`` As if - the explanation of Emergence

Under Construction


Examples from my own Experience (mostly of accidents) - Me


If you're going to write, write about what you know - attributed to Mark Twain , Hemingway etc.


Index


  1. My background

  2. My Lucky or Unlucky Stars

  3. What makes Me such a great example?

  4. The Events

  5. Conclusion

My background


At various points I have introduced the importance of personal experience in determining truth, and we usually have some idea of the personal experience of the famous. I'm not famous, except within a tiny circle of friends and family, but I include some of my experiences that have led to my take on what is true, because this is what I know.


Personal Experience

An account of the reasons and events that have led me to believe in something beyond the accepted material level of existence, and led to me wanting to investigate and better understand what that something might be.


Where to begin? In what, by its very nature, must be a wide-ranging exploration of some frankly unusual ideas, it seems to me best to start with my own experiences that touch on the matter. These form much of the basis of why I believe in things that many would scoff at.


Ghosts

My story starts when I was 5 or 6, and living in Blackheath, London, in the house where I had been born, 67b Shooter's Hill Road. It had previously been the home of my adoptive maternal grandparents, Bertie and Hilda Elton, and earlier the home of Hilda's parents, Charles and Nell Huddy, together with Nell's mother, Jane Hamilton. One night I woke up to go to the toilet, which was at the end of a long corridor, and as I turned out of the bedroom and into the corridor, I saw a lady dressed in period costume (a full length red dress, possibly with a crinoline, or at least that kind of full shape) coming toward me. There was no doubt in my young mind that this apparition was a ghost, and I fled back to bed to hide under the covers. Many years later I saw photographs of Nell and her mother, for the first time, who had both died some twenty or thirty years before I was born. Both women bore a remarkable resemblance to the lady I had seen that night, and both had lived and probably died in that same house - a house which was newly built when they moved into it in the early 1900's. Ever since that event I have been fairly convinced of the reality of the human spirit, and interested in the mysteries of life and death.


Now, this is merely a personal anecdote, and I would not expect it to convince anyone else that I, at age 6, was able to see my great-grandmother who had died 30 years earlier. But as an event it most definitely happened, and it has certainly pre-disposed me toward gullibility, and to believe in the supernatural, though even now I can't be 100% sure that who I saw was not just some friend of my parents in fancy dress (though I am fairly sure that they would have told me the next day, had that been the case, when I told them about the ghost). The moral of this is that even if you believe your own eyes, you can't really expect anyone else to.


Some years later, when I was about 11 or 12, we had moved to Portishead, where we lived in another big old Victorian house. One day, while doing some spring cleaning, I had flopped down in an armchair, and was vacantly staring across the hallway, and out through the porch and open front door, when I saw a man dressed in a green tail coat walk out of the right hand porch wall, across the porch, and through the wall on the left. Clearly another ghost. I have no idea of his identity, although he may well have pre-dated the house which was built in 1888.


Again, although it happened, this story is barely evidence for me, let alone anyone else. So in the quest of proving the paranormal, or not, it doesn't get us very far. But it does make me suspect that a relaxed, altered mental state is necessary to see ghosts, or else have hallucinations, if there is a difference. Ultimately, these are close encounters only of the first kind, so ghost sightings are never going to be more than personal evidence, and even then maybe shouldn't be trusted.


Knowing

In 1973 (or more likely 74) I was one of three winners of a round of 'Get on the right track', a competition on the Saturday afternoon Alan Freeman show on BBC Radio 1. In the competition a song would be played and listeners had to identify the band, the song and the album it came from, send in their answers on a postcard, and three winners would be picked the following week, each receiving a £ 2.50 record token, and a signed photograph of Alan Freeman. That week I caught the last minute of the song, Galadriel from Once Again by Barclay James Harvest. Although I had never heard it before, I recognised the lyrics, my sister having sung them to me earlier in the year because, unusually, my mother had liked the song when my sister had borrowed the album from a friend, while I was away in France. The peculiar thing about this story is that, strangely enough, as the winners were announced the following week, I 'knew' with complete certainty that I would be announced as one of the winners. Now, there is nothing particularly unnatural about this story, except for the very odd subjective experience of knowing what was about to happen. A state of mind that is both recognisably different to everyday experience, and one that suggests that the bounds of time are not quite as absolute as we normally think. For me such odd states of mind are few and far between, and as such something to be treasured.


Clearly there is a probability that, having the right answer, I could win the competition, but I have found it impossible to dismiss that feeling of certainty that I had seconds beforehand. Mainly because it hasn't happened since.


As with the ghosts the experience doesn't amount to very much. It couldn't be called evidence, more of a hint to me only that there might be other possibilities in life. And so it is with all precognition. Things do happen, and chance alone will often prove them correct, but as evidence it will remain in the 'first kind' category of close encounters.


