This is an intriguing video! Carol is an expert in the field of children’s past lives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYkwguBK8EA&feature=youtu.be
Solar eclipses occur every six months and are usually times of new opportunities, new relationships, new doorways opening. They’re like double new moons. The second one of 2018 will occur on July 12-13, depending on where you live in the world, at 20 degrees 41 minutes of Cancer. EDT for the eclipse is 10:48 PM July 12.
Globally, eclipses can signal mass events. The solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 was called the Great American Eclipse because for the first time in 99 years – the path of a total solar eclipse traversed the U.S., 14 states in all. Just four days after the eclipse, Hurricane Harvey hit Texas. Harvey was followed by Irma and Maria. It was the first time in U.S. history that three category 3 hurricanes hit the U.S., with two of them reaching category 5 status. Maria wiped out Puerto Rico’s power infrastructure and revealed an unbelievable level of incompetence in the Trump administration. Nearly a year later, Puerto Rico is still suffering.
None of this means that the July 12-13 eclipse will bring the same types of events. This eclipse will be visible in southern Australia, but will occur mostly over the Pacific and Indian oceans.
It’s the first of a series of eclipses in Cancer/Capricorn that will be happening through 2020 and looks especially good for water signs – Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces. It features two grand trines (120 degrees) – one in water signs – Jupiter in Scorpio, the sun/moon in Cancer, and Neptune in Pisces – and another in earth signs in a grand earth trine (120 degrees) with Venus in Virgo, Saturn in Capricorn, and Uranus in Taurus.
Grand trines are especially powerful, facilitating the flow of energy. Since Cancer rules women, home, and families, we should be hearing more about families at the border being separated from their children. It’s a good day to focus on your own family, hopes and dreams, and to make a list of what you desire for yourself and your family and the society in which you live during the next 6 months. The other good thing about this eclipse is that Jupiter, the giant that represents luck, expansion, turned direct on July 10, so now it will be functioning at full capacity. Jupiter also represents the courts and law and trump has just announced his awful pick for the supreme court.
Those of you with a Cancer sun, moon, rising, or any planets between 19-21 degrees Cancer, should benefit from this eclipse. But there’s a caveat.
Pluto at 20 degrees Capricorn opposes this eclipse. This aspect may reveal our shadow selves, what’s usually hidden, and could activate emotions and themes that occurred at the last set of eclipses – a lunar eclipse on January 31 and a solar eclipse on February 15. It could also bring out the worst in a boss or other authoritarian figure and a confrontation of some kind may ensue. It’s probably a good idea to move through the next day, weeks, or 6 months with love and appreciation in your heart. Yeah, it sounds silly, I know. But more often than not, it helps to circumvent arguments and disagreements.
And, with two grand trines in this eclipse chart, there’s plenty of powerful energy to deal with whatever arises.
UNITED STATES – JUNE 19: FBI Director Robert Mueller testifies before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Dirksen Building on oversight of the FBI. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)
Dear Mr. Mueller,
I know you’re busy. I know you’re gathering evidence about whether trump colluded with Russia during the 2016 election and obstructed justice. I understand that you’re not a PR guy, don’t leak info, and are pursuing the legal avenues.
But in the meantime the trump admin is tearing kids away from their moms at the border and creating one more reality show drama after another to distract us from your investigation. Trump’s tweets calls your investigation a witch hunt, claims that the Department of Justice is a broken system, and always, always, their mistakes can be traced back to Obama and Hillary Clinton. More lies. The only thing this administration does well is lie, one piled on top of another, the labyrinth of lies repeated so often the for his supporters, those lies become the truth.
I know you’ve issued more than 20 indictments, that Paul Manafort’s bail was rescinded for attempting to tamper with witnesses, and that he’s now in jail until his trials. I know you‘re closing in on trump and his family. But in the end, what will come of this? Impeachment? Doubtful, not with a spineless republican congress. And if you do indict trump, then his lackey Giuliani will make the TV rounds, spouting more lies about how the prez is above the law.
So all of this happens on a daily basis, trump creating one reality show distraction after another so that we’ll forget about your investigations. Meanwhile, young immigrant children are being interred, just as the Japanese were during WWII, just as Jews were in Nazi Germany. We’re not just in the beginnings of Fascism, but are in the midst of it. If trump and his lackeys get really ticked off, maybe you and your team will be interred with journalists, business people, and other people who criticize him.
