Eggtoplasm in sHell

Your faithful guide to the underworld was fortunate enough to participate in a West Coast Synchromysticism Summit and The Radio 8-Ball show, hosted by Andras Jones, and attended by a handful of "syncheads" (I'm keeping that word even if no one else does, and making a few more of my own), along with a few witnesses to our collective madness. (Observers help with creating reality, I've read.)

I also got to spend a whole day with most of them while attending the Bridge Benefit Concert at the Shoreline Amphitheater. The third and last day consisted of a breakfast at the Cock-A-Doodle (I had an omelette, not the sausage) and a brisk walk to the Greyhound station so that the canine psychopomp could bring me back to the underworld.

Check out the Always Record podcast for the audio from that event which took place at The Monkey House, the house-slash-venue owned by Ira Marlowe whose music provided the answers and syncfodder. (Direct links: part one, two, and three. Podcast links are for download, but you can right click and copy the link so you can stream it in an audio player if you so chose.)

If you are not already familiar with it, Radio 8-Ball is a radio show hosted by actor and musician Andras Jones where the querent poses a question which is then answered by a song picked at random: the "Pop Oracle." This video is a good quick introduction, and you might want to watch it before listening to the audio. There should be video on some dude's iPad of us doing the show, but I don't know if it will be posted online, so use your imagination. (Imaginal me is taller and better looking by the way.)

I had to overcome my fear of people, places and things (basically: nouns) just to make it as far as attending, but then Andras threw me into the ring as one of the synchead interpreters of the Pop Oracle's musical answers and I had to overcome some serious anxiety. Anxiety which caused me to break down into tears once during a science class demonstration of my styrofoam and pipe-cleaner plant cell, to nearly fail English and have to repeat the year because while I had done a great book report, I didn't present it to the class, and also responsible for a myriad of other embarrassing events and missed opportunities in my life (blonde chick who was in my Sociology class, I wanted to be with you, but I couldn't show it!).

Thankfully the audience was small, enthusiastic, and didn't know that I was terrified that I would throw up all over my custom Stygian Port shoes. (I have Etnies skate shoes with "Stygian" stitched on them. Nerd alert!) My brain tends to scramble when I'm put on the spot — I sometimes say that if you just stopped me on the street and asked me my middle name, I wouldn't know it — so my syncromystic interpretations suffered from my inability to be mentally spontaneous and to pin down the overwhelming clutter of movie references and get to the damn point. I won't make up for that and reinterpret anything, because I'm lazy, and you know that. One thing I do regret not mentioning though, is that Truman's favorite show, inside the Truman Show, is called "Show Me The Way To Go Home."

The cute bubbly blonde (not the one from my Soc. class, but I'm easy), nicknamed 'Special K', whose song-answer I had to interpret, was the polar opposite of me and really enjoyed talking. I think that helped me just sit there and look dark and mysterious, as her stage presence thankfully took some of the burden off my chest and kept the vomit off my shoes. All in all it went really well and I'm already hoping we can all get together again sometime soon, and with even more fellow-travelers! I mean synctravelers! Ok, it doesn't always work.

Go here to listen to/download Ira's song Ship In A Bottle which is what the Pop Oracle gave as an answer which I then tried to interpret for my cheery syncvictim Special K.

A couple of the attendees, Melissa and Colin (website: Living In The Movie), wrote about their syncexperience and how it fits into the greater narrative of their lives, and you can read that here.

Day 2 in syncheaven was spent at the concert mentioned previously. It was a sunny-side-up kind of day and I had the opportunity to see lots of musical acts I was unaware of, I learned (and dominated) Chinese Poker/Big Deuce/whatever it's called, and I got to just enjoy hanging with like minded people who seemed less frightened by my Asperger-induced rants about movies than do most people.

I don't really pay attention to real-world syncs since I'm so rarely in the real world, so when I was on Radio-8 Ball via Skype after returning to the comfort of my hell, and Andras and Alan asked me about the day of the concert, I started rambling about divination instead of regaling you with tales of wild synchunting. I may have also told everyone to experiment with Ouija boards. Hopefully Captain Howdy doesn't make you all vomit pea-soup if you do, but hey, that would kinda prove my point wouldn't it? There's something to it, magick with a k, and it's out there waiting for you to test it out for yourself. You can download that podcast by clicking here. The Sync Book website has also laid out the timeline of events on this page here.

