Welcome to The Mystical Underground

 Adelita Chirino has a great blog about dreams and dreaming.  She recently posted a powerful story about spirit communication through a luna moth that she’s allowing us to repost.

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My husband’s younger brother, Charlie, died unexpectedly last week. While  Jim was down south taking care of the funeral arrangements with his sisters, he was standing outside the hotel and saw a luna moth on the tree.  Luna moths are pretty rare sightings, as far as I can tell.  They are the most lovely creatures of the night.   

When he called and told me about the luna moth, he also sent me the picture he took of it.  We talked about how maybe it was Charlie visiting.

 During  a dream workshop I was leading recently,  one of the participants told me a story of how her grandmother always said she wanted to transform to a butterfly when she died.  This makes good sense as butterfly is a classic symbol of the transformation of the soul in death because of the caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly existence they have.  The Greek word we chose as the name of our video production company, Psyche, means soul and butterfly.  Well, at her grandmother’s funeral, at the gravesite, her sister nudged her and pointed out a beautiful butterfly flying near the grave and said, “Here’s Gram.”

 Today walking on the beach, trying to be present and open to the beauty around me and not stuck in the jabberwocky of thoughts in my head, I caught snatches of a conversation between a couple headed the other way.  As they approached me, I heard the woman “funeral” and “ladybug.” Then as we intersected, I heard her say, “How does a lady bug show up in the car when we’re driving down 95?”  He says: “Do you think it’s symbolic…?”

I felt that thrill of recognition, three’s a charm.  Three times in a row, someone is comforted by the appearance of a beautiful butterfly or insect at the very moment when it counts, after experiencing the loss of a dear loved one.  Maybe because insects have such short little life spans, the departed get to speak their comfort through them and then move on, leaving that beautiful image for their loved ones to share forevermore.

Within the ghost-hunting community, there has been a debate during the past decade about what kind of cameras should be used to document a ghost – a single-lens reflex camera using film vs. digital cameras. Digital cameras supposedly pick up orbs better than film cameras, but is that because the digital cameras are more likely to pick up dust particles? Likewise, ghost photos taken with digital cameras could be enhanced, whereas film negatives document a photo.

The website ghoststudy.com notes such issues, but recognizes that all kinds of cameras can be used to take ghost photos – from throwaway film cameras to cell phones as well as SLR cameras. But how about the camera that was used in the following – a sonogram camera that seemingly picked up the image of a deceased relative superimposed over the head of the fetus!?

Here’s the story, as presented on ghost study.com.

“My name is Charity. In March 2011, I lost my father. We had many discussions about the paranormal and I always thought it was crazy. He proceeded to tell me that after he dies, he will appear to me, somehow, someway. Before he died, my son and his wife had their first child. My dad went to the hospital a couple times to see the baby. She was born in February 2011. Not a month later, he passed.

“She was with her mother at the time of the sonogram and didn’t see anything strange or out of the ordinary. They got in their car to leave and her mother wanted to see the printed out pictures of the new baby. As she took a glance at the picture, she noticed there was a man in the picture. After my daughter-in-law started looking at it, she recognized the man in the photo and said it looked like her husband’s grandfather that passed away.

“After she had called me and told me about this picture, she sent me a copy on my phone. Sure enough, it looks just like my father. I went to their home and seen the original picture, and it is in 3 or 4 of them! I am now a believer.

“I am enclosing one of the sonogram pictures and a picture of my father. Could you please get back with me and tell me I am not crazy. Thank you.”

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I was a bit confused when I first looked at the top image. It’s like one of those ink blot images. You can see it one way, or another. But then when I looked at the image below and compared it with the one above, it became much clearer and, yes, it does look somewhat like the deceased grandfather. Strange, but fascinating.

On September 11, 1973, Augusto Pinochet seized control of the Chilean government  and banned every political party that had supported democratically elected Salvador Allende. For the next 17 years, Pinochet’s military dictatorship was responsible for more than 3,000 deaths and 38,000 cases of arrests and tortures that included a large number of “desaparecidos,” people who were disappeared. The date and the number of deaths attributed to Pinochet has an eerie, synchronistic parallel to September 11, 2001 and the WTC attack.

Forty years ago this week, Chilean folk singer Victor Jara became one of the early victims of Pinochet’s brutality. He was arrested, tortured, and shot to death with 44 bullets. Bruce Springsteen  paid tribute to Jara during his first concert ever in Chile.