In the daily world, these events have a profound impact on ordinary people. I don’t sleep well at night. I think about moving to another country. I think about the world my daughter is inheriting. I argue with a neighbor who thinks trump is the best president ever, but can’t name a single thing he has done that benefits Americans. When I mentioned that Harley Davidson is moving some of its operations overseas because of trump’s tariff/trade war, she just shook her head. “No way they’d do that. They’re too American.”
Yes. And they don’t want to be taxed when they sell their products to Europe.
This same neighbor informs me that the words on the back of Melania’s jacket when she visited an internment camp were photoshopped. The words: I really don’t care, do u? I queried snopes.com about this. They says that the words on her jacket are real.
Yes, we may be placing too much pressure on you, Mr. Mueller, to save us from Fascism. Maybe it’s karma, payback for what we did to to people of color, Native Americans, the Japanese, the “other,” whoever they were at any given point in time. Maybe there’s no end to this nightmare because in 2020 trump wins and declares himself prez for life.
Will we, by then, be able to escape to another country?
Could you please speed things up, Mr. Mueller?
When I was in elementary school, my father gave me a violin. I think I was in fourth grade. I joined the orchestra and stuck with it for six years up to my sophomore year in high school. I remember it wasn’t cool to play the violin, but that wasn’t what stopped me. Frankly, I just wasn’t very adept as a violinist. It wasn’t a natural talent for me. In other words, in my case, practice did NOT make perfect. However, I did enjoy playing the classics in our school concerts, something I’ll always remember. But I knew I was not destined to be the ‘first chair.’ So I gave it up.
I recall as a kid looking inside the violin at the label and puzzling over the strange words. If I asked my father where the violin came from, I don’t remember doing so. It was a hand-me-down, something that had been in the family maybe for generations.
Last year, after my mother died, I went back to Minneapolis and helped my sister clean out the house where we had both grown up. In the closet of my old bedroom, I found the violin in its somewhat battered case. I didn’t have room to take it back with me on the airplane so I had it carefully packaged and sent through the mail.
Last week we visited friends who are professional classical musicians and have played many international venues. One of their daughters is a violinist and I noticed her violin case near the door. For some reason, that triggered my interest in my old violin. I took it out of the closet and examined it closely for the first time in many, many years.
I realized that now with Internet resources, I could look up the Latin or Italian writing on the inside. A few of the letters have become difficult to read, but by Googling what I could read, I was able to figure out the entire label. Here it is:
Andreas Guarnerius fecit Cremonae fub
Tituto Sanctae Theresiae anno 1701
That translates to:
Andreas Guarnerius made this in Cremona under the title Saint There’s in 1701.
I also found out that Guarneri dedicated all of his instruments to St. Theresa. Do I have an antique Guarneri violin, I wondered. Andreas Guarneri was a student of Antonio Stradivari. He died in 1698 and his son or nephew continued his work under his legend. I continued my research and found that there were thousands of copies of Stradivarius and Guarnerius violins made in the late 19th century and early 20th century in Germany and Italy. Finally, those luthiers were stopped from continuing those copies because so many people around the world were wondering—and still do—if they owned a real Stradiverius. Unfortunately, most do not. Same with the Guarnerius violins.
Out of curiosity, I’ve recently sent out photos of my violin to two luthiers, who requested pictures of the violin after I described the label. I have yet to hear back from either one, but in all likelihood I have a Guanerius copy. Regardless, it’s a very nice instrument…though now missing a couple of strings.
If I get an interesting update from the luthiers, I’ll add it on here.
Amy Coney Barrett
Have you ever heard of a religious group called People of Praise? It’s a conservative cult-like group that mixes Catholic traditions with Pentecostalism. It was founded in 1971 in South Bend, Indiana, with a core group of 29 people, and now has groups in 11 other states. The groups emphasize “intentional community living,” not like you and the folks in your neighborhood, but rather committing to deeply sharing one another’s lives. “We’re not just praying together, we’re putting our lives in common,” Craig Lent, the group’s current leader, said in an interview. (Having grown up Catholic, I can’t think of a better name for a charismatic group leader than Lent. Synchro one.)
