Syncnado 2: The Second One

or: The Jungian Thing 

The night was humid.

There I was, standing before my mostly movie themed tee-shirt collection, straining to choose three shirts to wear during the upcoming sync summit in Olympia, Washington. I could have ventured down multiple paths here with the themes my clothing collection covers: music, Japanese, movies, ironic-Japanese, television, etc; you get the picture.

This was actually taking place a few hours before I had to wake up to catch my plane, because I’m a lazy bastard who waits until the last minute. But you know that.

I settled on two shirts from my “silver-age Jeremy” collection and one from the “modern Jeremy” collection. I didn’t know it at the time, but my decision would trigger a Syncnado which would change them all forever.

Fade to black.

Day 1: Charlie Don’t Surf

Friday morning I arrive in Sea-Tac and make my way to the rental car hub to meet David and Amy. This was my second sync summit (explaining the title of this article) and the second time meeting David, who at some point I admitted I had a sync-crush on; but then everyone loves to hear him wax esoteric, so I don't think I'm alone in saying that. Also meeting us was JJ, or: “the French Jeremy.” Almost immediately David and I reveal that we are both currently reading books by Carl Jung. Mine is Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. David had also stepped on a spider before coming to the summit, and had a bruise on his foot which bothered him the whole time. I think his better half confirmed the dual puncture wounds of a spider bite on his foot, but this is information you don't need until later (and that's how I'm going to get you to read this whole thing!).

At some point David mentions, and this will become a running sync for the weekend, that the Olympia Sync Summit is Friday and Saturday August 8th-9th, the anniversary of the Manson Family murders and the death of Sharon Tate whose body was found on a zebra skin rug.

From Patrick Svec's blog: The Blog of Caverns:

On August 8th, 1969, The Beatles took the photographs for their Abbey Road album cover, a white VW Beetle sits on the roadside. That same day, Manson declares, "Now is the time for Helter Skelter." Later that night, after midnight, therefore attributed to August 9th, is when Tate and her house guests were murdered.

The itinerary for the weekend consisted of a few interesting and repeating numbers: meet at Last Word Books (111 Cherry St), check in at Fertile Ground (311 9th Ave), Happy Hour at Dillingers (404 S. Washington), Radio8Ball at Rhythm & Rye (311 Capitol Way), and then back to Fertile Ground (311, 3x11=33) for Saturday’s events. Repeating digits were a big theme of Scott Onstott’s presentation on Saturday.

The main event Friday was Andras Jones’ Radio8Ball Show, hosted by Andy Shmushkin. You can tell Andras and Andy apart because Andy has a mustache and likes to “bring the dick out,” whatever that means. The musical guest whose songs would answer our questions was Peter David Connelly.

The last time I went to a Sync Summit the sync heads in attendance were part of the Radio8Ball Show and helped interpret the musical answers. That was scary enough. This time there was no direct participation by us, unless picked at random to be a contestant. And, of course, the most socially anxious stage-frightened person there (me) gets picked to be on stage; and this time it was on camera. Unfortunately for Smushkin, I get total brain-lock when put on the spot, whether it be in person or on camera. I’m more of a thinker than a talker, so like last time, I was thinking a lot of big thoughts but saying very little. Lucky for you, if you like tragic comedies, you should be able to see the video evidence for yourself soon enough.

The question I put to the Pop Oracle was this: What should I accomplish before I die?

The answer was: She’s not going home with you.

Typical.

This song was penned by Peter David Connelly (do I have to say all three names like he’s an assassin?) when he was with the otherwise all girl band The Bangs and is on this album from his group The Mona Reels. Peter explains that the song was about all the rude drunken requests by audience members for the females to stay at their house for the night in the hopes that something would happen. Although I’ve never rudely or drunkenly propositioned anyone to spend the night with me, the result is still the same.

