Jupiter Enters Scorpio

Posted on October 10, 2017 by Trish and Rob

At 9:20 a.m. ET today, the planet Jupiter enters Scorpio and will be in that sign for the next 13 months.

In astrology, Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, represents good fortune, expansion, luck, serendipity, synchronicity, everything we humans equate with those moments when we dance around, shouting with joy, pumping our collective fists into the air. Jupiter rules the higher mind, law, the judicial system, higher education, philosophy, our spiritual beliefs, foreign countries, cultures, travel, and people. It represents good times, optimism, ideas that are larger than life. I think it also rules synchronicity.

Jupiter rules Sagittarius and co-rules Pisces, so its movements are particularly important for these two signs. But we all have Jupiter somewhere in our natal charts and you don’t want to miss out on what this transit may mean for you.

Every 12 years or so – 11.6 years to be exact – Jupiter returns to the place it occupied when you were born. It’s called a Jupiter return and that year in your life is generally a game changer. The last time Jupiter transited Scorpio began October 26, 2005 and lasted until November 24, 2006. This transit was particularly significant for anyone with a Scorpio sun, moon, rising, or natal Jupiter in Scorpio. Other water and earth signs – Cancer, Virgo, Capricorn, Taurus, Pisces – benefited from this transit. But even fire and air signs benefited in some way.

So before we go any farther with this post, think back to that period in your life. What was going on? What were you doing? What were you involved in? Were you happy? In the midst of big, positive changes? Was your life pivoting in some new direction?

An example. I have Scorpio rising at 00 degrees 49 minutes. Less than a month before Jupiter entered Scorpio back in 2005, my dad died shortly before his 92nd birthday. On October 16, 10 days before Jupiter entered Scorpio, we were hit by Hurricane Wilma, our beloved dusky conure, Kali, died in the aftermath of that storm, and we spent 10 days without electricity. In other words, the shit hit the fan. But after that, the ensuing months were great, with multiple publishing contracts, greater financial ease, and a lot of general happiness and satisfaction with life. By October 2006, Jupiter was at 19 degrees Scorpio and I officially entered my Jupiter return year. Doors crashed open, new opportunities poured in.

It’s as if Jupiter,  good guy that he is, speaks to us of  visceral level. The power of Jupiter returns was driven home for me during the election. I had looked at the birth charts and transits for Clinton, a Scorpio, and Trump, a Gemini. I noted that Trump was entering a Jupiter return year in early December 2016. I knew from experience that some of the effects of the return could be felt more than a month before the return actually started. My first thought was: OMG, he’s gonna win the election.

 But because I’m not a mundane astrologer – someone who studies how transits impact world events – I doubted the power of Trump’s Jupiter return. I doubted what I felt about it. On a radio show for The Biggest Book of Horoscopes Ever, the host asked if I would predict who would win.

I had studied up in the days before the show, reading various articles by mundane astrologers who predicted a Clinton win. What they said made sense and I, who found the possibility of a Trump win so repugnant, an idea so emotionally devastating, predicted a Clinton win in spite of Trump’s pending Jupiter return.

And my prediction was,  of course, wrong.

What I learned from this is to trust my intuition, to call it as I see it. Even though there were many astro interpretations of this election, I realized that sometimes the simplest things you see in a chart are what determine an outcome. But hey, guess what. Trump’s Jupiter return year officially ends today. He’s no longer Teflon, no longer protected. And my gut, the thing I didn’t trust last year, now says that trump’s undoing should come fairly quickly.

Then again, this is my fervently desired outcome and maybe I’m reading into things.

But, for you water and earth signs, expect new opportunities, doors that open suddenly, foreign trips and interactions with foreign-born individuals. You may go to college, grad school, workshops and seminars. You may teach, embark on a quest. For you air and fire signs, you may feel overwhelmed at times, but your goals are becoming clearer and the opportunities you encounter should be positive. You need to be ready, though, to seize the opportunity – and run with it.

Click here to see your own natal chart and find out where your natal Jupiter lies.