The other thing that this illustrates is that paranormal experience is often no more than a feeling, something internal that is probably beyond the limits of scientific investigation; something so subjective that it can hardly be called real at all.


Meditation

When I was a student in the 70s, I learnt TM, Transcendental Meditation, an age old technique from India where one quietens one's mind by repeating a mantra silently to oneself. It is something I have only practiced sporadically, but which I have found to be a useful skill, on occasion. I mention this for a number of reasons: it was part of my journey; the meditational state is important in some of the phenomena discussed here; during meditation there are a number of bodily changes, including various tingling sensations, that occur during other practices such as Tai Chi.


I once entered a trance state and experienced what may have been, or at least seemed very much like, a past life regression. During 1982 I was playing (for want of a better word) at what you could call hypnosis or guided meditation, with some friends, and easily fell into a state where (unprompted) a scenario sprang to life as if it were a snapshot memory from another life. The scenario was one of me hiding in tall marsh grasses by a river that was near a village, my home, which was being sacked by some marauders. Now, this may have just been imagination, but it felt pretty real to me, although clearly not a memory from my own life.


Aikido

During 1985 a number of chance encounters led to me taking up Aikido, a martial art that is largely based on Tai Chi and Japanese fencing. Ki being the Japanese equivalent of chi, the spirit energy involved in many Chinese mystical arts. The practice involves a certain amount of Ki projection and although I never mastered that, I did take part in a few demonstrations at the dojo in Bristol. In one of these I and another pupil, the aptly named Dave Strong, had to lift our Sensei, or teacher. We each held an arm of his and being much larger than our teacher, Michael Narey, lifted him clear of the floor with relative ease. We then had to repeat the exercise, but this time he felt as light as a feather, almost like lifting a hollow person. Then a third time, but we were unable to get him off the ground. We strained and pulled, heaved and puffed, but nothing. Pete Norridge, a friend of mine in the class, remarked afterwards how he had seen the veins and tendons stand out on my neck as I tried my utmost to repeat what had previously been so easy. I heaved and strained, but nothing.


One explanation for what occurred is that my teacher was projecting ki to first make himself light, and then heavy. The sceptical view would probably be that we had been hypnotised, despite nothing having been said. Even now, for me it is a great piece of personal proof for the existence of ki energy, something that I clearly remember the feeling of, but still, as a single event it doesn't constitute objective evidence. Even so, I'm surprised that we don't hear more about ki as this kind of demonstration seems to be perfect for scientific investigation.


I later repeated this exercise, this time one on one, with Fyfe, an 18-year-old black belt who had only been practicing Aikido for two years. He had mastered the technique of projecting ki, and when I lifted him it felt as if I was lifting an empty paper bag. This shows me that there are a number of supposed components that are completely unnecessary in the exercising of ki. The first thing not needed is a special 'respect' for the person projecting ki. He was just a kid, albeit a very talented one. Nor is any trickery involved, such as suggestion. Nor is it necessary to have trained for many years, nor be particularly special in any unusual way. If anything, it tells me that anyone should be able to do this quite easily. However, I have never mastered this trick.


Being such incontestable physical proof [to me anyway] of apparently breaking the commonly accepted laws of science makes this a gaping hole in the dyke holding back the floodwaters of unreality, non-materialism, magick and spirituality. Because if one mystery rejected by the tenets of science is true, then the whole edifice of materialism is in danger of crashing down around us. This could be wonderful, but could also have unwelcome consequences if we fail to understand the boundaries between what is real and what is dangerously not real.


Actually, I find the prospect of an end to materialism very exciting, as it heralds a potential dynamic expansion of the realm of science. I say this because I firmly believe that whatever is real, whether it conforms to our current understanding or not, must obey certain laws, by which I mean that in principle science should be extendable to all things, material or not. In other words, two plus two (in the absence of other strange conditions) must equal four, and ultimately there has to be a logic to everything.


Incidentally, the magician Steven Frayne, better known as Dynamo 'Magician Impossible', credits Aikido techniques of Ki projection, taught to him by his grandfather, as the method by which he made himself immovable, and so averted being bullied at school. Presumably it is also behind some of his other 'magical' feats, although in this day and age we should not be too credulous about things seen on camera.


What it certainly is not is anything merely mechanical, as suggested by many explainers of magic tricks, who often would have us believe that if Derren Brown stops a boxer lifting a girl, that it is simply because she has altered her position to become hard to lift.


Psychic phenomena

In 1991 I attended a course in Bristol, run by the pagan Julian Vayne, teaching psychic development. During these ten weeks of once a week evening classes, we learnt an amount of theory, and took part in a number of exercises aimed at bringing out any dormant psychic ability. I think most of the class were there out of curiosity.