It’s an interesting continuation of the previous sync summit Radio8Ball question. In my blog about it I mentioned that I regretted not bringing up Truman’s favorite show within The Truman Show: “Show Me the Way to Go Home.” That of course is related to my question of what I need to accomplish before I die, as death is ‘like going home.’

After getting over the initial shock of “of-fucking-course it was a song that perfectly describes my life” I started pondering the idea that “She” is the lost or hidden feminine, the Shekinah, the the veiled goddess, Isis as the Mysteries, and the virgin-whore dichotomy. I still don’t know what to make of it, but I had initially wondered if it spoke to a duality, and if I was both the annoying guy in the crowd and also the guy on stage or across the veil. When I “go home” the whore will be revealed as virgin, or vice-versa, so technically the “she” I see doesn’t go home with me, because she’s already there in her true form. In fact I had spun the Radio8Ball wheel of fate to number 4 whose song had already been played, so I re-picked from the Radio8Ball cards and got 7, which I took to be a dichotomy as well with the character for 4 meaning “death” in Japanese (“Shi”) and 7 being a fortuitous number. Then I was reminded that Japanese for 7 also contains the same character as 4 (“Shi-chi”), which I guess means that the number and resulting song I received was already hinting at a sort of merging of opposites (death and luck). Aaanyways, I said something about how maybe I need to reconcile the opposites internally, and Andy seconded the idea adding that that’s something we all need to do. And then I kinda stopped talking because I was still trying to figure out if it’s not simply saying that I ain’t getting laid anytime soon.

The real fun was the sync discussion surrounding the event. I was wearing a black and white shirt with the face of Charlie Manson on it. Ezra Sandzer-Bell gave a presentation about Philip K. Dick and his ZEBRA phenomenon, which included an image of the Abby Road album cover complete with black and white crosswalk; themes that would continue to influence/highlight the syncs of the weekend. (Recall that this day was the Abby Road picture and Manson’s Helter Skelter anniversary) I was also seated in front of the giant black and white yin-yang looking Radio8Ball wheel of fate.

careful walking barefoot, you might step on a spider!

Speaking of Philip K’s Dick: the libidinal symbolism of the horse (zebra) as being partly phallic in nature (per Carl Jung) was part of Will Morgan’s presentation on Saturday, but by then we had pretty much worked it all out anyways. By the way, it is currently the year of the horse in the Chinese calendar. In VALIS, Philip K. Dick writes himself in as another character named Horselover Fat which is derived from his name: Philip means 'horse lover' in Greek, and Dick is German for 'fat.'

Unfortunately for you I have a terrible memory and can only give a taste of the syncnado whirling through the weekend. Speaking of, Patrick just reminded me and everyone that the last question read in Radio8Ball, from the submitted but not chosen questions, was: "Why is zebra such a dick?" (ZEBRA & Philip K Dick once again.) Some themes seemed to come up again and again the whole time.

Day 2: Join The Army

I wore my Join The Army shirt on Saturday. Like the previous one it references a war movie, this time Full Metal Jacket, with a paraphrased quote from the above video. I thought it was synchronous that Will Morgan had a shirt with the words PE_CE and W_R and a dove holding a letter A, as if you could choose which one you want. The reason this stood out is that the same guy who gives the line on my shirt also has “Born to kill” written on his helmet and wears a peace button: another duality, which he refers to in the movie as “the Jungian thing.”

When my airplane landed on the day of the summit, the person in the seat next to me got up to grab his luggage and noticed my Charlie Don't Surf shirt, asking “The Clash, or Apocalypse Now?” I didn’t remember that The Clash actually had a song inspired by the line in the movie, so I pointed out that Charles Manson is on my shirt, which he didn’t even notice. I think David said something like the face on my shirt could be mistaken for a random yogi at first glance. Anyways I looked up The Clash’s song and found a video with the movie scene preceding the song and to my surprise Kilgore mentions another synchronicity: the number 86 (or 68).