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Meet Nigel

Posted on October 8, 2017 by Trish and Rob

At the end of August, before Hurricane Irma, I received a text message from a dog park friend asking if I’d like to look at a couple of Golden Retriever puppies. She said they’d been bought by a couple in Boca Raton, who realized they couldn’t care for the pups properly because they worked so many hours. So on a Sunday afternoon, I met Caren Griffin at the home of local woman who was trying to find homes for the dogs.

I was instantly taken by Nigel’s cool, calm demeanor in a household with three rowdy dogs. He climbed into my lap and if he’d been able to purr, he would have. His name then was Winston – didn’t fit him. Caren, who owns three dogs, was looking for a dog for her grandchildren and chose the other dog, now named Sunny.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a puppy. Nika was our last pup. We got her in 2011, when she was just six weeks old. Nigel, as we eventually named him, was 10 weeks when we brought him home. At first, Noah didn’t seem to understand who he was or what he was doing here.

During Nigel’s first week or two with us, we were hit by Hurricane Irma. Rob and I were able to watch some of the hurricane on our back porch, with the dogs. In between train bands, Nigel bounded outside to do his business and collected avocados that had flown off our tree and into the pool and the area around it. The wind scared him, but the rain didn’t bother him.

When we lost power for 36 hours, Noah and Nigel were miserable together. The heat and humidity were extreme and they were constantly panting and looking for cooler spots in the house. Once we got the generator going, they laid in front of the freezer, hoping we’d open the door, or sprawled in front of the floor fan.

In the days since then, Nigel follows Noah around, doing whatever he does. There does seem to be a teaching by example here. When Noah chases the Frisbee, so does Nigel. When Noah pees, Nigel mimics. When Noah follows Rob outside while he’s mending our broken yard fence, Nigel trails after him.

Noah now plays with him, chasing him around the front yard, knocking him down, running his teeth through Nigel’s fur.Here’s Noah, tryingf to tech Nigel about SQUIRRELS.

He’s still not fully house trained, but hey, he’s getting there. Meanwhile, Caren’s grandkids are ecstatic about Sunny coming into their lives and we’re going to get the two bros together for a catch up.

During all of this, we were trying to find a home for a neighbor’s German Shepherd who, for the eight months of his life, had been chained to a tree in her backyard or to an even shorter leash in the garage. The day that Irma approached us, the shepherd escaped and came tearing into our yard, so ecstatic to be free that she ran around in circles, lapped haphazardly at the bowl of water we put out, at the food, and then ran around in more circles. She was so starved for attention and affection that I kind of lost my mind and marched next door and told the owner off. I regret that.

But this was an ongoing issue. Neighbors have called Animal Care and Control on this man, the Humane Society, and he continued to keep this shepherd chained to a tree in his backyard. We threw the dog treats over the fence, she knew our voices, so the day she escaped, she knew where to come.

I’m delighted to say she has now been adopted by a family with two kids and another dog, where she’ll have a yard and the freedom to roam and sniff and be a dog. This evening, Noah and Nigel went outside and up to the fence and barked at the shepherd to respond – and heard only silence.

Look at this face, Nigel damp after getting hosed off at the dog park:

 

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The Emotional Lives of Animals

Posted on October 6, 2017 by Trish and Rob

 

 

There’s something so magnificent about these creatures and I think Megan’s painting captures that mystique in the animal’s eyes.

Years ago, I remember reading When Elephants Weep: the Emotional Lives of Animals.   Published in 1996, the book became a national bestseller and parts of it stick with me even today, more than two decades later. For instance, when an elephant is injured or sick and dying, the herd forms a circle around it, all of them facing outward, as if to say, We’re with you, we have your back.

Any pet owner will tell you about incidents when their dog or cat or bird does something that underscores the premise of this book: that animals feel the same way humans do. They mourn, feel happiness, disappointment, triumph, sadness, joy. They aren’t living separately from these emotions; they are immersed in their emotions. Feelings are a sea in which they swim, float, drown.

Some years ago when our Golden Retriever, Jessie, was on her last legs, our cat, Powder, curled up next to her and spent that night – Jessie’s last – next to her, cuddling with her, comforting her. And when we left the next day to have Jessie put down, Powder seemed to understand what had happened when we returned.