Be that is it may, one of these exercises involve pairing up and performing a guessing game where one partner would think of a colour, while the other tried to psychically pick up and say what the colour was. We started with a guided meditation to get into a suitable frame of mind, and then I teamed up with a lady named Pat, from Weston-Super-Mare. For about twenty minutes or half an hour we played this game, with a very high success rate, about 80% correct as I remember, although in reality it was probably a bit less. But there are only a handful of likely colours to choose from so chance dictates that sometimes, some people will be right many times without there being any hidden mechanism at work.


However, on two occasions during this exercise I experienced psychic phenomena while trying to not guess, but really 'get' the colour that Pat was thinking of. For the first of these, while trying to just have an empty mind (mushin, as the Japanese call it) I heard a voice in my head say 'red', just as if someone had spoken, but from a point inside my head, an inch or so to the right of my left ear, and sure enough Pat confirmed that she had been thinking of red. On the second occasion I felt that I wasn't getting any impression of a colour, so I tried to think myself forwards towards where she was sitting and mentally place myself inside her head (in my imagination). As I did this I got an image in my mind, rather like a large glass jar lined with houseplants and suffused with green light. So I said green and once again Pat confirmed that she had been thinking the same colour [green].


Now, I have no reason to think that Pat was lying, just to keep me happy, but it is possible. I wasn't when I confirmed the colours that she was trying to psychically get from me. Maybe there are extremely subtle hidden ways that body language can afford this level of non-verbal communication, after all Derren Brown seems to do pretty well with non-psychic methods on his shows. But, for me, I 'heard' and 'saw' what I did, and that keeps me guessing about the paranormal. Despite that, I recognise that it still falls short as evidence in many ways, especially the lack of a control.


I would note that the guided meditation as preparation of our state of mind was probably significant in the personal success of this exercise.


This next personal experience may not strictly count as psychokinesis, but I am not sure what else to call it. It occurred one day in 1991 while I was living in a shared house. Someone there had a dartboard and talked me into playing darts. Now, I am usually fairly bad at darts, and hardly ever play, and probably hadn't for at least 5 years prior to this. Anyway, at one point in the game I threw 180, all 3 darts in the triple 20. Although this was surprising, it was by no means of itself paranormal. The thing that makes it strange is that while throwing the darts I was aware of being in an altered frame of mind, in a meditational sense. I was mentally relaxed and totally dis-interested in the outcome.


Impressionable

On many occasions I have attended spiritualist churches, I was even married in one in 1984, and visited psychics and mediums. Now, it has to be said, there has been a wide variety in the quality of mediumship. Very often the messages received make little sense, or are quite trivial. However, on a number of occasions mediums have come out with surprising and meaningful messages. Enough to keep me intrigued by the phenomenon. I even attended a development circle for a while during the 90s, and although circumstances prevented this continuing, I did experience the process of attempting mediumship myself. It was a quite strange feeling, to stand in front of a small group of people and essentially just recount the seemingly disconnected and random thoughts that popped into my mind. I didn't much like the feeling of being unsupported by any objective reality, but in going along with the spirit of the thing, I seemingly managed to recount a few meaningful points, including an incident of near-drowning that apparently had happened to one man in the group whom I was addressing at the time. The peculiar thing about this episode was that it very much involved the suppression, or suspension, of rational thought, and the recounting of any pictorial images that entered my mind.


In early 2017 I had another one of those vague premonitions that subsequent events bore out to be meaningfully true. I was driving through a village near Glastonbury, and unusually and for no particular reason had the feeling that it would be a good place to stay, if one were wanting to take a break, a weekend away say. Not even two months later I found myself staying there for the weekend, entirely at someone else's suggestion and as their guest.


Precognition

A more recent example that happened in 2018 was an undoubtedly precognitive dream; one morning I dreamt a dream about bullets, the main thing I remember is comparing these two short fat bullets, one is only a casing, does it fit on the end of the other one?


That evening I was watching the TV and nothing appealing was on so I ended up randomly half-watching Instruments of Murder, a program about the development of various forensic techniques used to solve murders. After poison came shooting, and the 1928 shooting of PC Gutteridge. The policeman was shot using a Webley revolver, and the comparison of its bullets was essential to the conviction of the two murderers. Not at all the sort of program I would normally watch, but the curious thing is that it compared a bullet casing found in the stolen car with a new bullet fired from a gun found later, showing the same marks on the casing, and proving that it was the same gun. The very specific Webley bullets were markedly short and fat, just as in the dream, and in the dream one was only a casing.


This is so definitely an example of a precognitive dream coming about in real life, as watched on TV. My immediate reaction to the dream itself was that it was telling me about the need for evidence, but for that the dream could have been the day after, so it must be entirely about the reality of precognition, which is a pretty amazing thing to get an example of. Not world shattering as precognitive messages go, but of great personal meaning.