And that brings us to the golden center of this protein filled article. In the above interview I detail some methods of divination which were practiced by members of my mom's side of the family. She's from Ecuador and apparently this stuff is fairly common in South America, but she also comes from a very Catholic family, and married into another one, which makes me the black sheep I guess! The main thing I wanted to talk about was my experiences with egg divination. First, we'll take a journey to back when people only came in two dimensions and had animal heads...

horus being born from osiris inside an egg

Egg symbolism is as old as symbolism itself; one of the more ancient themes which can be found the world over. Sometimes it may be the Mundane or World Egg dropped into the pre-creation waters of chaos by the divine bird, and other times it may simply be the idea and number zero. I'll quote from volume one of The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky,

Whence this universal symbol? The Egg was incorporated as a sacred sign in the cosmogony of every people on the Earth, and was revered both on account of its form and its inner mystery. From the earliest mental conceptions of man, it was known as that which represented most successfully the origin and secret of being. The gradual development of the imperceptible germ within the closed shell; the inward working, without any apparent outward interference of force, which from a latent nothing produced an active something, needing nought save heat; and which, having gradually evolved into a concrete, living creature, broke its shell, appearing to the outward senses of all a self-generated, and self-created being — must have been a standing miracle from the beginning. 

The second reason for its having been chosen as the symbolical representation of the Universe, and of our earth, was its form. It was a Circle and a Sphere; and the ovi-form shape of our globe must have been known from the beginning of symbology, since it was so universally adopted. The first manifestation of the Kosmos in the form of an egg was the most widely diffused belief of antiquity. As Bryant shows, it was a symbol adopted among the Greeks, the Syrians, Persians, and Egyptians. In [...] the Egyptian Ritual, Seb, the god of Time and of the Earth, is spoken of as having laid an egg, or the Universe, “an egg conceived at the hour of the great one of the Dual Force.” 

As said in the Vishnu Purana: “Intellect (Mahat) ... the (unmanifested) gross elements inclusive, formed an egg ... and the lord of the Universe himself abided in it, in the character of Brahma. In that egg, O Brahman, were the continents, and seas and mountains, the planets and divisions of the universe, the gods, the demons and mankind.”

Egg divination, as demonstrated in at least one video I've seen on YouTube, can be carried out pretty much like any other object-based divination, such as reading tea leaves or the patterns in the intestines of disemboweled sacrificial victims. Obviously, some forms of divination are more convenient than others! If you so desire, you can follow my instructions at any convenient time and ask your question and use your intuition as to what the result tells you.

For the traditionalists, there's always the method outlined in the Grimorium Verum grimoire:

Take the egg of a black hen, laid the same day, break it, and remove some yolk. You must have a large glass, very fine and new. Fill it with clean water, and put the yoke into the water. Put this glass in the sun at noon in the summer, and the director of the operation will recite the orations and conjurations for the day, such as is found in the Clavicles of Solomon, where we treat amply of the aerial spirits. Stir the water with your forefinger. Let it rest a moment, then look at it through the glass without touching it, and you will see signs of that which you wish to know.

(If you like that, there's also a magickal working which will allow you to travel at the unfathomable pace of 20 miles per hour. Ingredients include, but are not limited to: 2 ounces of human fat and an ounce of natural mummy.)

In today's fast paced low attention-span world, where most apartment managers prohibit owning a black hen, the practical magickian requires simple, easy to follow steps and readily available ingredients. For this operation you will only need a clear glass filled at least 2/3rds of the way with water, leaving enough room for you to crack a single egg into it, and the egg, of course.

There's no need to remove some of the yolk or stir it with your finger or pose the egg any questions. I don't ask the egg anything (and the egg demands nothing), because like the other form of divination I mention in the podcast, it will simply work without any pomp or circumstance. Specifically, this method of egg divination will show you at least one major event in your life in the coming year. There are some signs and symbols to look for, but for the most part it should form a shape you can interpret for yourself. If it forms no shape at all, you better have your Last Will and Testament in good order. Egg results like that are why I'm the last person in my family with the huevos to still do this.

What I do is prepare the glass of water on New Year's Eve, and on midnight that night (easy for me as I'm always painfully alone) or noon the next day (which is probably more convenient for most) you crack an egg into the glass and let it settle. You can leave it overnight, but it really only takes maybe an hour or two for the egg to fully 'form' within the water, and it can and will break apart the longer you leave it sitting there. Plus, the glass may get moved and change the shape, or some hungover partyer might try to drink it! I'm now in the habit of sketching it out and taking lots of pictures so I can study it after the fact. So, as you are hopefully still reading this increasingly massive blog article, I will present you with the New Year's Egg I did for 2012.