In the late 1980s, Rob and I led tours for writers to the Amazon between Leticia, Colombia, and Iquitos, Peru. On one of those trips, we pulled in at an Indian village and I traded several tubes of lipstick and insect repellent for this beautiful Amazonian owl tethered to a young man’s shoulder.

 

The owl spent the next two days perched on a wooden bar on the main deck of our boat, watching all of us, eating the tidbits of fish we fed him. I was fascinated with this owl, talked to him, and made sure that when we arrived at our destination he would be set free on the animal preserve that was part of where we were staying. I remember that one of the writes, a young guy from New York, laughed at my preoccupation with the owl, and told me I was anthropomorphizing.

“It’s just an owl, Trish. It doesn’t feel anything. No soul there. No comprehension of anything other than anticipation of its next meal.”

“Dude, you need to go live in Central Park. Or in the middle of this jungle.”

Elephants, owls, dogs, cats, birds, any creature great or small, possesses an emotional life. And people who tell you otherwise, who dismiss animals as incapable of anything other than their roles as cogs in a food chain, are to be avoided.

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Las Vegas

Posted on October 4, 2017 by Trish and Rob

 

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Trump: the Ultimate Trickster

Posted on October 2, 2017 by Trish and Rob

It’s October. The trumpster is officially entering his ninth month in office, and it has been eleven months since he was elected.  About the only thing he has done is launch twitter wars against people who oppose or criticize him. But in that twitter world, he has revealed a great deal about who he is and is not.

I recall that after he won the nomination, media pundits predicted he would become “more presidential.” He didn’t. His tweets eventually became his official  policy statements. Daily, his tweets ignite some new controversy that keeps the news cycle humming for 24 or 48 hours and you can bet that behind that camouflage, Trump is up to no good. He’s trying to divert our attention from Mueller’s Russia probe, the fact that his daughter and son-in-law used private servers for their official emails, the very thing his campaign condemned Clinton for doing during her job as secretary of state.

This past weekend, after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico and left people in “apocalyptic” conditions, as one island official expressed it, Trump didn’t bother tweeting about the situation there. (Except like this.) Instead, he attacked the NFL

And then attacked the mayor of San Juan while he was enjoying a weekend at one of his golf resorts.

Seriously, dude?

With each tweet in this administration, each passing day, trump and his administration break so many laws, trample the constitution (since when can a president tell a private organization – the NFL – to fire employees/players?) and do their best to stifle free speech and a free press. In short, with every 3 a.m. tweet, trump creates a new distraction, a new whirlwind, a new international crisis (North Korea) and a new media extravaganza that distracts from the bottom line: he equates the presidency with dictatorship.

His republican cronies fall into line behind him, shrieking, Build a wall, repeal and replace Obamacare, there is no climate change. It’s so glaringly obvious that trump and his republican cronies don’t give a shit about people – only about donors, about the elusive base that got him elected (with help from the Russians), about the angry white men who feel the world is leaving them behind and stick with him in spite of everything.

Remember that kid’s story, The Emperor Has No Clothes? Remember how the wizard in The Wizard of Oz was revealed when the curtain was pulled away from him revealing the little man he actually was? Trump is that emperor, that pathetic wizard, the guy who refused to release his tax returns because we might find out he’s no zillionaire, that he’s in debt to the Russians, that his entire persona is a façade, a farce, a flat-out lie.

So here we are, long past the point where he should have been impeached, tossed out, relegated to the corridors of our darkest history. And our hope lies in Mueller, who I wish would hurry up and get on with it. Yeah, he’s undoubtedly building an airtight case. But will it conclude soon enough to save us from nuclear war with North Korea? From rising oceans and the disastrous effects of climate change? From the suffering of Americans whose health care is stripped away? Will it happen before more American citizens in Puerto Rico die from lack of the basics?

Some people refer to trump as our “karma” – for slavery, racism, war, the intervention in other countries where we installed dictators, then killed them off after we’d stripped their countries of their natural resources. But my sense is that trump is our wakeup call, the manifestation of our collective shadow as a nation, a people, a democracy. How do we hope to live in the future? Enslaved to a narcissistic egomaniac with unsettling parallels to Hitler and other dictators? Or do we live as a a nation where the rule of law matters and compassion for our fellow human beings overcomes divisiveness and hatred?