In the scene from Apocalypse Now, the discussion about whether to surf Charlie's point includes the information that the break is "six to eight feet" high, and Kilgore sends some guys back to grab boards adding, "bring me my Yater Spoon -- the eight six." 6-8 are my favorite hole cards in Texas Hold’em, and one of the numbers I keep an eye out for.

“It looks like 86 is your lucky number.” – The X-Files (movie)
“86% Accurate (Only God is Perfect)” – Pi

The second day was really great because everyone was there and we got to walk the Olympia Tree of Life which is outlined in Andras’ book Accidental Initiations. (Books by Sync Book Press are available here.) Ezra brought out his pet Zebra and placed it at each sphere on the tree and played the appropriate notes per his Tone Color Alchemy. There was a funny synchronicity when Andras mentioned losing balance and the zebra toy fell over at that exact moment. There were a lot of great moments lost to my bad memory, but the one I want to talk about was the 6th sphere on the tree, Tiphareth.

in hades, 8's shade is a 6

Marty Leeds volunteered to explain the mathemagical symbolism of this sphere, but afterward I got to throw some of my own observations at him. Tiphareth, the 6th sphere, is equated with the sun. The object at this location on the tree was a hexagonal gazebo. The heart chakra, associated with the sun, is also a hexagon, a green hexagon, and the gazebo had a green wooden rail going around it and a green roof I believe. (On my now defunct tumblr account, I had a picture from a comic where a green six-sided sun is mentioned, and the Egyptian Ra is also associated with a green sun.) There was a phone number over the gazebo for reserving it for parties and part of the phone number was an 888, and all the digits of the phone number add to 36 (a veiled 666 for the magic square of the sun). The 6th sphere on the tree of life happens to have 8 paths connecting to it. I also mentioned that turtle shells have 13 sections on them which are six-sided, but have lines running through them which form 8-spoked stars, a combination of 6 and 8.

I also recently brought up somewhere on Facebook that the Tree of Life can be found on a turtle shell:

Speaking of the turtle shells, Joe Alexander has a tattoo with a basketball skull which looks quite a lot like the underside of a turtle shell. At the end of an old post of mine I write about turtles being connected to Babylon aka: The Gate of God, and compared that with the cross of the fontanelle where the human skull merges as it grows. This spot is known as the Gate of Brahma where the soul escapes from to join Paramatma, the Universal Soul.

The rest of the day included some great presentations that I wouldn't do justice to if I tried to explain them here. There was Scott Onstott discussing the geo-metry in his new book Quantification, Swami Anantananda Giri introducing us to some ideas from his Yogic Gospel of Thomas, James Evan Pilato (another guy with the 3 name thing going on) from Media Monarchy who gave an entertaining talk on The Simpsons, Marty Leeds and the mathematical structure of the human hand, a spoken word presentation (the audio wasn't working) by Will Morgan, a skype-in by Rodney Ascher, and videos by Joe Alexander and David Plate to round off the looong day.

Day 3: I Want To Believe

The final day was basically spent sitting around having discussions with people who actually nodded their heads as they followed along, rather than stare blankly with their eyes glazed over like we're used to seeing in our day-to-day lives. We're all weird people, and it's really great to be able to be weird together.

At the end of the first day and on until the end of the third, I had kept bringing up spiders and spider webs, mostly when I was talking to Misty Greer. I think she came up to me because her dualistic shirt, Marilyn Manson, was syncing with my shirt, Charlie Manson. And speaking of shirts, I swear I was being followed by men in Captain America shirts all weekend, including Michael Schacht who changed into his on the first day. Anyhoo, it's probably more that I pay attention to these things, but I have always felt that I have some strange attraction to spider webs and flying insects. And I really don't like bugs in general, especially ones which can jump or fly at my face! (Eeek!) For one, I feel like I attract flying bugs, and I have accidentally scooped up one or two flies or bees in-between my fingers on more than one occasion, just by swinging my arms normally by my side as I walk. Imagine the surprise felt when looking down at the vibrating feeling in your fingers to see two bees trapped there! The first thing I caught accidentally was a fly, then some bees, but there have also been a couple of very humorous moments involving birds in the garage while I'm working on my car. At some point, someone told me that the reason zebra's have those black and white stripes is that it serves as a natural fly repellent, negating the need for a long tail like other horses.