Why is People of Praise cult-like? Members swear a lifelong oath of loyalty to the group. Each one is accountable to a same-sex adviser, called a “head” for men and a “handmaiden” for women, who gives input on a wide variety of personal decisions. Anyone who has read The Handmaid’s Tale or has seen the TV series by the same name can’t help but notice the irony of that designation for advisors. It also certainly sounds like a trickster synchronicity, and possibly a warning of more to come from this group. But how could People of Praise have any effect on the rest of us non-members? Read on.
President Trump is currently considering a member of People of Praise for the Supreme Court, a woman who has a handmaiden advisor or possibly is a handmaiden herself! Her name is Amy Coney Barrett and she has emerged as a strong potential favorite to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy after he resigns from the Supreme Court later this month. Barrett is fiercely conservative, a former law clerk for fellow Catholic Antonin Scalia and holds membership in the extremely conservative Federalist Society.
SLATE.com, in an article on Barrett, cited one blogger who described her this way: “Barrett is a dangerous religious extremist who believes a federal judge can subvert the U.S. Constitution and the laws of the United States in order to promote her own religious agenda.”
You’ve got to wonder if Barrett has ever watched The Handmaid’s Tale and seen her image among the powers-that-be that rule.
Hang on.Trump says he will make his pick for the court July 9.
This is what freedom looks like. Happy July 4!!
On June 30, we joined five or six hundred protesters for a Families Belong Together march on trump’s Palm Beach hideaway, Mar de Lago. On our way across town to the march with our friends Estis and Marcio, our phones suddenly started blaring. An amber alert:
A Florida Amber Alert has been issued for three children out of Volusia County.
Law enforcement is searching for 3-year-old Akeem Dorset, 8-year-old Makylah Brown, and 10-year-old Aaliyah Brown. Officials said the kids were last seen in the area of the 800 block of Oleander Street in New Smyrna Beach.
Officials believe the kids are in the company of their grandmother, 65-year-old Venita Porter-Carter. They may be traveling in a 2010, white Suzuki Grand Vitara with the Florida tag number 632RKB.
The actual alert said “multiple children.” I didn’t think much about it until we were at the rally before the march when an immigration attorney – herself an immigrant – spoke. She noted that on her way to the rally this morning, she’d heard an amber alert about multiple children and thought it was “ironic” and somehow fitting since this rally and march were about stopping the trump policy of separating children from their familiar at the border.
As soon as I heard her say it, I realized she had recognized the synchronicity and Rob and I had missed it!
The rally and the march across the bridge to Palm Beach were a wonderful mix of old and young and everything in between. Several politicians attended – Representative Lois Frankel, the mayor and West Palm Beach and the former mayor. A rabbi gave an outstanding speech in both English and Spanish and later on, in our way across the bridge, I heard him speaking both French and Creole to several Haitian women.
Due to construction on the bridge, with traffic reduced to a single lane, we were allowed into Palm Beach only in groups of 40. A woman in front of us had brought her two young daughters and for a while as we crossed the bridge, they were directly in front of us. One of the girls, who was 5 or 6, remarked, “Trump is as bright orange Cheeto!”
On our way in, we passed the “service entrance” to trump’s palace.
Here’s the palace. Rather phallic.
His place straddles both sides of the road.
There was a strip of grass just beyond the curb and two men on trump’s property told us to stay off the grass because it was “private property.”
The con man wasn’t home.
We are long-time fans of time travel stories as writers, readers and viewers. Trish has written three time travel novels, Running Time, Kill Time, and Black Water. My time travel novel is called Romancing the Raven. As readers, Trish and I both think that Time and Again by Jack Finney is perhaps the best time travel story ever written. As viewers, in recent months, we’ve watched two television series recently that feature time travel—Travelers and Timeless.
Travelers, a Netflix series, is a post-apocalyptic tale, in which teams of travelers come back from the 24th century and attempt to alter some events that will change their history and save the world. It’s an unusual time travel story in that it takes place in our present! The time travelers come to us. Very tricky. They take over the bodies of people who they know are about to die. The team leader, for example, takes over the body of an FBI agent who was about to meet his end on a case. So these folks from the future have to fit into the lives that their new bodies were living. That, of course, leads to some interesting scenarios.