Was it coincidence that this occurred exactly on a full moon that had some important personal significance?


Dreams

There are plenty of times when dreams go beyond the usual random, uncontrollable images of normal dreaming. Sometimes even becoming lucid, although the only time my dreams came close to lucid was when I dreamt that I won the lottery, which felt fantastic as everyone was telling me that I had won, but when I looked at the ticket, all of the numbers were blurred. At that point I tried harder than at any time in any dream to take control and by dint of pure will alone make the numbers show themselves. However, only 3 of the six numbers did so.


Generally, though, dreaming for me is a bit like watching a film, even when I take part, I am not really in control of my actions, although a part of me obviously is because I still behave as an autonomous individual.


Sometimes in dreams I meet dead relatives and they tell me things, such as when meeting my godfather, he told me 'Of course you survive death and meet all your deceased friends and relations'.


Other witnesses

My next event is not a personal story, but one from my father (who is, I believe, a credible witness), I include it because so many sceptics describe something totally different when it comes to firewalking. It is a common phenomenon to see someone walk barefoot, fairly quickly, over hot coals, and be protected by the powers of Science. Nothing unusual there. Plenty of that on Youtube.


My dad, who is a retired teacher, and something of a natural sceptic, was in Sri Lanka in the early 1980s when he was present at a demonstration of firewalking. Before it happened, a tourist present held his sandaled foot close to the fire and quickly recoiled from the heat. The firewalker, a young lad with a serene expression, walked slowly, lingeringly my dad says, over the embers, then stopped in the middle of the fire, stooped and picked up two handfuls of glowing embers and trickled them down his bare chest before walking slowly out of the fire with no apparent ill effect.


Obviously this is very different to the usual accounts of firewalkers, and speaking as someone who has burnt themselves many times, I am certain that if this happened as described there is absolutely no way that Science could offer the protection from burning that occurred (as it usually does through the speed of the walking across embers), nor could it explain what happened. At least, I thought so, except that I have now heard of a genetic disorder that affects the nerves in the spine, causing a complete loss of the sensation of pain, and which at a pinch could explain how someone could stand the heat of prolonged contact with red-hot coals.


However, there are two other problems with this account as evidence, firstly it is always open for anyone else to say that some conjuring trick was performed, and secondly, it is a story recounted by a third party, and however reliable your third party is, whatever they say is only hearsay, not evidence.


The conjuring trick explanation is essentially no different to the 'science protects the fast walker' explanation. It is saying that some real quality, some reality, enables a method that overcomes the 'normal' way that the world functions, in a perfectly natural way. For instance, the inability to feel pain will be a 'feature' of someone who has a mutation in the SCN9A gene that causes a loss of Nav1.7 function, the sodium ion channel that is needed for certain neurons in the spine to carry the pain signal.


Now, the young lad doing the fire-walking told my dad that the requirements were proper diet and thought. But maybe he was mistaken, and just couldn't feel pain anyway? But would a certain amount of singeing take place? Maybe not, if no air was getting to his heated feet and hands.


Despite its shortcomings as evidence, this story does illustrate the difficulties on both sides of the sceptics fence. On the one hand a believer in the supernatural has to overcome the sort of objections mentioned, while the sceptic has to address the very most difficult cases to debunk, and can't, like Richard Dawkins in the God Delusion, pick and choose the easy targets to ridicule.


It is extremely problematic to try to say very much about the reality of any of the many spheres of paranormal activity, largely because of the absence of cast iron evidence, but also because of the strongly held and polarised opinions on the matter, that ridicule supporters and turn sceptics into scientific fundamentalists.


However, while it is relatively easy to denigrate the opinions of the seemingly credulous, it is just as difficult to disprove their claims as it is for them to prove them. So on that score the balance is fairly even and people in general are left pretty free to believe or disbelieve as they please.


Given this state of affairs it seems a reasonable supposition to assume that people mostly follow their personal experience in deciding what to believe. Those with a mono-cultural religious background naturally adopting the commonly held belief system, at least until personal experience intervenes with some inexplicable event that throws previously held beliefs into question. Something that can just as easily happen to the sceptic.


The big problem with the paranormal though, is that it is an infrequent visitor to most of us, and therefore hard to have faith in, and that includes religious revelations as well. In short, it is hard to distinguish between personal experience and personal mental aberration, and so to be objective about it, one must always take one's own subjective experience with a pinch of salt.


Astrology

Of all the areas of the paranormal, astrology seems to provoke the biggest negative reaction among sceptics, and it is easy on the face of it to see why. But, on the other hand it is invariably misrepresented through the mistaking of sun-sign astrology for the real thing. Be that as it may, anyone with an unprejudiced outlook would still have to admit that the whole premise for astrology is unlikely in the extreme.


