Through the Eyes of An Alchemist

Posted on January 12, 2011 by Trish and Rob

from Jung’s Red Book

These illustrations from The Red Book, which Jung called his confrontation with the unconscious, seem appropriate for this story. It’s from D Page, who seems to have experienced her own confrontation with the unconscious. 
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The past two months have been very strange for my husband and I. In October, I was battling my second round of bronchitis. On the 28th, the hot water pipes exploded in our shower while I was standing there. Within 45 minutes, our home was flooded. Within 8 hours, we were evacuated to a hotel 10 miles away. Then things became even stranger: the very day the work on our home was to be completed, the hot water heater exploded on the man who was finishing the tile work in the kitchen. (I am grateful he was not hurt.) 
This created a second flood which covered area of the new floor and walls just completed. It also flooded the only space that wasn’t flooded in the previous incident. Also curious: no personal items (furniture, books, clothes, guitars, computers etc.) were destroyed by the flooding itself. When the work was finally done on our home on December 16, we moved back in. The adventure didn’t end there.
As this drama was unfolding, I was asking myself  “What does this mean?”  Trish MacGregor reminded me to analyze it like it was a dream….and I finally had a “light bulb”  moment. All of it can be explained through the language of alchemy. In particular, the stage of dissolution! Jung wrote several books on the language of alchemy as a metaphor for the individuation process.  
Some of symbols representing the alchemical dissolution process include: whale, fish, toad, dragon, a stag in a forest, flooding, breaking apart, rivers, streams, tears, pools, warm bath, baptism, dissection, dissembling, dismemberment, the near death experience, mid-life crisis, lungs, the color blue, the metal tin. The first alchemical apparatus for use in experiments with water and dissolution were invented by a Jewish alchemist named Maria Prophetissa, sometime before 100 B. C E. Maria Prophetissa is considered a female Hermes (Hauck/1999). Hermes is the mercurial trickster force behind the alchemical process. The alchemical bath has since been called the bain-marie (French for Mary’s bath). This process can be repeated- solve et coagula: dissolve and solidify — several times before it’s done.

Prior to the flooding, I was battling bronchitis, a lung disorder.  I have several problems with my immune systems as well as ME/CFS, so any illness can create complications. The first person on the scene to help me after the hot water pipes exploded was a woman named Mary. When my husband and I first walked into the lobby of the hotel that would be our refuge from the flood, we encountered a giant whale sculpture.

  

The lobby was also decorated for Halloween with pumpkins, skeletons, and skulls. During the first three weeks of our stay, the maid assigned to our room was named Maria. The room was decorated in blue. The view outside the window was of a surrounded courtyard with 3 heated pools. During this period of time, I read The Millennium Trilogy by Steig Larsson. The main chraracter in this trilogy is Lisbeth Salander, aka “the girl with the dragon tattoo.”

During this time, I had 3 dreams about shamans. In one dream, I was traveling over water on a boat in the Florida Everglades. I had 3 dreams that involved structures dissembling. I also had 3 dreams where I was communicating with people who have died. During the 3rd week of reconstruction, the hot water heater exploded, creating more flooding. At this point, we can say that the 2nd process of alchemical dissolution had begun. The day after Thanksgiving, we went down to the lobby. The whale in the lobby now had antlers and a sweater, decorated for Christmas.

Our alchemical whale had become a reindeer/stag. The following weekend, we moved to the fifth floor, into another blue themed room. This time our view was of a steep, forested hill.  It was in this room where I celebrated a mid-life birthday.

During a dissolution phase of psychological alchemy, one finds oneself in a position of having no control over one’s life passage. When my husband and I entered the hotel, we no longer had our own identities. For 6 weeks, we became anonymous. Even the account at the hotel was done by a third party. We became Mr. and Mrs. Page, the displaced couple. We had none of our usual props in our daily lives. Very little belonged to us. We didn’t have our usual daily routines. We were living amongst a sea of anonymous, transient people. Even though we had computers, the hotel had very limited internet contact. The TV had very few channels (unless you paid extra).
Larry’s job was the only thing that remained constant, but even that was effected by the dissolution process. On one particular day, he went work to find corporate personnel in the office. Several of his co-workers were gone, either transferred or let go. There was no warning for this incident.
   