The travelers apparently are never going home. They’re stuck in these bodies. Their rules include: Never jeopardize your cover. Do not call each other by future names—”Leave the future in the past.” Do not use future knowledge for personal gain. Don’t take a life; don’t save a life, unless otherwise directed.
The other TV series, which is on NBC, is Timeless. It’s more of a traditional time travel story with a time travel machine taking them to significant past events—a trip through history. So we meet famous people and view famous incidents, such as the explosion of the Hindenburg, the assassination of Lincoln, the fall of the Alamo, the Watergate scandal, Charles Lindburgh’s cross-Atlantic flight.
Of course, there’s a purpose to these journeys. Someone has stolen a time machine and is attempting to change history. So while the travelers from the future in Travelers attempts to change the past (our time), in Timeless the time travelers are attempting to prevent the group in control of one of the time machines from altering the past, which would change the world and their own lives. In Travelers, the nemesis is another group from the future aligned with a different power base with different interests.
In both series, the time travelers live communally in dinghy warehouses equipped with really advanced computers. Both series have some flaws, which can be overlooked by letting go of your sense of disbelief. For example, in Timeless there’s an annoying telescoping of time after they arrive at a new time frame and abandon their time travel vessel. We never see how they get from the rural, isolated areas where they usually arrive, to the city or place of action. They often arrive in 21st century street clothes, but then must go and buy new duds. We never see how they pull that off.
In Travelers, the shortcoming is how these people from the future manage to adjust not only to the 21st century sensibilities, but how they are able to fit into their new families and jobs without betraying who they really are. We manage to overlook these lapses in storytelling and enjoy the episodes.
Time travel fascinates. There’s no doubt about it. Another TV series we enjoyed—at least for two seasons—was Outlander which is set in Scotland. But, for me, what’s even more fascinating and mind-boggling than any of these shows is a story of true time travel.
If we are to believe former Coast Guardman, John Murphy of North Carolina and his friend Barbara. Those two seemingly moved back in time nearly 200 years for at least two hours in 1964 on the island of Bermuda. Their story is summarized here. It’s also included in detail in our book, Beyond Strange: True Tales of Alien Encounters and Paranormal Mysteries.
Unlike time travel in those two TV series, John and Barbara required no advanced technological device to move them back. Yet, somehow they walked through a window in time, and into a 18th century village and out again, only later to discover that the village no longer exists, that it was destroyed in the so-called Great Hurricane of 1780. It’s hard to imagine that this pair would make up the story, especially since they had lost contact shortly after the incident for more than four decades and Barbara had no idea that the village didn’t exist until John asked her in 2008 if she recalled walking into that village with him. She did, and then was told the rest of the story.
Whether you’re moving or applying for a job, signing a contract or buying a lottery ticket, having surgery or launching a company, taking a vacation or getting married, there are auspicious times to act – and times when it’s best to lay low. In this 5 hour workshop, we take a look at common situations and learn when the deck is stacked in our favor.
The sessions will run for 75 minutes, once a week for 4 weeks, on a closed Facebook group. The only prerequisite is that you come with a couple of questions – like those in the list below – and email them to me before the workshop, with your birth information – date, time, and place of birth.
Best times to:
Move
Sign a contract
Get married
Buy a home
Pitch an idea
Get divorced
Start a creative project
Review and revise
Initiate a legal matter
Find a doctor
Have surgery
Beautify personal appearance
Plan a vacation
Travel
Buy a lottery ticket
Send out resumes
Look for a new job
Schedule interviews
Have a party
Publicize a product
Start a new job
Adopt a pet
1st session: Each planet and house of a horoscope rule particular situations and areas of our lives. We explore the roles of the moon and sun, and planets, what areas they rule, and do the same for the 12 houses in a horoscope. We then discuss the auspicious angles or aspects that transiting planets make to our natal planets to help determine the success of the endeavor.
As an example, we’ll look at a good date and time to buy a lottery ticket, then compare it to your natal charts to see how the date and time fit. This one is fun to experiment with, finding several times to buy a lottery ticket between this class and the next and seeing what unfolds.
