar into a Butterfly. I stumbled upon this brilliant crop circle today while randomly checking one of my friends’ profile on facebook … my first reaction was that of sheer amazement and the feeling of a rising wave of excitement within realizing the magical synchronicity communicating with all tuned in …
***
Any ideas on the origin of crop circles? Are they made by artists who work in the dark and make these sensational images, by some sort of cosmic intellect energy force…or what?

Posted in butterflies, crop circles, DaVinci, Netherlands | 32 Comments

Wizard of Oz

Posted on September 25, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Recently, we received an email from Ray Grasse, author, astrologer, and associate editor of The Mountain Astrologer. He had found our blog through a mention on another site and suggested that we check out his book on the topic, The Waking Dream. We already own the book and it’s one of our favorites. It begins with a synchronicity we’d heard, but had forgotten about the making of the movie based on L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. So, thanks, Ray!

This story was originally dismissed as a publicity stunt for the movie, but in The Making of the Wizard of Oz, author Aljean Harmtez contended that it actually happened.

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Frank Morgan played five different parts in the movie, including the disreputable Professor Marvel. For that role, the director and wardrobe man wanted him dressed in a “nice-looking coat, but tattered,” said Mary Mayer, a unit publicist on the film. So they traipsed down to a second-hand clothing store and purchased a rack of coats. Then Frank, the director and the wardrobe guy all got together and selected one of the coats.

In Harmtez’s book, it was described as “a kind of Prince Albert coat…black broadcloth…worn velvet collar.” The coat fit Frank and gave him a “shabby gentility,” the look they wanted. One hot afternoon, Frank apparently turned the pocket inside out and found a name sewn into the lining: L. Frank Baum.

The tailor in Chicago who had made the coat vouched that it had been made for Baum, his widow attested that it was the same coat, but the publicist could never get anyone to believe the story – thus the notion that it was a publicity stunt.

So what are the odds that the author’s coat would end up as a prop of the movie version of his story? Then there’s the added synchronicity that both men who wore the coat were named Frank.

Posted in Frank Morgan, L. Frank Baum, Wizard of Oz | 9 Comments

It’s a sign

Posted on September 24, 2009 by Trish and Rob


A few days ago, we went into Barnes and Noble after eating dinner at a nearby restaurant. While Trish was looking at Dan Brown’s new novel, I picked up a novel under new releases, read the first couple pages, then picked up another and did the same.

In the first novel, Shimmer, by David Morrell, we’re in a chopper with a police pilot who is chasing a pickup truck along a desert highway. In the second novel, THE SIGN, by Raymond Khoury, we’re racing across the desert in a pickup, pursued by a chopper.

What are the chances of that: desert-desert, chopper-chopper, pickup-pickup. Point of view above; point of view below. But if it’s a synchronicity, how is it meaningful?

Maybe because I was reading and editing our synchronicity book for the final time before submitting it, I attracted what I was focused on. Or, more esoterically, there’s the ancient alchemical saying: As above, so below. The macrocosm is the same as the microcosm. Now maybe if I read The Lost Symbol, which Trish did buy, I’ll find out more.
Rob above
Rob below
***
From the strange but true department (which is most everything we put up):
Now there’s a wine from South Africa called Synchronicity.

Posted in books, dan brown, synchronicity wine, writers | 17 Comments

Don’t I know you?

Posted on September 23, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Here’s a relationship synchronicity that gives us a peek at the complex web of intertwining lives, reinforcing the concept that we are linked. It was originally posted by Richard Swank on The Strange Coincidences Archive.
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I’m from Atlanta, Ga., but in the summer of 1991 I had the opportunity to go to Los Angeles to help organize a political fundraising event.

The woman I worked with there, Joyce, was worried that I would be somewhat homesick, because she knew it was the longest time I’d ever been away from the southeast at the time. She told me that she knew someone who knew someone whose sister was also in L.A. that summer from Georgia. She thought we could meet and perhaps comfort each other about being strangers in a strange land.

The only fact she knew about the sister was that she had graduated from the University of Georgia in the spring, and that her name was Delia. I think she was actually trying to set me up for a date, but being gay, I wasn’t really all that keen on it. As far as I knew, all we had in common was that we were the same age and from the same state. I had never met anyone named Delia in my life.

Finally, just to get the hyper-enthusiastic Joyce off my back, I agreed to meet this sister of a friend of a friend. Joyce made the arrangements, and I was given Delia’s phone number.

Reluctantly, I called the number a few days later. It was answered by a smoky-voiced young woman who sounded instantly familiar. I identified myself by my first name and started to tell her why I was calling. Suddenly, she interrupted me, asking, “Is this Richard Swank?”