Unfortunately, by the time I found a working camera, an arch of egg-white had already broken apart. You can see the remnants to the left of the larger egg-white shape. Arches are essentially bridges, and tend to indicate travel, which in my case has always meant moving to a new location. Although, I suppose if you travel in the coming year and that is the main event of the year, your egg would have shown you an arch or two.

If you happen to have a good idea about coming attractions for the next year, you might even recognize a piece of architecture or a shape that confirms your plans. That happened to be the case with this egg. The arch which broke apart before I took this picture was indicating that I was going to move, and I did move from Colorado to California. There was only one arch where there are sometimes two, and I interpreted this as staying in California at least as long as that year, which was true. Now the main shape is representing the major event. From the above angle it might be a little hard to see. My mom thought it looked like a church, which was fitting. I have a bad memory, but I think by this time I already knew that if I could manage it, I would be attending two weddings in California for two of my cousins. Here is the egg at another angle.

click for larger

To me this was clearly a woman in a wedding veil with what are probably two children behind her. For a microsecond I thought I might have a shotgun wedding, but let's face it, I'll probably only ever have a wedding if I take a bride hostage with a shotgun. The first wedding that coming year was for a male cousin, but the second wedding would be for a female cousin who also had two kids from a previous marriage. This wedding was a massive family get-together, super fun, and definitely the highlight of the year. There's no doubt, in my mind at least, that the egg was showing me this event as being the most significant one of my life that year. Apparently other people's significant events are about as exciting as it gets for me.

Egg results in my mom's family have included blood, which indicates a severe disease, an egg that just laid flat in an apparently 'coffin' shape (and you can guess what that means), a wedding veil, an old fashioned baby carriage, lots of bridges, sometimes some big air bubbles which mean lots of money (you'll note that my eggs are lacking in significant bubblage). The bit of shell that made it into the glass is apparently meaningless, and so far I agree with that assessment, especially where the symbolism is concerned (it's what's inside that matters, or so they keep telling me). And that's all I can remember. As you can see, the results aren't as esoteric as tarot cards or the I Ching. I believe that simple divination with clearly defined parameters can be used reliably by anyone. Ultimately, it is subjective, and you can't escape that fact of quantum mechanics that observation is participation.

The next egg is for the current year, 2013. I had no idea what would/is coming this year, so I had nothing to go on. It didn't seem to indicate that I would move away, and I haven't yet, or at least if I do it won't be the main thing the egg wants to convey. And it certainly didn't show me money (lots of air bubbles, or a few big air bubbles), so I was kinda stumped when I first saw it.

It is split into two sides, and I don't know if it was influenced by my placement of the two 99cent Store Mexican prayer candles, but probably not. (The one on the right is seen in the movie The Holy Mountain)

Hey! I just noticed a funny syncrnocity with how I have arranged some stuff on top of my desk when compared to the above picture of my egg display. Try and pretend that you're waiting on me to snap a picture with my cellphone and upload it here, because that's what I'm about to do...

click egg-shaped r2d2 for larger
& compare to previous picture

Aaanyways, here are some close up's of the 2013 egg:

I don't know how the uninitiated feel about it, but this is definitely one of most beautiful egg results I've seen. My first thoughts were that I would have a near-death experience or travel to a psychedelic elf world; it is that impressive of a landscape up close and in person.

The splitting into two could potentially be showing me two separate events since the previous egg had both the arch and the veiled bride, and another year's egg had two arches. I don't want to speculate too much on the side with the large egg-bubble, at least until the year is completely over. And truth be told, unless maybe some of the remaining older relatives in my mom's side know what to make of it, we have no idea what a large bubble of egg-white means, if anything. It's not a money bubble (trust me), and my thoughts were leaning more towards it representing a gestation of something important to come later, possibly in the next year. The shape on that side is rather mountainous, and could mean that I end up back in Colorado before the next New Years Eve, but again, don't want to speculate too much on it right now.

The left side in the above picture, which was on the right side in the original orientation with the candles, looked to me like the face of a large building. I felt that the spires on either side were an important feature, but what type of structure it was showing was beyond me. Until, possibly, Syncsummit Day 2 at the Sleeptrain Amphitheater.