We were going through the dissolution together as a single body: the Sun/Moon, or King/Queen. (Larry and I).  I have a natal (his)Sun/Moon (mine) conjunction in astrological charts.) We were removed from our collective body, our home, and taken to an anonymous bardo, or transition state, while our body (home) was dismembered and reconstructed. This is similar to a shamanic dismemberment & initiation. The point of this whole process is to learn to live in the moment. 
Just this… Now.
We were finally able to move back in to our home on Dec 16. The alchemist would ask at this point: “Will the newly constructed vessel be able to contain without leaking?“
On December 21st, there was rare eclipse (sun/moon, or king/queen)– last seen in 1378. On Dec. 22nd, San Diego was hit by a storm that would bring record rainfall and flooding. On Dec. 23rd, we awoke to standing water– up to 8 inches — surrounding 3 outer walls of our condo. This had never happened before. The men who had just spent 6 weeks working on our home happened to be on the grounds already, so we were able to work fast on preventing damage to the interior of our newly remodeled home.

Christmas day was celebrated with family and friends. I received a beautiful golden bronze stag as a gift from my friend Teresa. 

On the morning of December 28th, I pulled back the curtains to find many doves sitting outside my front picture window, looking inward at me. Usually there is only one or two, not several.  The dove is prominent above the heads of the King and Queen in alchemical imagery– after the dissolution is complete. 
At this moment I knew all was exactly as it should be. The storm on Dec. 29th did not cause any further flooding. The work of this phase of the alchemical process was complete. I hope we don’t need to repeat it.
Posted in alchemy, Carl Jung, d page | 27 Comments

49 States with Snow

Posted on January 12, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Ok, take a look at the map. Right now, 49 states have snow – even Hawaii, on Mauna Kea on the Big Island. Only Florida has no snow! We don’t mean to gloat….but…well, I guess we do.Our high today was 79 or 80.
But wait! Tomorrow night, we’re supposed to see some of the temps we did during the Christmas holidays – thirties. In homes as porous and uninsulated as ours against cold, that’s huddle weather.

This state of affairs is apparently unusual.”Snow is present in 69.4 percent of the lower 48, which is more than double than December.  This is extremely unusual, though it’s hard to put a date on when this last happened because records aren’t kept on this kind of event,” says CNN.

Posted in weather | 26 Comments

Bizarre Synchro

Posted on January 11, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Gypsy woman alerted us to this synchro. I’m not sure where this falls – global synchronicities? Law of attraction? Bizarro world? The headlines of the story pretty much sum it up: 36 dead after bus collides with vehicle carrying mourners in India.

In a nutshell, a state government bus in northern India collided with a vehicle carrying mourners from a funeral. The vehicle carrying mourners was called a matador, a rather curious name for this vehicle. In Spanish, the matador is the one who kills the bull in a bullfight. The wold literally means killer. The vehicle was transporting people back from a ceremony that marks the last rites for the deceased.

Thirty-six people died and 28 were injured.

Posted in buses, death, law of attraction | 18 Comments

The Pod

Posted on January 10, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Two days into 2011, we trekked south to the Florida keys with Megan and her boyfriend, Andy, to get Megan settled for her month-long internship at a dolphin facility.
At her college, January is independent study time, when students design their own projects. It can be anything allied with your major and/or your passions. One year, Megan went to Ecuador to volunteer at a wildlife center in the jungle. This year, it’s dolphins in the keys, at a facility where we all swam with dolphins when Megan was much younger.
We took two cars and Rob and I were ahead of Megan and Andy. There’s an exhilarating moment in this drive when you reach the end of the Florida turnpike, the road narrows to two lanes, and suddenly you’re on U.S. 1, which extends from Key West to Maine, and a sign announces that you’re entering the Florida Keys.
 It’s called the Florida Keys Scenic Highway. It’s 106.5 miles long and takes about four hours to drive from one end to the other. The Keys are an archipelago of 1,700 islands that are connected by bridges. The longest one, the 7-mile bridge in the photo, is an engineering marvel. All along this highway, the Atlantic stretches out on one side of the road, the Gulf of Mexico stretches out on the other. The shades of blue and green are  pure and clear, the air smells of salt and sand and sun, the sky looms from horizon to horizon. Magnificent, huge. The beauty blows your mind and heart wide open, you kick off your shoes, lower your windows, and the breeze blows through the car. Suddenly you know that anything is possible.
Everything in the Keys is measured by the mile markers. Mile marker 127.5 marks the end of the turnpike and its junction with U.S. and the scenic highway. Mile marker zero is Key West. So when people in the keys give you directions, they do so according to these markers. Megan, for instance, will be staying with the mother of a friend, who lives just past mile marker 88. So somewhere around mile marker 99, just as we’re approaching our favorite Cuban café where we intend to stop for the best coffee in the universe, I happen to glance to my right, on the Gulf side of the highway. And there, a pod of five dolphins surface, their bodies shimmering in the cool light.
“Rob,” I squeal. “Look! Dolphins, five of them.”
“I see them, I see them,” he says, craning his neck.
There’s no place on the highway to turn off, but Rob slows down and the dolphins remain visible for a few precious moments longer.
We have both been to the keys dozens of times over the years. Neither of us has ever seen a pod of dolphins during this drive. The synchronicity of it, the fact that we were down here because of Megan’s dolphin internship, struck us as a favorable sign for her month’s stay. I later realized that the five was also significant; Megan’s full name adds up to a five.
It turns out that the facility allows family and friends to visit the facility for a meet and greet with the 13 dolphins that live there. We plan on indulging at the end of the month. But Andy dropped by and Megan took this photo during his meet and greet:
 Kissed by a dolphin. Way to go, Andy!
Posted in dolphins, internship, keys | 19 Comments