I replied, “Uh, yeah. How did you know my last name?”

She said, “This is Dee Dee Johnson! [last name changed] I go by Delia now!”

Her voice sounded familiar because it was. She was a high school classmate and friend of mine from Georgia. We had lost touch in the intervening four years; neither one of us had a clue that the other was in California. I had gone all the way across the country, and ended up being set up with a high school friend by my boss.

Years later, I’m still trying to get my head around that one.

Posted in relationships | 14 Comments

Spooky Synchro

Posted on September 22, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Here’s yet another one from Isabella, the healing sound lady from Montreal: She had a dream, a spooky one, and her neighbor…well, let her tell it.
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Very early one morning 12 years ago, around 5 am, I was half sleep when I noticed a gigantic spider suspended over my head. I was also aware of younger version of me seeing it from the astral plane. Kind of complicated. I said to it: “If you are my totem animal, do you have to be big as a pumpkin to scare the hell at me? You know what, I choose to sleep and not be bug by you..bye now.” I closed my eyes.

One week later, my next door neighbor, a chef, was vacuuming the entry of our building. He stopped when he saw me and told me that last week he had a strange dream in which I was sleeping in bed and a big spider was over my head. In the dream, he killed it!

“Thanks,” I said. “You work in the astral when you sleep, and you just proved to me that there is no such thing as walls.”
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Esoterically, spiders represent an intensely creative period of life. Part of your success will be due to your ability to camouflage yourself, to blend in with a crowd, and yet to stand out from the crowd in terms of what you produce. Anyone who has listened to Isabella singing knows that her voice is that ability.

Posted in spider, totem animals | 16 Comments

The heart of the story

Posted on September 21, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Here’s one we received in e-mail from Rob McKenzie, a movie producer who lives in southern Maine. At first, we didn’t get it. Then he sent the kicker. Very funny!
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I was driving home from work. Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill” was playing on the radio. When the song hit the “My heart goin’ boom-boom-boom” section of the chorus, I happened to look up at the street sign of a street I was passing, which I had never noticed before. The street? “Ann Gina Blvd.” I laughed out loud.
***

Maybe you get it. If not, read on…

Angina, of course, is a heart condition that produces chest pain and an irregular heartbeat. Angina… Ann-Gina… see? “Puns of the Gods,” says Rob.

Posted in angina, Peter Gabriel, puns | 12 Comments

Mercury Retrograde and Writers

Posted on September 20, 2009 by Trish and Rob

In Roman mythology, Mercury is the winged messenger, the god of trade, commerce, profit. In Greek mythology, his counterpart is Hermes, messenger of the gods, the guy with the winged sandals who is associated with travel, orators, thieves, poets and poetry.

So in astrology, Mercury – ruler of Gemini and Virgo – became the planet that governs communication, travel, the conscious mind. Three times a year, Mercury turns retrograde – that is, it appears to move backward through the heavens. When this happens, stuff doesn’t work quite the way it should. Travel plans go awry. Electronics act up. Computers crash.Cell phones stop working. Communications go haywire. Any contracts you sign during a Merc retro will be revisited later, for sure. Old friends and lovers may resurface. Old issues rear up. We’re being told it’s time to slow down, regroup, revise.

So Mercury is retrograde right now, in Libra. It started on 9/7 and goes until 9/29. On the 7th, our blog post went black and we lost electrical power in our neighborhood. A reminder.

Between 9/10-12, we attended the Book Heritage Festival in St. Augustine, Florida. We arrived late Thursday afternoon. Great bed and breakfast in the old town, comfortable accommodations, perfect room. Good, we thought. Mercury retro must be on hold.

We thought our talks/workshops were to be held on the Flagler College campus and decided to get a jump on the Mercury retro by walking over to the college Thursday evening and locating the appropriate rooms.

Short walk. But the campus is sprawling, it was hot, we were hungry. As we went from the administration building to the student union and on to the library,it became apparent that no one had heard about the book fair. We finally stopped in at a used bookstore and the owner directed us to Casa Monica, a hotel across the street from the college. Mystery solved. We located the room for my workshop Friday morning. If we hadn’t looked Thursday evening, it’s likely I would’ve missed the workshop.

Rob was supposed to talk at a local high school Friday afternoon. The school was so new it didn’t show up on mapquest or the Magellan. The media specialist at the school had provided him with specific directions on how to get there. So Friday we get to Casa Monica for my workshop, but Rob can’t find the directions to the high school. He makes a mad dash back to the car – half a mile away. I went in to start my workshop on storyboards as a tool for novel writing and realized I had brought the wrong storyboard! I was talking about one novel and looking at the storyboard for another one.