Having said that, from a personal point of view I had always been quite pleased to be a Scorpio, after all it is quite a macho sign with a certain reputation. But I didn't discover the bigger picture until 1990 when Bristol hypnotherapist Caryl Jones lent me her copy of Dynamics of the Unconscious, a serious astrology book by Liz Greene and Howard Sasportas.


Gradually I learnt more about the subject and quickly realised that, when it comes to astrology, there is a tremendous amount of opinion, but precious little fact. However, once I had learnt to calculate my own chart, I found that although it wasn't as flattering as I might have liked, I could, if I was honest with myself, relate to much of it. The main thing though is that I found that, retrospectively mostly, it often appeared to provide an accurate commentary on events in my life.


One striking example of this relates to my marriage, which ended after some protracted difficulties that were accompanied by years of transits by Pluto to the middle degrees of Scorpio where I have a conjunction of the Sun, Venus and Jupiter near my seventh house cusp. This astrological jargon can be translated as saying that whatever the three strands of these planets (in this sense the Sun is a planet because it appears to move against the background of the stars) mean to me personally, they all are connected to the seventh house which traditionally represents one to one relationships. Transiting Pluto represents transformation, in this case transformation of me, via the aspects (of me) represented by these three planets. That's the theory anyway.


Looking back on this, after the events, I realised that at the moment I originally met my ex-wife and our relationship started, transiting Venus was exactly opposite Pluto in my birth chart. At the exact moment when she finally ended the marriage transiting Venus was exactly conjunct Pluto in my birth chart, and three days later, when I moved out, transiting Mars was exactly conjunct Pluto in my birth chart. This struck me as meaningful because; well, it doesn't happen every day, and it ties the beginning to the end.


Another example is that I was made redundant from my job at the end of 1992 when the computers were moved from Bristol to Peterborough. This was accompanied by a conjunction of Neptune and Uranus on the midheaven point in my birthchart, a feature that most astrologers would judge as appropriate.


Around this time I met my ex-partner, and it turned out that the chart for the relationship, the composite chart - composed from the midpoints between our charts, has a precise grand trine, an equilateral triangle, involving the Moon and all three personal planets. A grand trine indicates a level of meaningful connection that lends stability, and can be seen in the synastry between Prince William and Catherine, Prince and Princess of Wales. Synastry being the direct comparison of charts.


Each grand trine will be different, and ours happens to be in water signs, and involve personal planets that feed off the element water, making the relationship emphasise the personal meaning in life - essentially the emotional.


For William and Kate, their respective natal charts join to create a grand trine in elemental air, they both have Mars in the same place in Libra, and this combines with his Mercury in Gemini and her Mercury and Venus in Aquarius. The composite brings their Sun and Mercury together, opposite that Mars, and their wedding saw Venus conjunct that Sun, while Saturn was conjunct the Mars. Essentially their subjective reality is well suited to what they want to do, and Saturn is particularly capable of making that objectively real.


These are just aperitif examples, tasters for more substantial courses to come, but here -where I am explaining why there are reasons to believe the unbelievable, this introduction of astrology is to show that it forms possibly the only objective way of measuring meaning, which elementally is fire.


Another striking personal example of astrology in action, one that I cannot keep quiet about, however much she probably would want me to, relates to the romance that I was involved in, with Mrs Jones [Me and Mrs Jones, Billy Paul - 1972]. It started quite by chance when she asked me a question on Facebook (we had a Facebook friend in common, at that time). However, as well as being the major prompt to get on with this book/website/theory, it turned out that the probability of the astrological connections between us were something like 1 in 20 million when looked at with certain criteria, that is compared to one of us with a hypothetical random person. Not only that, but there were numerous other very significant astrological factors between us, and the events that unfolded, and the various other significant people involved to a greater or lesser extent.


The relationship itself, a not quite precise grand trine in fire, was largely abstracted, removed, from concrete reality, although no less true for all that; which is quite appropriate for the element fire, and it had quite a different role for each of us, in as much as I was able (felt compelled even, though not under duress) to be open about it, while she experienced it as something private, or even secret. This difference was very apparent in reality, and in the various ways that astrological techniques are able to illuminate events.


The thing here is not that we became romantically involved, after all billions do so, nor that it came to an end, nor that she probably hates me now, but that there should be such a specific and remote probability of this almost ideal astrology pattern occurring with the one person I have an affair with, and that it happened at an appropriately significant time for each of us. I shan't be more precise with dates and times, nor planetary positions, because I aim to keep her identity secret, as she has a life to lead that doesn't need disturbing by me.


(External Website) More discussion of the events of Me and Mrs Jones


Another feature that I have seen occur within families, including my own, is the coincidental connections of similarity and difference between the charts of parents and children. For instance, my daughter's birthchart is in many ways a mirror image of my own, but also has some similarities.