Mass Events in Tucson

Posted on January 9, 2011 by Trish and Rob

In 1981, Jane Roberts/Seth published a book called The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events. This book is one of the most intriguing and also one of the most baffling.
In the book, Seth talks a lot about epidemics and about Three Mile Island and the Jonestown Massacre, events that occurred while he and Jane were writing the book. In this era of instant communication and 24/7 news coverage, however, we can add some other mass events to this list: 9-11; O.J. Simpson’s flight in the white Bronco after the murder of his wife; the Columbine shootings in April 1999; the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting; the Oklahoma City bombing; Hurricane Katrina and the devastation to New Orleans in 2005; Hurricane Andrew in 1992; the Indonesian tsunami in 2004; the Haitian earthquake in 2010. Those are just the mass events that come immediately to mind. There are many more. But you get the idea. A mass event is one that thrusts itself into our consciousness and changes our private, personal realities in some significant way.
Yesterday shooting and deaths in Tucson, Arizona certainly counts as a mass event. On a synchronistic level, it’s disturbing.
First, the fact that the shooting occurred in Arizona is significant. The state has been in the news recently because of Governor Brewer’s controversial immigration laws (racial profiling) and her denial of health insurance through Medicaid to individuals who need certain types of transplants in order to stay alive. Brewer claims these cuts are necessary, even though they save just over a million bucks from the state’s annual budget. The death panels that Sara Palin and her ilk screamed about during the health care debate last year (they’re going to kill your grandmother!) are a reality now in Arizona–but not because of ‘Obama-care.’ Already, two of the hundred individuals who need these transplants have died.   
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was outside a SAFEway grocery store to meet with constituents when she was shot at point blank range. (That one smacks of the dark trickster). The bullet went through her brain. Even though she has survived the surgery,  only about five percent of individuals with this kind of injury survive. Yet, her surgeons are “cautiously optimistic.”
The federal judge who was killed – who simply dropped by as a show of support for Giffords after having gone to mass – was an immigration advocate.
The call for violence has entered the discourse of American politics in a way that is horrifying. On Palin’s Facebook page – since scrubbed – the face of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was depicted in the crosshairs of a gun. Glenn Beck called for the killing of filmmaker Michael Moore. Sharon Angle, the Tea Party candidate in Nevada in the 2010 elections, advocated that Americans exercise their “second amendment rights” against Obama’s “socialist agenda.” The second amendment to the Constitution was adopted in 1791 and protects the rights of the American people to “keep and bear arms.”
From  a Sethian perspective in the mass events book: “People die when they are ready to die, for reasons that are their own. No person dies without a reason. The mass world is formed as the result of individual impulses. They meet and merge, and form platforms for action.”
If we, as individuals, create our realities from the inside out, as Seth contends, then what does that tell us about the roles played in today’s events? Why did federal judge John Roll just happen to walk over to the gathering outside Safeway? Why was Congresswoman Giffords so gravely injured? Why was an innocent nine-year-old girl killed in these shootings? The little girl, by the way, was Christina Taylor Green, featured in the book, Faces of Hope: Babies Born on 9/11. A baby born on the day of a terrorist act dies at the age of 9 during a terrorist act. Why would anyone choose  such experiences, even at an unconscious, soul level?