Meanwhile, Rob returns to Casa Monica. The directions to the high school were tucked away in a pocket of his backpack, which he had with him the whole time. We were hopeful that the Mercury retro stuff was done. Sure enough, he made it to the high school with time to spare.

What we seem to learn repeatedly from Mercury retrogrades is that it’s a period when you’re supposed to slow down, revise, review, rethink what you’re doing. But even with the best laid plans…well, ole Mercury/Hermes may be the ultimate trickster.
Trish
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Trish knows the way of the stars. She is the author of eight astrology books. In addition, for the past six years, Trish (with a little help from me) has written 13 Sydney Omarr astrology books a year – one for each sign of the zodiac, and an annual covering all the signs by the month. In her ‘spare’ time, she does private astrology and Tarot readings…and writes a novel a year.
Rob
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Rob writes half of these books – that’s not just “a little help!”
– Trish

Posted in astrology, Mercury, retrogrades, St. Augustine, writers | 14 Comments

Jenean’s UFO and MIBs

Posted on September 19, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Photo taken 1957-58, Edwards Air Force Base
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This synchronicity is from Gypsy Woman, whose stories we have posted before – here and here. Her synchronicities are always richly textured, complex, and intriguing. This one is no exception!
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In the late 60s, Jenean and her children were traveling by bus from Little Rock to Monroe, in northeastern Louisiana. The bus was full, so they had to share seats. Her son, five at the time, was sitting next to the window. On a rural stretch of road between Sterlington and Monroe, which were about 15 miles apart, her son tugged on her arm, drawing her attention to the window.

“I looked up and there, in the sky over the fields beside us, was a huge object – an unidentified flying object. I remember being so startled that I closed my eyes and then reopened them to make sure I was really seeing what I knew I was seeing. Sure enough, the UFO was still there and the other passengers on that side of the bus were all looking at it, talking about it. Passengers from across the aisle got out of their seats and crowded into the aisle to see it better. By then, there was a lot of commotion – people wanted to get off the bus, passengers telling the driver to drive faster (which he did), and all the while my children and I are watching it, spellbound.

“It seemed to be moving very slowly, parallel to us, very low in the sky. Low enough for us to see it out the window without straining to look upward. I can’t say how far away it was, but I can say it was close enough that the textured surface of the body was visible.

“I remember trying to memorize all the details of the craft – its size, shape, color, how it moved. It made no sound, none at all. No engines were visible. No wings. There was nothing at all characteristic of a plane. Its size was at least that of a football field. It was oval/circular, with a domed top. Think of a donut with a glass dome. But it was more oval than round. The glass seemed clear, but I don’t remember being able to see through it. There was a row of what appeared to be windows or lights encircling the bottom of the domed top. The object’s body was gray, like a battleship, and not shiny. I remember there was what seemed to be a bit of “texture” or “mottling” to the matte finish – almost like old cast iron cookware looks.”

“The UFO continued moving alongside us for quite a distance, more than just a few minutes. Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared beside us, it made a 45 degree turn to then right and upward and was totally out of sight instantly. I mean, it literally zoomed! away. And still, there was no sound. The bus was now traveling at a high rate of speed as the driver really was attempting to out run it and most passengers were anywhere from hysterical to more hysterical.

“By the time we pulled into the Monroe station, there were already news reporters there. I just wanted to get my children and leave, to get away from it all. By then, I felt fearful about the experience – as if “they” were “looking for me.” This feeling was overwhelming. As a matter of fact, I left the station without even getting our luggage. We took a taxi straight to my mother’s house, but even then, by fear didn’t subside. I desperately wanted to flee – literally – to somewhere that my children and I could not be found.

“To this day, I am unsure of my profound reaction. I had grown up having seen UFOs in our many travels, they were discussed by our parents. UFOs were nothing new to me. Yet, I’d never responded with anything but total curiosity before. This experience was my first up close and personal encounter. There was absolutely NO doubt what this object was, let alone what it was not. It was daytime, clear.

“Shortly after our arrival, my mother’s phone begin to ring – reporters and law enforcement. Several days later, several men dressed all in black – I kid you not – came knocking on the door to interview me. They identified themselves as being with Wright Patterson Air Force Base. I told them what I saw and they had me draw a diagram of the object. I did so. They took it with them. At least one of the men gave me a business card when I asked for it. Some time later, when I phoned the number on the card, there was no such number. I called the base direction, but no one had heard of the person for whom I asked.

“Some of the news reports identified this “object” – seen by a bus full of people – as nothing more than a “smoke cloud” emanating from an industrial site in Sterlington.”