Astrology never ceases to astound me with the coincidental correlation between charts and real life, so much so that I can only conclude that it is not mere coincidence, but some other factor at work.


The point of recounting these personal examples is to attempt to show that while the interpretation of astrological events may be problematic, proving prediction to be almost impossible, life events in my experience often seem to be accompanied by significant astrological events, even though there is no known way that there could possibly be a connection between the two. Chapter 6 will have many more compelling examples.


However, as with all the other paranormal experiences, they don't amount to evidence for others, as coincidence can always be called on to account for this kind of thing. Only the accumulation of many such astrological examples would start to be considered as evidence, and I will include some of my favourites in a later chapters/pages.


All in all, personal experience may make believers of those who have the experiences, but it can never be enough to convert the opinion of someone who hasn't had that sort of experience and is naturally, and reasonably, sceptical about the whole thing.


My Lucky or Unlucky Stars


My Grandpa, who was fond of repeating many things, often exclaimed to my Granny 'My stars, Isa' (she being Isabel), which kind of meant that something was happening over which he held no responsibility, that fate was taking a hand, although I'm not sure if it was supposed to be good or bad. Sometimes it was 'Bless my stars', which was generally good.


My birthchart

By traditional astrological standards my chart [my stars], shown below, is in many ways as bad as it could be, although it does have some saving graces. First of all, it is both fixed and angular, which is not likely to be a happy combination, as the angular wants to get something done, while the fixed gives a tendency to keep things as they are, or even to procrastinate. Next, the personal planets are all in signs of detriment, Mercury in Sagittarius, Venus in Scorpio and Mars in Taurus, and Mars is retrograde to boot, and more or less unaspected. Uranus is also in detriment. The luck comes from the stellium of Sun, Venus and Jupiter in Scorpio, but this is square Uranus, so tradition might say short lived. Easy come, easy go. Is it lucky, this stellium? I have been lucky at times, but what I think it really says is that I place too much focus on relationship, that in this one place is where mind creates meaning, where reality creates meaning, and where desire creates meaning. The meaning is not always nice, as it must lead to a tendency to be overly opinionated, which I'd have to accept I am, but on the plus side it is very opposite to Hitler's Mars/Venus conjunction. Also, with all that focus on the seventh house of relationships, but Saturn in the eighth house of sex, it doesn't point to a happy love life, according to tradition. My brother takes these negative factors as a positive for astrology, as who would believe in it when it promised so little, unless they really had to. Be that as it may, the salient factors are not in the interpretations of tradition, but in the numerical coincidence with real life events.


Me and Mandala Astrology

The first version of my chart illustrates the way that Mandala Astrology shows which regions of the Zodiac become activated by planets. This is done by fading the colour of inactive regions. The lines shown on this chart are not those of conventional astrological aspects, but are lines of elemental connection, i.e. showing how one planet supports another, according to my version of Astrology. With each line coloured by element, we can see how it is through elemental air that my Self, my Ascendant, starts to connect to the planets


Transits modify the above by intervening between planets that would not normally talk to one another directly, or not at the same level. Note. Transits can take the form of planets or peopele.


Me and Traditional Aspects

The chart shown is for my birth, with traditional aspects shown. From my perspective, I think the contrast between the two charts shows the difference between the dynamics of the abstract spiritual meaning [in the former], aompared to the physical manifestation [in the latter]. I'm reminded that while Monday's child may be fair of face, Saturday's child [me] must work hard for a living, or so the rhyme goes. Perhaps it shows my ambition exceeds my grasp, or maybe the jury is still out on that one.


What makes Me such a great example?


Me and Mars and Broken Bones

Mars makes an excellent exemplar for astrological transits, because Mars performs an alchemy from water to earth. Another way of saying this is that Mars encourages us to do real things because they mean something personal, i.e. we act through desire [Dylan - 1976]. Mars happens/exists/is whenever anyone does something because they want to. Doing something is making a difference, a change to the real world, frequently one that is attempting to make a difference by competition, or separating, each of which differentiate this from that, winners from losers, and one side of the cut or furrow from the other. This makes Mars very noticeable, and apparent in sports, surgery, and farming, to name just a few of the possibilities.


I have a stellium of Sun conjunct Venus conjunct Jupiter at 15, 15 and 13 Scorpio all conjunct my descendant at 16 Scorpio, but also square Uranus at 16 Leo and square Chiron at 17 Aquarius. This stellium is trine my mum's Mars at 16 Pisces. My Mars is retrograde at 26 Taurus. It is also notable that my natal Venus Jupiter conjunction echoes my parents' relationship, where my Dad's Venus was conjunct my Mum's Jupiter, and my Mum's Venus was conjunct my Dad's Jupiter.