Perhaps the individuals involved chose to be involved in these tragic dramas to bring collective attention to this culture of violent rhetoric that has grown even more vitriolic and excessive in the last several years. It’s not that human beings are flawed. “The quality of your lives is formed through the subjective realities of your feelings and mental constructions,” wrote Seth. “Beliefs that foster despair are biologically destructive. If mass action against appalling social or political conditions is not effective, then other means are taken, and they are often in the guise of epidemics or natural disasters.” Wakeup calls, in other words.
Perhaps Tucson – like 9-11, like Columbine, like all the other mass events through the decades –  is one of  America’s wakeup calls. Have we gotten the message – as individuals, a society, a culture, a planet?
Here’s Seth talking about the power of beliefs.

Posted in beliefs, Seth, tucson, violence | 44 Comments

For Crying Out Loud!

Posted on January 8, 2011 by Trish and Rob
John Boehner – a crying shame?

Here’s an ironic synchronicity related to the new U.S. Congress. The same day that the constitution was read aloud for the first time in congress, two representatives violated the constitution.

Republicans, who now are in the majority in the house of representatives, staged the first ever reading on Thursday, Jan. 6, at the behest of their most conservative supporters, the Tea Party, who look upon the U.S. Constitution as a holy document, somewhat like the New Testament. It should be noted that most members of congress got bored and left the house floor during the reading.

Meanwhile, two Republicans managed to violate the constitution on the same day when they voted without being sworn-in. GOP Reps. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) and Mike Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) chose to attend a fundraiser rather than show up for the swearing in ceremony. Later on, they cast their first votes of the 112th Congress-  despite the fact they were technically not members of Congress at the time. Hence, violating the constitution. Good going, guys. Thanks for the synchro!

Besides casting the votes on the house floor, Sessions even chaired the rules committee during a hearing on the health care repeal bill. According to sources, the situation came about when the speaker’s office discovered a photo of Sessions holding his hand up while watching a television showing his fellow colleagues taking the oath on the floor.

In other words, the two congressmen acted as if the ceremony was like a Wii computer game and they could be sworn-in via a TV monitor while collecting money from supporters. Strange stuff.

Also interesting was that certain parts of the constitution that were embarrassing weren’t read, hence making the document and founding fathers appear more infallible. Notably ignored was the original intent to allow slavery in the South by including the statement that black people were three-fifth citizens. Blacks were referred to as ‘other Persons’ to avoid using the word slaves.

Meanwhile, Thursday night, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow tried to correct the Republicans censorship by having Ted Williams, the now famous homeless man with an “amazing God-given voice,” to read the parts of the Constitution the GOP left out. What a hoot!

Regarding the photo above, maybe new House Speaker John Boehner just hit his fingers with his new oversized gavel. Who knows…. – R

Posted in boehner, constitution, politics | 45 Comments

Debra and Nita

Posted on January 7, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Matisse

This story comes from D Page, whose blog mythic musings is always a pleasure to read. It’s a wonderful example of spirit communication through dreams, but has a terrific twist!
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When my husband Larry asked me to marry him, we had known each other for 4 years. We had met as co-workers for a car dealer. I had met his father already. I knew he had a younger brother, and that his mother had died of diabetes- related complications in 1982.
 
The day he asked me to marry him was 12/12/92. I was living in Colorado, near Denver. He was flying into Denver when a blizzard struck. It took the plane approximately 5 hours of circling before it landed, because the snowfall was so heavy. After a safe but tense landing, Larry got off the plane, kissed the ground, and handed me an engagement ring. We spent the night at an airport hotel. No one could leave because of the blizzard.

I did say “Yes!”, so Larry moved into an apartment with my daughter Desiree and I. I knew we would be facing allot of issues. The one that worried me the most was the fact that the marriage would be interracial. Larry is African American, I am white European. We had already had problems with our friendship being an issue because we worked at the same dealership.

A few weeks after Larry moved in I had a very vivid dream: I was on a bus in San Diego. Desiree (my 7-year old daughter) was sitting to my right. On my left was a stranger: an African American woman. She was beautiful, with a very dynamic presence. She had an afro – very ‘big hair’.  She said, “My name is Nita. This is going to be very hard for Larry. Please be patient. It will all work out.” I had a lot of questions swirling in my head as suddenly awoke.

 The next morning I shared the dream with Larry. I told him what Nita had said. He said: “Nita is my mother. Her name is Juanita, but everyone calls her Nita. Then I asked him about the afro. “Yes, that’s her,” he responded.

We moved back to San Diego in 1993. We stayed a few weeks at Larry’s family’s home. I was home alone, cleaning one afternoon, when I found a photograph of the woman in my dream: a beautiful black woman with “big hair”. It was Nita. Somehow, I knew she would always be looking out for us.