The other phenomenon is the constant feeling of "walking through spider webs" (so leave a message and I'll call you back). I seem to always get covered in those thin webs baby spiders use to fly around, or webbing strung up in my pathway overnight. Every morning on the way to get my bike from around the side of the house I put my backpack over my head to block any webs I might encounter. In fact, recently on my facebook page I shared an image of baby spiders streaming down a silky strand that had become attached to my bike handle which I had unknowingly parked next to Charlotte's Web.

I think this line of conversing started when I mentioned seeing 'visions' sometimes (Jung's word to replace 'hallucinations' which have a negative connotation), including one of a giant spider hobbling across my ceiling (which I detail here). While doing some research for my last collaborative book project, CONTACT: Them or Us, I came across some of Whitley Strieber's visions of giant spiders, the size of VW bugs, scrambling up the walls of his bedroom just over his sleeping wife. (Let's not forget the VW Beetle in the Abby Road cover which is part of the "Paul is dead" theory.) There is also the idea of "astral spiders" who spin webs around our world intended to keep us contained here, even containing us from astral projection or remote viewing too far from home.

Eating as a group at the end of the first day, there was a discussion of Ariadne's thread which she gave to Theseus to help him find his way out of the labyrinth. It was called a "clue" which brings to mind the dark half of the creator of the world of Tron, called CLU (LUCifer), who merges with his other half and brings an end to their fictional world, in much the same way Neo merges with Smith at the end of The Matrix trilogy. That brings things nicely back to my question and possible answer during Radio8Ball with what I/everyone needs to accomplish before they die: the alchemical union of opposites.

"If I wake from a dream, do the others within my dream wake as well?"

On the plane ride home I open Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky and continue reading. The first dream description I read involved a giant metallic spider UFO gliding over the city and giving a statement via telepathy (the most common of all Alien communications, since talking to what is essentially yourself (like a dream character) doesn’t require ‘small mouth noises’).

[...] From the body of the spider there issued a solemn voice, loud and distinct; it uttered a prayer that was intended as an admonition and a warning to everybody, for those on earth as well as for the occupants of the spider. The gist of the prayer was: "Lead us downwards and keep us (safe) below ... Carry us up to the height!"

Adjoining the garden was a large administrative building where international decisions were being taken. Flying incredibly low, the spider passed along the windows of the building, for the obvious purpose of letting the voice influence the people inside and point out the way to peace, which was the way to the inner secret world. 

In regards to the insect UFO dream, Jung brings up the theory that aliens are insects from another planet, and their exoskeleton happens to look metallic, like the chitinous shell of a beetle. There's an anaology in the way UFOs behave, speeding around and then pausing to hover over an area, and then zooming off again, like a flying insect looking for food. We have the firefly or lightning bug which produces its own luminescence like a UFO. Also brought up in the footnotes is the book Flying Saucers on the Attack which mentions a report of a "rain of threads" which come from unknown spiders.

At the beginning of my summit wrap up here I mention that David had a spider bite on his foot. The double-puncture marks are similar to the double-sting of a scorpion. The constellation Scorpio is right next to Ophiuchus, the serpent bearer, whose foot dangles above the galactic central point where Scorpio's stinger is pointing. Scorpio is more of a amalgam of a serpent, the older image of the constellation, and an eagle, the enemy of the serpent or what the serpent transforms into when shot in the heart with the arrow of Sagittarius, the other constellation aiming at galactic center. By the way, at some point in the week probably after the summit, I ended up with two small scabs on my arm as if I suffered a giant double bite or sting.