 “If you are a politically inclined musician, Victor Jara continues to be a great expression of that,” Springsteen said in Spanish Thursday night at a packed concert in Santiago. “It is an honor to be here.”

He noted that in 1988, he had a concert in neighboring Mendoza, Argentina, when Pinochet was still in power. He met a lot of people with missing relatives in Chile and was shown photos of them. “It is a moment that has stayed with me ever since,” Springsteen said.

As a tribute to Jara, Springsteen played one of his best known songs, Manifiesto, which is emblematic of a social and cultural movement that arose in Chile in the 1960s and early 70s. And yes, he sang it in Spanish.Pretty cool.

Rose Marks family photo–her mother-in-law’s wedding day

Gypsy fortunetellers have always intrigued me. They bring out our gullibility, and there are apparently a lot of gullible people ready to turn over their hard earned money – even their fortunes – to the worst elements of the psychic field.

Some of them operate on the bottom rung of the business providing simply readings for a few dollars. I recall paying $5 at a county fair for a five-minute reading from a gypsy. I wasn’t expecting much so I wasn’t disappointed when my reading basically consisted of ‘Good health, good fortune, and of course, great romance.’ It was all mine. I smiled and walked off, thinking that the woman might make $100-150 an evening at the fair saying basically the same thing.

The next step up the ladder is the cold reading, where the reader asks questions and watches the subject closely, profiling the person. With a couple of lucky guesses, or even a bit talent, the reader hooks the subject to believing what he or she is being told about their futures. A mentalist working a crowd might have one or more plants, who pick up information about people beforehand that is forwarded to the reader. Some such readings are simply harmless entertainment. But clever readers will promise more, especially in the realm of romance…if you come back. But this time be sure to bring cash or jewelry that can be buried to discharge evil influences in your life. That sort of thing.

Why anyone would fall for such simple ploys is beyond me. But people do. Even seemingly smart, articulate, and wealthy people. For example, millionaire romance novelist Jude Deveraux. We’ll get to her shortly.

At the top of the ladder are the best of the con artists, people who do have psychic talent, but lack ethical or moral standards. They are out to hook clients, lie and cheat, and make as much money as possible. They are clever enough to carry on this ruse for years and can earn millions.

Case in point, Rose Marks of Fort Lauderdale and New York City, who schemed $25 million from long-term clients, including $17 million from novelist Deveraux. Marks, who worked under the name  Joyce Michaels, is a member of Vlax Roma, the biggest gypsy group in the U.S., where the women are traditionally fortune tellers. In fact, Marks was the head of a group of eight women, all family members, when she was arrested. With Deveraux, she worked her way deeply into the novelist’s life, serving as a personal assistant and life coach.

Some of Marks’ exploits are so over-the-top that it’s really hard to believe anyone would fall for such schemes. “She said money is energy and money is evil and if I had money in my bank account, I was attracting evil,” Deveraux testified in court at Marks’ trial in mid-September. So she gave millions in cash and jewelry for Marks to hold for her. Sounds like a con, smells like a con. But Deveraux complied.

It gets even stranger when Marks helped Deveraux with her romantic pursuits. She said she was duped into believing she was secretly corresponding with then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and actor Brad Pitt. Deveraux believed she was exchanging letters and emails with Powell for four years before she cut it off when ‘Powell’ continued to avoid a face-to-face meeting. An Arizona woman testified in court that she typed up letters and emails that appeared to be from Powell and Pitt, but were dictated by Marks. She said she thought they were role-playing writing exercises for Deveraux. Marks is a clever one. Quite creative in her ruses.

Then, as if to make it all even more bizarre, Marks devised a soul-transferring scheme to meet both Deveraux’s romantic desires and for her to salvage the soul of her 8-year-son, Sam, who had died in an ATV accident. Marks told her that her son had not gone to heaven and that Marks could transfer his soul into the body of another person, reuniting mother and son.

“She said all she saw were flames and I had to keep him out of the flames,” Deveraux testified. Marks said she had foreseen the death and prepared for it by saving an embryo from the in-vitro-fertilization procedures Deveraux had undergone to give birth to Sam.

Rose Marks

Marks claimed that a virgin, who looked like the late Princess Grace of Monaco, had used the embryo to give birth to a child – the full blood brother of Sam. Marks apparently predicted that Deveraux would die and assume the body of the younger woman and be re-united with son.