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How many of us can say we met our mothers-in-law years after she had passed on?
Posted in dreams, spirit communication | 13 Comments

Synchro Weirdness

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Trish and Rob

This synchro is one of those weirdo things you run across from time to time, involving names, the bizarre, and death. More on that at the end of the story.

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On Monday, December 12, 2011, Tyler Brehm, 26, walked down the middle of Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, firing on motorists with a .40 caliber handgun.  He didn’t appear to have any clear target and fired 20 bullets in the air and at cars and screamed that he wanted to die.

Several people were injured and one man was killed, 40-year-old John Atterberry, a music executive who was shot in the face and upper body as he drove his Mercedes through the area.

Atterberry has worked with the Spice Girls, Jessica Simpson, and other musicians. He was a VP at a record company that produced albums for some of the most prominent names in West Coast hip-hop- like Snoop Dog. The name of the company? Death Row Records.

Story here.

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Really? Why would anyone give that name to a company?  These types of synchros seem to emanate from what I think of as the ‘dark side” of the cosmos. We don’t know what, if any, karmic connections existed among the players, we have no clue about what these people were thinking just before or during these dramatic and, ultimately, tragic moments.

But if there’s no such thing as random, then the apparently “random” act was initiated at some deeper order in the universe. And this is where synchronicity seems to come into play. I often think of synchronicity as the seam, the border, between what is seen and what is hidden. It somehow makes the internal (hidden) manifest, and then we’re struck by the sheer weirdness of it and are compelled to pay attention. But what’s the message? What’s the law of attraction here? Or is there any?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in crimes, synchronicity | Leave a comment

Blackbird, Blackbird…

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Patterns are intrinsic to synchronicity and often can be seen through the signs and symbols in our environment. We read the signs and symbols in ways that are personally meaningful. But what about when the signs and symbols seem to be much bigger than any single individual? Is the collective consciousness of the planet speaking to us in some way? If so, then two towns in Arkansas may be the planet’s mouthpiece.

 

Let’s take a look at these two towns in Arkansas – Guy (population 549) and Beebe (about 5,000 in 2000 census). Both lie to the north of Little Rock.
Between September 20 and December 13, 2010, the area around Guy experienced a swarm of quakes –nearly 500 of them, quakes so small they go unnoticed but which are measurable. October 11 featured the largest quake – about 4.0. There are several geological faults in the area, but none are associated with the new Madrid fault, which shifted in 1811 and caused a 7.7 quake.
Less than 50 miles to the northwest of Guy is the town of Beebe. On New Year’s Eve, around 5,000 red winged blackbirds dropped out of the sky over Beebe, in a one-mile area. On that same day, in the same general northwestern region of Arkansas, an EF3 tornado hit. It was  500 yards wide, remained on the ground for 22 minutes, and killed four people.
Then there are the dead fish in the Arkansas River – more than 100,000 of them, all the same type – drum fish. This occurred about 125 miles west of Beebe.
In addition, there have been a number of UFO sightings in Arkansas – Batesville, November 11; Fayettville, October 16;  Emerson, May 27; and May 6, Rogers. Here’s a video about one of the sightings.   There may have been more sightings, but these are what I found in a quick search.
And here’s an update as of January 4.

So the obvious question is whether this area of Arkansas is just extraordinarily unlucky or  is there something else going on here? And if so, what? There’s all sorts of speculation – that it’s signs of the end times, that the area is a vortex of some kind, that it’s all related to UFOs, that may be near. In fact, rumors are swirling that disclosure could come from President Obama within the next month. According to this source, Obama “will concede that there is some evidence that aliens may have attempted to contact Earthlings.”
We find the phrasing rather humorous. To abductees and the hundreds of thousands of individuals who have experienced sightings, the contact has been ongoing for decades.  But hey, it would be a start! However these events shake out, these events certainly seem to be something we should all keep an eye on.
Today, January 5, the dead bird and fish phenomenon has gone worldwide, and now includes 40,000 crabs, plus starfish, anemones, and sponges that have washed up on the Thanet shoreline in England.

Then there’s the conspiracy take on all this, that government testing is what killed the birds, the fish:

Posted in mass deaths blackbirds | 60 Comments

Cute Reincarnation Rap

Posted on January 5, 2011 by Trish and Rob

A nice testament about why we must all co-exist.

 

Posted in synchronicity | Leave a comment