This is about Mars transits as much as it is about stelliums. But mainly, it is about every recorded accidental thing that has had some impact on my life, because I, someone else, or both of us, wanted something a bit too much.


The Events


A broken arm

On 10 May 1966, aged 7, with transiting Mars at 16 Taurus, conjunct my ascendant and opposite the stellium, I was playing on the swing in my garden, jumping from it at the highest point and flying, and eventually I landed badly and broke my right arm. It was my own fault entirely, which is connected mainly to transiting Mars being in my first house and making aspects to other features.


A lucky day

On 25 May 1968, aged 9, with transiting Venus at 27 Taurus, conjunct my natal Mars, I was taken to the wedding of one of my Dad's cousins. At the reception there was an old-fashioned one-arm bandit fruit machine that took 6d coins - that's a tanner, a sixpence, a six penny piece - anyway, I won the massive jackpot prize of 3s - that's three shillings, as six sixpences. Then later on I won it again! I don't remember, but I probably put the money back in again. That is not the point. The point is that Venus - Lady Luck - was conjunct my Mars.


A broken leg

On 20 April 1973, with Mars at 17 Aquarius, I was skiing in the Pyrenees when, on the last day there, going too fast on my last run down the mountain at Font-Romeau, my path on the piste became obstructed by other people, an instructor and pupil pfaffing around in my way, and I had to take a diversion over some quilted, rough, bumpy, icy snow, to avoid them. I fell and broke my right leg (shared fault with another).


On this occasion Mars was conjunct my natal Chiron, square Ascendant and Sun, I think showing the joint responsibility for this accident, of both myself and of the ski instructor and student.


A bent wheel

On 9 August 1975 with Mars at 26 Taurus conjunct my Mars; In Monmouth, my brother crashed his bicycle into mine, buckling the back wheel. Sun at 16 Leo conjunct Uranus (I don't remember this being my fault, but maybe I had stopped unexpectedly, so that it was actually my doing).


An expensive bonfire

On 9 June 1979 with Mars at 18 Taurus, so just on my ascendant, I crashed my motorcycle resulting in it being destroyed by fire. (My own fault entirely - first house). At the time transiting Venus was conjunct my Mars at 26 Taurus, and I have to admit I was loving the ride up until the point I crashed!


I think this demonstrates how it usually takes a number of concurrent transits to take place, for the astrology to become a bigger influence on events.


My daughter

13 May 1983 my daughter Bryony was born with Mars at 27 Taurus, conjunct my own Mars, and I have noticed that children often inherit astrological features from their parents. Her birthchart is in many ways a mirror image of my own, with a smattering of inheritances from other people, her mum, my dad, etc. She had Sun in Taurus and Scorpio rising, where I have Sun in Scorpio and Taurus rising.


4 July 1985 with Venus at 28 Taurus, conjunct her Mars, and mine, and we took Bryony to the American airbase that was at RAF Welford, and where they had a fairground set up for the Fourth of July. Her Mum wouldn't go on any of the rides, so I had to take Bryony on some hair-raising machinery - although only 2, she was very tall for her age - and there was one ride, a big wheel that lifted us high in the air, with a single pin the held the seating to the wheel, that looked scarily inadequate, and lurched each time we reached the apex of the ride. It scared me silly, but as soon as we got off Bryony wanted to get back on it - so I had to suffer a second time. Maybe it is because my Mars is retrograde, and hers was not, but she loved that sort of thing.


Another broken leg

On 20 November 1989 I was knocked off my motorbike, a Suzuki GS750, by a careless motorist, and my right leg was badly broken (Certainly the other person's fault and their insurance had to pay up!). Mars was at 11 Scorpio conjunct the Jupiter of my stellium (7th house so other person's actions involved)


The accident was accompanied by a Mercury return and the Moon on my natal Pluto, the latter which was a feature another time when I had to be rescued. .


Then on the 27 November the leg was operated on, to insert a pin, when Mars was at 15 Scorpio. (again, it was 7th house so other person's actions involved performing surgery) .


Another expensive bonfire

On 2 January 1991 my daughter Bryony, then age 7, managed to set fire to our house while playing with a candle, Mars at 27 Taurus conjunct both my Mars and hers. Transiting Mars was precisely conjunct her natal Mars, in her 7th house, so maybe this is about her wanting someone else to do something (put the fire out, rebuild her home), as much as it is about her being the other person and setting fire to someone else's house. .


A robbery

On 19 September 1991 with Mars at 12 Libra in an applying semisextile to Jupiter in the stellium, I was burgled, and my car, bicycle and jacket were stolen. (I think an applying semisextile has a very 12th house feel, i.e. hidden & secret causes.) .