Very cunning, right? But there’s more. Marks told her that the woman had secretly married Brad Pitt and Deveraux would be married to him when she assumed the woman’s body. Wow. To go along with this scenario seems so outrageous that we have to wonder if  Deveraux had lost her own soul. It seemed that she had become a character from one of her own romances.

There’s much more of this story being reported by the Sun-Sentinel newspaper. It’s been a front-page article for days, and we couldn’t help commenting on it. Marks has pleaded not guilty. She has also claimed to be a psychic consultant for the pope and the FBI and that her clients included former presidents, Powell, Pitt, and actress Jane Seymour. ‘Claim’ is the key word there.

Of course, hard-core skeptics and debunkers will say, ‘I told you so. Psychics are either frauds or misguided individuals.’ Of course, to do so essentially takes one case and expands it to the entire field of psychics and mediums. It’s seeing reality in a very rigid way, based on the idea that psychic abilities don’t exist.

But get this: Marks apparently does have psychic talents. Deveraux, in fact, came to trust her after some of her predictions proved uncannily accurate. For example, she said Deveraux’s husband would file for divorce and accurately predicted the precise hour when the divorce filing was delivered.

Marks also warned her to leave her Manhattan apartment and change the locks because her husband was coming. She checked into a hotel and staff at her apartment building told her that her husband unexpectedly showed up and was angrier than anyone they’d ever seen, Deveraux said.

Then again, knowing what we do about Marks…maybe the husband was in on the con. But no such allegations have been made by the prosecution. So who knows. Maybe Marks will reform and give good readings to her fellow inmates when this case is over.

         Jude Deveraux – duped for 17 years for $17 million

 Reality TV interested us for the first episode of Survivor way back when. Since those days, the genre has burgeoned and our interest has plunged.  That said, I must admit I was blown away by the performance of this 13-year-old girl on The X-Factor USA, a reality show, which I ran across on one of the news sites I frequent.

Some people are born with extraordinary challenges, but also extraordinary gifts. This girl, Rion Page, is one of them. In a rather stunning synchronicity, she performs Carrie Underwood’s Blown Away, which is certainly what she did to me, to these judges and, not surprisingly, to the Internet viewing public, where this video has gone viral. For some reason, the video wouldn’t show up on the blog. Just click and enjoy. This kid is amazing.

watch?v=11oMu365xYU

Back in 1989, I co-authored a book on color divination with Tony Grosso, a psychic who typically asked his clients to quickly–without thinking about it–name five colors. From their choices, he was able to give them a detailed reading. Tony was short in stature, barely five-feet tall, but a head above many psychics in talent. Clients came back again and again.

At some point, he put together a booklet, called Color Me Psychic, that described his personalized definition of various colors. The problem that developed, though, was that the repeat clients who had bought his booklet learned the meanings of the colors and came to readings prepared with the colors that they thought were right for what they wanted. Tony was able to work around that problem by using other psychic talents, including his own method of handwriting analysis in which he asked clients to sign their names. He would rub the fingernails of his thumb and index finger over the signatures and read the person’s life. He always looked dazed when he gave readings, as if he were in a trance.

And these readings were weirdly accurate.

When I met Tony, he had moved away from his color readings, but he’d given me a copy of his booklet and showed me how it worked. From there, I came up with the idea of creating a divination system in which anyone could use his color scheme for readings. He liked the idea and we settled on using the concept of five colored cubes.  The cubes overcame the problem of pre-selecting the colors you wanted. I wrote the proposal and it sold to Ballantine Books. The Rainbow Oracle was published in 1989 as a hardcover book in a box with the cubes along with a velvet drawstring bag.

For the rest of Tony’s life, The Oracle served as a platform for him in his seminars and workshops. He personally sold a lot of books. Meanwhile, I moved on to other projects.

The reason I’m recounting this story is that twenty-four years after it was initially published,  The Rainbow Oracle is out again as an e-book with Crossroad Press. Of course, an e-book doesn’t come with colored cubes, so I’ve revised the book slightly, providing readers with methods for creating their own colored cubes. In fact, the You Tube video below shows how one reader created her own cubes.

Katrina Joyner actually formatted the book when I was considering bringing it out with Smashwords. She was fascinated with the oracle and started sharing color readings with a group of friends who get together regularly. Her enthusiasm shows in the video and she carries on for quite a while before getting into the nitty gritty of readings and creating colored cubes. Near the end, she finally holds up a copy of the original book in its box that we had sent her after finding out how much she liked it.