I think of trump as the ultimate trickster archetype, born in a dark pocket of the American psyche.

 

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Strange UFO

Posted on September 30, 2017 by Trish and Rob

 

The above notes and sketch were made Aug. 31 by Wesley Meeks, a former police officer from Midland, Texas. Wes’s stories of UFO/alien encounters as well as out-of-body experiences is featured in chapter one of our latest book, BEYOND STRANGE: True Stories of Alien Encounters and Paranormal Mysteries.

Here is his full description of his latest sighting.

“I  just saw a strange craft of some sort. It was about 8:00 PM here, the son was down but it was still very light, no stars visible, but the moon and a couple of planets were visible. I had the baby (our granddaughter) out for a stroll. I looked into the western sky at about 60 degrees at what I thought was a planet. It was a silver or very bright white light but at first I thought it was a planet.

“As we walked I then noticed that the “planet” started moving to the east, and also climbing slightly. The sphere next seemed to grow in diameter, but it could have been that the object was moving closer to me, like an airplane that is at first a dot then gradually gets larger and the shape becomes visible. Then the object seemed to get even brighter, and that is when I saw the strange structure that was attached to the top of the sphere. I have never seen anything like this in any of the UFO books I have read.

“In #4 the object vanished, instantly. No noise, but if the object was really twenty or more miles away, of course there would not have been a noise. This was a very “Star Trek” style of vehicle. I searched the sky for several minutes but did not see the object again. This craft was moving in a very “normal” pattern and I would have conceded that it may have been a jet flying over Midland International Airport, except that it had the strange shape. But then it vanished. It did not race away or shoot up out of sight….it just vanished. This is a usual type of UFO sighting for me. What is NOT usual is the shape. Again, I have never seen this shape that I can recall. I am still excited about this!”

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Wes’s sighting and report in itself makes an interesting blog post, but there’s also a synchronicity involved. Note that Wes wrote that he had never seen anything like this in any of the UFO books he’s read. I (Rob) agreed that it was an unusual shape and couldn’t recall reading about any such UFOs, either.

At the time, I was reading a book called THE CLOSE ENCOUNTERS MAN, by Mark O’Connell. It’s a biography of Allen J. Hynek, the astronomer who became the government’s lead man on UFOs in the ’60s and a debunker, then later changed to a believer. It’s a fascinating story. Very detailed.

I opened the book the morning after responding to Wes’s e-mail and surprisingly, on the very first page from where I left off, I read a description of a UFO sighting in 1947 in Kentucky that sounds similar to what he had seen.

Here it is from pages 40-41:
“The military police at Fort Knox first described it as ‘a small white object in the Southwest sky. It appeared stationary. Could not determine if object radiated or reflected light. Through binocs it appeared partially as parachute with bright sun reflecting from top of the silk, however, there seemed to be some red light around the lower part of it.’

“Of the tower crew at Goodman Airfield, one witness thought it ‘resembled an ice cream cone topped with red,’ while another said “It would seem that it was at least several hundred feet in diameter.’

“The commanding officer, Colonel Guy Hix, reported, ‘It was very white and looked like an umbrella. I thought it was a celestial body but I can’t account for the fact that it didn’t move. I just don’t know what it was.'”

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After all these decades, UFOs continue to appear in our skies and continue to amaze.

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Rachel Maddow and Synchronicity

Posted on September 28, 2017 by Trish and Rob

This evening, Rob and I were watching the Rachel Maddow Show and this image appeared on the screen and remained there for a while. She was talking about the new twist in the trump admin – that the head of the DEA has resigned because trump doesn’t have “respect” for the law.

Maddow has alluded to synchronicity before, but never called it by that name. Instead, she has used the word “coincidence.”

She didn’t explain what the synchro was, but it was interesting to see the word mentioned at all, on MSNBC’s highest rated news show. I wish we knew what the synchro was. It’s possible she used it in reference to a synchronization – not the same thing as synchronicity. If anyone else saw this segment and knows what the synchro is, please enlighten us!

Rachel, we’ve got a rather long twist of trump admin synchros. But for starters, here’s a good one.