2nd Session We explore the roles certain astrological points play in the timing of an event. These include the North and South Nodes, the elusive Vertex, and the part of fortune. We discuss the auspicious angles in detail – the conjunction, sextile, trine, and some of the astrological patterns that help bolster the chances for success. Then we’ll take several timing situations you’ve emailed me during the week and will analyze the charts to determine the success quota.
3rd session: We explore the most common situations that people ask about in terms of timing and discuss the specific steps to determine the planets, houses, and aspects involved. These situations include: – moving, signing a contract, getting married or divorced, buying a home, interviewing for a new job, having surgery, starting a creative project. We delve into any specifics questions you have about the timing of a particular event.
4th session: Now we put it all together and test what we’ve learned. We explore any upcoming events and situations in your lives where timing may prove to be critical.
When: July 11, 18, 25 and August 2, 7:30-8:45 PM. I’m flexible on times.
Price: $111, Venmo or Pay Pal
Contact: trishjmacgregor@gmail.com
I’m capping the workshop at 7 so that everyone gets individual attention! Please let me know by July 4. Once you’ve paid, I’ll send you an invitation to the closed FB group.
The I Ching is a 5000 year old divination system that was popularized for the West by Richard Wilhelm, who spent most of his life studying and translating the ancient Chinese text. In 1949, Carl Jung wrote the foreword to Wilhelm’s translation, The I Ching or Book of Changes. It was the first time he publicly discussed his theory of synchronicity.
“…whoever invented the I Ching was convinced that the hexagram worked out in a certain moment coincided with the latter in quality no less than in time,” Jung wrote. “To him the hexagram was the exponent of the moment in which it was cast.”
“This assumption,” Jung continued, “involves a certain curious principle that I have termed synchronicity, a concept that formulates a point of view diametrically opposed to that of causality… synchronicity takes the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more than mere chance, namely a peculiar interdependence of objective events among themselves as well as the subjective (psychic) states of the observer or observers.”
In other words, when you ask your question and toss the coins, the hexagram you receive is like a snapshot in time, making manifest the internal.
For the Western mind, however, the definitions of the hexagrams sometimes seem obscure, couched as they are in references to life as it was 5,000 years ago. You may come away from an I Ching reading thinking, How does a hidden dragon relate to my question in the 21st century? Or: Who is this great man I’m supposed to see? Fortunately, Adele Aldridge, writer, artist, and I Ching connoisseur, provides a Western woman’s interpretation of the I Ching in her superb book I Ching Meditations: A Woman’s Book of Changes.
Back in the days before the Internet and personal computers, Adele decided she would define and illustrate every line in the I Ching’s 64 hexagrams. That should be 384 lines, but she has chosen to use 7 illustrations per hexagram, one for the image at the beginning and then an illustration for each of the 6 lines. So that’s 448 images! As she herself remarks, “A work of madness!”
She started this massive undertaking with a set of black and white abstract woodcuts that integrated the use of astrology symbols with the I Ching trigrams. She made 64 prints that she laminated onto canvases and strung them together in a large wall construction. She also made two sets of these prints on rice paper, bound them into books, then made a similar set in color. Her n3ext step was to translate these designs into acrylic paintings that were 36”x 48”.
A lesser mortal would be exhausted by all this. But Adele was just getting started, a testament to her passion for this work. She created limited editions books for hexagrams 1-16 with illustrations depicting women and created black and white pen and ink drawings. And all this happened before the introduction of the Macintosh computer in January 1984.
In many ways, her journey with the I Ching reminds me of Wilhelm’s, the total dedication to a vision. Where Wilhelm sought to open Chinese spirituality to the west through translating the I Ching texts from Chinese to German, Adele seeks to define the 64 hexagrams through the perceptions of an American woman and artist. “Because the Chinese language is pictorial and not linear, I felt that by giving the work images, along with linear text, it provides a broader experience for the meaning of the text, however subjective that may be.
This book takes us through hexagram 32, half of the I Ching, and what a stunner it is.
I tossed some coins on a roofer that is coming out today to give us an estimate for a new roof. I got Hexagram 32, Duration. Adele’s interp: “A relationship that endures is self-contained and self-renewing, maintained in a cycle with a a new beginning at every ending.” I had lines 1 and 2 changing. Her interp for line 1: “Something that lasts long begins gradually” and for line 2: “Commit to the relationship.” bThe illustration for this hexagram is at the top of the page.