A holiday

21 - 28 March 1994 Mars 11-16 Pisces trine stellium Took my kids on holiday to Crete. A nice time with trine to whole stellium throughout. This is doing something with/for others in a manner that is pleasant and goes well. .


A funeral

30 April 1994 Mars 13 Aries inconjunct my stellium. It was the funeral of my very good friend, Andy, in Semley, Wiltshire, and I helped bury him, filling in the grave with the help of other friends. Here Mars was in my 12th house, so contrasts with the earlier theft.


Glastonbury

24 June 1994 with Mars 23 Taurus conjunct my daughter's Sun. Here Mars was experienced via the connections of transit to her Sun and the close connection between her Mars and Chiron, and my Mars. I had taken her to Glastonbury festival, and on the Friday we watched The Spin Doctors play, which was doubly good because she appeared on the BBC coverage while up on my shoulders [and I have a copy], as the band performed Two Princes. When they finished and the crowd thinned out, she dragged me down to right in front of the stage, to better see the next band. I asked a random stranger in the crowd 'Who's on next?', and hadn't heard of the band, 'What are they like?', I asked. 'Pretty heavy' came the reply. The band was Rage Against The Machine, and as soon as they appeared on stage, playing Take The Power Back, the whole crowd erupted around us, pogoing like crazy. I had to grab Bryony quickly, and haul her up onto my hip, and jump, or we would have gone under, and jump ... and jump. It seemed like a long time before I jumped us to a safer part of the crowd, and just like on the 4th July Air Day, back when she was two, she wanted to go back in there, and so started a life-long love of the mosh-pit - for her!


A long holiday

8 Nov 1994 Mars at 17 Leo conjunct my Uranus, and a departing square from my Ascendant (also Sun conjunct my Sun, Venus, Jupiter semisextile Saturn followed by Jupiter inconjunct Mars) I went to the Dominican Republic on holiday with my girlfriend, which was great but led to eventual (temporary) separation (Mars conjunct Uranus), with reuniting finally when Mars reached 16 Scorpio and the stellium.


A lucky break

1, 4 and 6 March 1996, Both the Sun and Mars at 11, 14 and 15 Pisces trine stellium. Also ninth house Jupiter at 12 Capricorn sextile Jupiter of stellium, and approaching a trine of my Ascendant. I was Initially told that my work contract would not be renewed, and then, almost immediately, I answered a phone call on the 4th intended for an ex-colleague, one which I guessed was from an agent, and so I said 'I can do anything he can', which led to an interview on the 6th, and a contract in Belgium on twice the money, which lasted for 4 years.


A helping hand

8 Sep 2014 Mars at 26 Scorpio, opposite my Mars. Due to work commitments I was unable to take my [now ex] girlfriend to hospital to be given a heart monitoring band, so my brother kindly stepped in and took her on my behalf. Here Mars is someone else doing something helpful for me.


The Sweetest Gift

6 June 2016 Mars at 26 Scorpio, opposite my Mars, so in my house of other people. Mrs Jones sent me a copy of a picture by Pierre Bonnard, out of the blue. Here Mars is someone else doing something generous for me.


The curious thing is that this relationship, that lasted one year, was marked by transits of Mars, to both my chart and hers, at most of the significant junctures, including starting, ending, and meeting on various occasions, and even including events that happened long before we first encountered one another, but without which nothing could have happened. This demonstrates how events connect through common meaning, and that this leads to an emergent pattern that both reflects, and adds to, the meanings of the gods/chakras/planets.


Conclusion


I am sure there have been many other significant Mars transits, but I wasn't always paying attention to when things happened (not keeping a diary). My diary was painstakingly (but accurately) reconstructed from other sources. I wish I had kept a diary for all those years, and do so now.


Another example of Mars in action is that of a girl that I know of. While at school she twisted her ankle doing sports, and as one might expect, this happened on a Mars transit. In this case an opposition accompanied by Jupiter also opposing her natal Mars.


The thing about these Mars transits is that Mars goes around the sky every two years, and so makes many transits, most of which have no apparent effect on anything, but that is not to say that they did not have an effect, rather that it was not dramatic, or was countered by some other effect such as a very loud thought or some other circumstance.


What is interesting is to consider the reverse question, when dramatic things happened what was Mars doing? The answer to that is that on all of the occasions where I have had some event that fits the description, that I know the date of, Mars has been involved in the most appropriate of ways (astrologically). So irrespective of tradition, or science, or any other point of view, I say this looks to me like when I know enough about what happened to who and when, I can clearly see the hand of astrology at work.


To most people that would seem like a crazy conclusion, astrology being thought to be so unfounded in fact. But it has to be seen in the context of all the other paranormal life experiences mentioned in the introduction, and it has to be taken in conjunction with the philosophical perspective described in Virtualism. In this light everything starts to make sense.


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