Perhaps the spider-UFO in the dream is echoing the alchemical maxim which I'm sure I'm paraphrasing poorly: Visit the center of the earth, and by rectifying what is there through repeated distillations, you will find the stone. The center of "earth"/your torso is your heart, where the stone-seed grows upwards like a tree which the serpent energy climbs until it transforms like Scorpio/Serpent into Aquilla the eagle. At one point while pondering the spider theme, I felt like there was a evolution from the flying bugs I catch on accident to the spiders and webs I attract, to the birds I attract...

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.

I dunno why she swallowed that fly,

Perhaps she'll die.

There was an old lady who swallowed a spider,

That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.

She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

But I dunno why she swallowed that fly -

Perhaps she'll die.

There was an old lady who swallowed a bird;

How absurd, to swallow a bird!

She swallowed the bird to catch the spider

That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.

She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

But I dunno why she swallowed that fly -

Perhaps she'll die

If you want to learn more about upcoming sync summits, podcasts and publications, check out thesyncbook.com!

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.

Spatting Theory

Do you hear what I hear? It's the sound of my comical voice on Star Theory again! Kyle invited me back to talk about Gremlins, in movies and elsewhere. Here is the Star Theory article for the show. And here is the podcast link. And here is the download link. (It's 13.7MB You might have to right-click and choose "save link as...")

I just got back from my hiatus so I didn't have time to write anything to accompany this podcast, but I think between Kyle's post, and my previous article on the subject, we've got it pretty well covered.

The idea that gremlins are both bad and good came up during the discussion, as well as the idea of gremlins being externalized inner demons. Coupled with this, scarredsoul called in to the show and poked fun at my slothy nature by questioning my opinion of the seven deadly sins. Just after the show I read something in The Song Of The Bird which I think goes well with my attitude on the subject:

A preacher put this question to a class of children: "If all the good people were white and all the bad people were black, what color would you be?"
Little Mary replied, "Reverend, I'd be streaky!"

And today I read something in Alan Watts' (not Alan Watt's) book The Book On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are which goes well with the above sentiment:

Thus for thousands of years human history has been a magnificently futile conflict, a wonderfully staged panorama of triumphs and tragedies based on the resolute taboo against admitting that black goes with white. As when Tweedledum and Tweedledee agreed to have a battle, the essential trick of the Game of Black-and-White is a most tacit conspiracy for the partners to conceal their unity, and to look as different as possible. It is like a stage fight so well acted that the audience is ready to believe it a real fight. Hidden behind their explicit differences is the implicit unity of what Vedanta calls the Self, the One-without-a-second, the what there is and the all there is which conceals itself in the form of you.

Well, that's all I have to say about that. Per tradition, the title of this blog post is an anagram of the name of the blog :) And the opening line of this post is my favorite part of Gremlins part 1; when the mom finds the cocoons and starts walking down stairs and the gremlins put on the Christmas record with the song lyrics, "do you hear what I hear?"

Death & Dairy

While grabbing scenes for another video I plan to make, I noticed there was an interesting synchronicity between the last three or so movies I had recently watched. There seemed to be a possibly intentional correlation being made between milk/dairy products and death. Sounds weird, I know. Well, I remembered/found a few more movies which seemed to back this up, so I put them together inter-spliced with some television interviews and commercials about milk/dairy in general. So check it out and then read my theories on it below:

Death & Dairy from ViolatoR on Vimeo.

I was too lazy to add music to the video, but if I had, it would have been by these guys:

Damn, most of this post got deleted when blogger failed to save it and I tried to post it. :/ Oh well. So, if you want to know more about why drinking dairy isn't a good tradition to mindlessly follow, see: notmilk.com

My thoughts are that milk is being connected to death in a sort of symbolic "land of milk and honey" type theme. Milk relates to babies/birth/rebirth in the afterlife, and honey was used in mummification in some places, as well as being used to preserve food. So milk and honey is birth and death, only here in these movies, death is carried out by mafia hit-men most of the time. Anyways I'm too hungry to keep typing, so enjoy this small post and video. ;)