 

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The Neanderthals among us

Posted on September 26, 2017 by Trish and Rob

A 2015 Q&A from the Smithsonian Insider suggests that Neanderthals went extinct because of climate change. Kind of a political synchronicity: Neanderthals didn’t believe in climate change and paid the price. Humans out of Africa were more adaptive to climate change and survived.

I’m not making this up. Take a look here.

While the study is a theory, there has never been any evidence of wars between humans and Neanderthals. Quite the contrary, humans and Neanderthals mated, though there probably was no flowers or chocolates involved. So many of us now carry between 1-4 percent DNA of Neanderthal origin.

That bit of DNA might just be biting us back now as we see so many of a particular political persuasion who don’t believe in climate change. Synchronicity.

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Archie, Nat, and the White Feather

Posted on September 24, 2017 by Trish and Rob

 

Natalie Thomas, a medium who lives in Australia, sent us this story. The “beautiful little man” she refers to is Archie, the dog whose photo is at the top of the post. Mark is Nat’s husband.

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This weekend would have marked 4 weeks since our beautiful little man got sick. Last weekend (he was still with us but very poorly) was Mark’s Birthday. We all needed a break, so on the Saturday, we took the kids to the beach for some fresh air. While walking along by myself, I heard clairaudiently that I would find three gifts from the beach. The first one would be a special shell for my collection.

We walked and picked up odd shells here and there, though none were special. As we were heading home, a couple was smooching on the stairs we came down, so I suggested another exit. There, right up near the stairs, was a special and perfect shell for my collection. Nowhere near the waterline, someone must have dropped it on their way home.

As we walked along the promenade towards our car, I saw something silvery in the grass. The late afternoon sun was illuminating it. I bent down and retrieved my next treasure. It was a silver “happy birthday” decoration, that must have fallen from someone’s gift. I handed it to Mark and said, “Happy Birthday from those who love you on the Other Side.”

The third gift was a white, fluffy feather right next to my car door. I thanked the Universe and especially my Nan, as she leaves me feathers whenever I am distressed or anxious. I put the feather in the left pocket of my navy blue jacket.

The next day was Sunday and we had a dinner date. On the way out the door, I grabbed my  new black jacket and there in the right hand pocket was the feather! It had moved from the left pocket of my blue jacket, to the right hand pocket of my black jacket by itself.

Day D was Monday, when we were going to take Archie to the vet to have him put down. We had a morning appointment at the vet. I got into the car and as I clicked my seatbelt, the feather appeared on my left thigh! It had followed me! I was feeling very low, so I knew it was my Nan trying to comfort me for what was about to happen.

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The first white feather experiences we read about were on Mike Perry’s blog. Since then, we’ve read many others, But Nat’s story is a first in terms of the feather moving so deliberately!

 

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Avocados and more avocados

Posted on September 22, 2017 by Trish and Rob

 

A little levity from the news:

One of the fallouts of Hurricane Irma was that about 125 avocados fell from our tree, the entire crop all at once. Of course, there is no way that we could eat all those avocados, which would be ripening about the same time. So I’ve been giving away grocery bags of avocados, leaving them at places where people gather or pass by. With one bag, I included a note about it being a great opportunity to make guacamole. I came home after dropping them off and noticed on my iPhone that the word of the day in Words with Friends was…guacamole! Synchronicity!

So how did that synchro play out? The next morning out of the blue Trish and I were offered a small editing project with a tight deadline. We finished it in a few hours and made $375. Not bad, especially since it was quite easy. The guy liked it and says he’ll call on us again. Interestingly, the store value of the avocados we gave away is just about what we were paid for the editing!

Here’s another one. I’ve been working on a mystery novel in which the main character, Jake, has the ability to travel out of body, but I’d been stuck for a couple of days. Nothing I did seemed to work. Finally, one evening I came up with the idea that Jake has trouble  getting out of body, and it’s right at a point where he needs to do so. He’s frustrated and blocked—sort of like I’d been feeling.Then, as I was working on it, I received an e-mail from Wes Meeks, whose out-of-body experiences have been featured here. But he told me he was feeling frustrated because he couldn’t get out of body, nothing was working. He basically told me that he was having the same problem as my character! So, for me, that means I’m on the right track with the novel!

My suggestion for Wes, btw, was to watch for synchronicities.

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