***
Okay, here comes the synchronicity. As Jenean was editing this story for her blog, her house phone rang – which she and her family never used – and the incoming call was unidentified and from Ohio. “We don’t know anyone in Ohio, have no business there. The only association I have with Ohio is that it’s where Wright Patterson Air Force Base is located. When I answered the phone, no one there.”

Apparently, Wright Patterson AFB is well known in UFO lore. Project Blue Book, the Air Force’s “official” investigation of the UFO phenomenon (1947-1969) was headquartered at Wright-Patterson. According to UFO researchers and theorists, this base, along with the Groom Lake/Area51 installation in Nevada, is where wreckage of the Roswell UFO crash was shipped via a B-29. Everything was allegedly placed in Hangar 18.
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Message to Aleksandar:

Posted in Jenean, MIBs, UFOs, Wright Patternson AFB | 22 Comments

Cassadaga

Posted on September 18, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Back in the 1800s, a medium from Pike,New York was directed by his guide – Seneca – to establish a Spiritualist community in the South. He ended up in central Florida, which was mostly swamps and mangroves, totally uninhabitable in my book! But on December 18, 1894, the Cassadaga Spiritualist camp was officially chartered.

Today, the camp consists of 57 acres with 55 homes, two lakes (Colby Lake and Spirit Lake), a haunted hotel, a bookstore, gift shops, and mediums, psychics, astrologers, tarot readers, healers. I first went there in the 1970s, when I was in graduate school, and had a mind blowing reading with a psychometrist, Wilbur Hull, a quadrapelegic. After Rob and I met in the 1980s, we began going there every so often, usually when en route elsewhere. Over the years, we got to know Hazel Burley, one of the mediums in the camp, and her husband, Art.

The friendship started around 1984, when we were walking around the quiet streets in town, checking out the various little houses, most of them posted with signs that read, Reverend So and So, followed by the person’s psychic expertise. The sign outside of Hazel and Art’s place was simpler:

So we went in and had readings. The synchronicity in our meeting Hazel was that her mentor had been Wilbur Hull, the quadrapelegic with whom I had my first reading in Cassadaga. Ever since then, we always drop by Hazel’s when we’re in town.

On our way back from the book fair in St. Augustine, we stopped overnight in Cassadaga, stayed at the haunted hotel (that’s another story) and this morning, dropped by to say hi to Hazel. We hadn’t seen her for three years and discovered that her husband, Art, passed on in December 2006. But as always, Hazel is the paragon of graciousness and intellectual curiosity and the three of us settled in her comfortable reading room and talked.

The conversation turned, invariably, to her wonderful collection of books. She pulled out a 1962 edition of a Sydney Omarr book that we’d never seen. Thought Dials, based on his numerology system.

Since Rob and I have been writing Omarr’s astrology books since 2003 when he died, we were most interested. We were also curious about whether our contract for these books is going to be renewed. We didn’t tell Hazel about our contract concerns, but she said, “Let me show you two how his marvelous thought dial works. Think of a question, then you each turn the dial to three different numbers.”

As she was demonstrating how it worked, we both had the feeling that Omarr was giving us a reading about the future of his books! The upshot? Rob’s numbers added up to a 1, mine added up to a 9. The beginning, the end. And the interpretations that Omarr had written for these two numbers perfectly describes the situation.I’ve since ordered the book so that when this whole thing shakes out, we can post his words, about those numbers.

There’s a certain synchronicity in timing here, too. We had thought about dropping by Hazel’s the night before, but learned this morning that she hadn’t been home. So our timing for this morning was perfect. She was home and in between clients.

– Trish

Trish and I also both had readings with a couple of the psychics who live just outside of the camp. The ones who aren’t members of the Cassadaga Spiritualist Association, as Hazel is, usually are card readers, not mediums. The association is very strict on rules and adding new people.

Trish’s reading was positive about her career and things in general. I sort of complained that psychics usually are very positive, because it makes you feel good, like you got your money’s worth. They rarely tell you that anything negative is coming your way.

So I had a reading with a guy named Mike, who used a native American deck. I picked eight cards and he talked for 45 minutes. When he got around to asking if I had any questions, I asked about my left foot, which was fractured this past summer. “Will it get better so it doesn’t bother me anymore?”

He answered instantly: “Oh, that foot is going to give you pain the rest of your life.”

Hmm, so much for complaining about positive readings. That’s a good example of a trickster synchronicity.
Rob

Posted in Cassadaga, Hazel Burley, mediums, Numbers, psychics, Sydney Omarr, travel | 14 Comments