 

It's not a perfect facsimile, but then again, it is an egg in a glass of water. Two spires, hell it's even white. The opposite side of the egg which I said looks mountainous could conceivably be the grassy knoll we syncheads gathered on that day. The bubble could then have something to do with the friendships formed there. Call me crazy, but I think that this event, certainly one of the most significant of my life, let alone this year, was divined by my trusty Grade AAA cage-free egg.

Now while I was writing this out, and also avoiding writing this out by constantly checking Facebook, I happened across a science article about the idea that "Time is an emergent phenomenon that is a side effect of quantum entanglement."

Basically, what had happened was that any attempt to combine General Relativity with Quantum Mechanics would result in incomprehensible equations filled with infinities, and the Wheeler-DeWitt solution, which removed the infinities, introduced the idea that time doesn't exist in the universe. In fact, from the outside, it would appear as if nothing at all were happening within the universe (kinda like that World Egg, no?), "a prediction that is clearly at odds with the observational evidence."

In this case, the observer cannot detect any difference between the photons without becoming entangled with one or the other. And if there is no difference, the system appears static. In other words, time does not emerge.

I feel like this speaks to the egg symbolism I quoted previously. Just let it roll around in your egghead for a bit.

[The] results depend on how the observation is made. One way to do this is to compare the change in the entangled particles with an external clock that is entirely independent of the universe. This is equivalent to a god-like observer outside the universe measuring the evolution of the particles using an external clock.

In this case, [...] the particles would appear entirely unchanging — time would not exist in this scenario.

But there is another way to do it that gives a different result. This is for an observer inside the universe to compare the evolution of the particles with the rest of the universe. In this case, the internal observer would see a change, and this difference in the evolution of entangled particles compared with everything else is an important a measure of time.

This is an elegant and powerful idea. It suggests that time is an emergent phenomenon that comes about because of the nature of entanglement. And it exists only for observers inside the universe. Any god-like observer outside sees a static, unchanging universe.

It is an elegant and powerful idea, but I'm leaning toward a more occult understanding of the universal microcosm of your own mind, and how perturbations of conscious, and contact with the Other, can elicit states of timelessness.

One symbol which Alan Green brought up in relation to the synchunting at the concert was that the Bridge Benefit logo looked like a planchette, used in divination as with the Ouija board, and it looked like a winged sun disc. But that's not the only thing with wings from the time of two-dimensional people, there are also depictions of floating eggs and eggs with wings. Here's a more modern example:

Quoting again from The Secret Doctrine:

The Egg was the symbol of life in immortality and eternity; as also the glyph of the generative matrix; and the tau, associated with it, only of life and birth in generation. The Mundane Egg was placed in Khnoom, the “Water of Space,” or the feminine abstract principle; and when Phtah, the “fiery god,” carries the Mundane egg in his hand, then the symbolism becomes quite terrestrial and concrete in its significance. In conjunction with the hawk, the symbol of Osiris-Sun, the symbol is dual: it relates to both lives — the mortal and the immortal. In Kircher’s OEdipus Egyptiacus one can see, on the papyrus engraved in it, an egg floating above the mummy. This is the symbol of hope and the promise of a second birth for the Osirified dead; his Soul, after due purification in the Amenti, will gestate in this egg of immortality, to be reborn from it into a new life on earth. For this Egg, in the esoteric Doctrine, is the Devachan, the abode of Bliss; the winged scarabeus being alike a symbol of it.

The “winged globe” is but another form of the egg, and has the same significance as the scarabeus, the Khopiroo (from the root Khoproo “to become,” “to be reborn,”) which relates to the rebirth of man, as well as to his spiritual regeneration.

This birth, or rebirth, is from the shell or dome of the heavens. Truman's world is called Seahaven, an anagram of "As Heaven," perhaps, "As above," so below. It may be what the Ship In A Bottle is telling us: that we are trapped within own minds, and macrocosmically, we are all trapped within a static and unchanging universe from God's point of view; but from a Christ point of view, within the universe, we are all of us going home.

Carry me home to the love that I know 

Is waiting for me at the end of the sea 

And I’ve packed my belongings and said my goodbyes 

The ship in the bottle is ready to ride the waves

UPDATE: The synctrain continues in this update which tracks some immediate synchronicities which followed my posting of this particular article.