Besides the video, you can find a detailed description of the book here on the Kindle site.

When we e-mailed her to let her know the post would be going up on 9/12, she replied that the date was an interesting synchro: My blog is set to advertise  the book on the 12th. I’d actually changed the date a few times.

Twelve years later, where are we?

Bush and his cronies are history, Saddam Hussein is dead, Iraq is probably still in chaos. Even though we’re told the U.S. is outta there, we’re still in Afghanistan, we may or may not go to war with Syria, the NSA has unprecedented power to spy on Americans…in short we seem to be caught in Orwell’s 1984, which should read 2013. Or 2014.

A dozen years later, we have elected our first Afro-American president, and certain paradigms of thought are gaining a foothold in consensus reality. Paradigms like: we don’t need perpetual war to thrive (the majority of Americans and of the U.S. Congress are against a strike on Syria); we don’t need to be the world cop; we create our reality from the inside out; ET is here; we’re all intuitive/psychic; we are more than our physical selves.

In just a dozen years, our attitudes have shifted dramatically. We seem to be more open to synchronicity, spirit communication, the roles that our animals friends actually play in our lives. In just a dozen years, a paradigm has begun to emerge that we are all connected somewhere within Indra’s net, so that what impacts you also impacts me.

Yes, the Mideast is a powder keg,

Past life researcher and therapist Carol Bowman contends that some of the people who died in the 9-11 attacks are returning with vivid memories of what happened.

Consciousness researchers are taking a deeper look at how energy may function.

In the end, 12 years after 9-11, we seem to be moving ahead in the development of consciousness, but we’re moving at a snail’s pace. I sure hope the pace picks up!

 I have been very happy the last few weeks. My Nika has been visiting and she really appeals to my wild side, that part of me that enjoys breaking rules and modes of behavior…well, just because. She and I don’t always succeed on these ventures, our humans are wise to us, but when they’re distracted, we can get away with squirrel hunting that is truly beyond the pale.

When our car pulls into the dog park in the late afternoon, Nika is usually leashed because our humans know she will head wherever the squirrels are – which is usually away from the dog park, in the open land to the south. So as they restrain her, I sneak out the back door and take off toward the dog park. She then strains to join me and if there are no other dogs entering or leaving the park, the human who holds the leash is nearly dragged to the pavement and releases her.

She tears after me and we race around through the trees just outside the dog park, where the squirrels often chitter and chat and laugh about all the dogs. We show them a thing or two, Nika and I do, leaping up at their trees, nearly climbing their stupid trees. And when Nika gets fed up with them, she flies to the south, to all that open land, her leash slapping the ground.

I can only follow her so far. I don’t run as fast as she does and always, within me, is the collective voice of my humans, calling me back, to the park, to treats, reminding me that retrievers retrieve, that they return to where they are supposed to be. Once I do what I’m supposed to do, Nika makes a very wide circle and joins me and we enter the park, free of our insulting leashes.

So while we race along the periphery of the fence, where there’s an overhang of branches and leaves from the outside trees, our humans sit around in the shade with others of their ilk and talk and talk. Syria, food, weight loss, job hunting, horses and polo and the interminable heat. Today, here in the shade, it’s 95 and feels like 111, that’s what some weather app on a human phone says. I’m grateful some human has brought in a pool; I plop down in the cool water, and gaze across all the green and sunlight at Nika, who has dug a hole and climbed into it, panting.

I know that Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq are places far from here where horrible things are happening. But why should these wars be mine? I only want to chase squirrels and be with Nika. I want other dogs to run and play and chase squirrels and find their true loves; I don’t want them to starve or flee their homes.

The human Prez talks about how there must be consequences for violating international law. This has something to do with the use of horrid chemical weapons. But how can ‘surgical air strikes’ act as punishment when only those who are NOT responsible will be killed? I feel the human despair and rage and hopelessness about this. But it’s not my war. Just show me the squirrels. Just let me run and dream and wear myself out so that at the end of the day Nika and I are zonked, settled in, gone for the night.

Yet, tonight there is hope that Russia is offering an out. That’s a good thing, right? It offers the prez an out from his line in the sand, right? Yes? Do I hear a YES that war will be averted? That it MUST be averted?