Because of the changing lines, suggesting the situation is in flux, the hexagram changed to 30, The Clinging Fire. “Cling to what is correct action. Articulate. Illuminate. Discriminate. While doing all that try not to get burnt out.” Here’s the illustration for hexagram 30:
This makes perfect sense. Finding a roofer in South Florida is challenging. There was so much damage around here from Hurricane Irma last summer that roofers are booked for 3 and 4 months.
However, the reading turned out to be correct. Brad gave us the best estimate, can begin in July, and asked for a reasonable downpayment upon signing and first day of work – 10 percent and 10 percent. This contrasts with the 80 percent we were quoted by another roofer. Just as importantly, we like him – line 2, according to Adele – commit to the relationship. We have!
Thank you, Adele, for a stunning book!
In the world of UFOlogy, Budd Hopkins was a big deal, an investigator, who rather than focusing on sightings of crafts, zeroed in on the abduction phenomenon in his books. In doing so, he opened himself to criticism from not only mainstream science and media, but also ufologists who rejected the abduction scenario. We met Hopkins once at a UFO convention and drove him to the home of an abductee, where he regressed her and she re-lived her experience.
Budd, who was also an artist, died in August of 2011 and we wrote about him here following his death. In the hours that we spent with him, we observed a man with a large, dominant personality, one who focused on his work with the woman and was convinced she was a true alien abductee. That may be so, but there was an elephant in that house that Budd didn’t seem to recognize.
The woman’s husband, a large man with a mane of gray hair and a full beard, wore a prominant gold Satan pendant around his neck. His black shirt was open at the top and the pendant was visible. He told Trish and I, when we inquired, that he was a former Baptist minister who had switched sides. We don’t know what role, if any, that played in the abduction scenario, but it wasn’t anything that Budd considered relevant, if he was even aware of it.
I bring up this oddity because I recently read something surprising about Budd’s attitude about life after death, and also that he supposedly has made at least one return visit since his departure.
The information comes from journalist/author Leslie Kean, who has written a phenomenal book, Surviving Death: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for an Afterlife. Kean also is the author of fascinating UFO book that focused on interviews with generals, pilots, and government officials. At some point, she interviewed Hopkins and they became friends.
Kean writes that after she found out that Budd was seriously ill, she brought him a few books that offered evidence of life after death. When she next saw him, he told her he wasn’t interested in reading the books because he didn’t believe in an afterlife. When you’re dead, you’re dead. That brush-off surprised Kean who knew Budd as an avid reader with an expansive curiosity.
Sometime after his death, Kean had a reading with a medium named Laura Jackson, who had been highly recommended. It was Kean’s first reading, and it was undertaken as part of the research for her book. In preparing for the reading, she had focused on Budd and her late brother. However, she didn’t tell that to the medium, who conducted the reading by phone and didn’t know anything about Kean, only that her first name was Leslie.
Kean found the reading astonishing. After a few minutes of tuning in, Laura told her that an “eager male” was “bursting through,” and was very excited to talk to her. Laura accurately described him as 12 to 15 years older than her, that he’d died two to three years earlier, and she wasn’t married to him. She came close to his name. She said, “I see a big B—a B-name, it’s short like Bub or Bubba.” She said it was a nickname, that there was another name. (Budd actually was his middle name.) Laura later corrected the name to “Buddy” and said there was an ‘E’ related to his name. (His first name was Elliot.)
She also accurately picked up that Budd died of cancer, that Kean was with him when he died, that he had one daughter, that his third marriage was a big mistake, that he died in late August, that his lungs had filled with fluid. (He died Aug. 24.) He also wished her happy birthday, and indeed it was Kean’s birthday.
Beyond those accurate comments, Kean was startled early on when Laura relayed this message: He says, “You were right. You were right!” Laura added: “I feel like it’s like you were right about the other side; you were right about this.” Kean said she knew immediately what it meant, and Laura confirmed it.
Kean also was surprised that Budd’s “big ego” personality came through. He dominated the reading and wanted all the time for himself. Laura said: “He acted as if ‘This is all about me.’” Indeed, Kean remembers Budd as having “a big, shining, sometimes overpowering personality.” Kean was amazed and said it was as if Budd, the person, was present.
Interestingly, though, not a word about UFOs!
