The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘coincidence’

I have talked before about how, when you are on The Path, the path that you are meant to be following, Life comes along and gives you a few signs and opportunities to speed you along and help you. Now, these don’t always feel like opportunities and signs, sometimes they feel like a nudge in the ribs, or a poke in the eye (Kal knows all about that from his narrow escape at Nine Ladies once, when an oak tree nearly had his eye out). Nevertheless, I have found that it pays to re-align yourself with your True Path and get back to work if you are being nudged in this way. You’ll know what I mean when it happens to you, and each nudge is individual and only has significance for you. Even so, I will try to explain a rather obvious and special poke in the eye that happened to me recently and see if its significance translates through the page.

The Original Book on Mediums

Sometimes a book that I should read suggests itself to me, other times I go in search of one using my dowsing rods. I had a couple of books in mind to read, but I wanted the dowsing rods to back me up on my choice, so I asked them to choose a book for me from my collection. They chose a book that I didn’t want to read at that time! I was directed to Allan Kardec‘s “The Book on Mediums“. I had flicked through the book when I had bought it and always meant to begin reading it but the language is so out-of-date that I found it difficult to devote enough attention to it to get around the style, so it went on the “rainy day” list. Well, that was until the dowsing rods insisted that it was the book I should read. So I began to immerse myself in it.

I started the book again but really found its introductory chapters hard going. I have read a lot of “hard going” texts over the years, having studied Philosophy and English Literature, but I have become far less tolerant of difficult writing since my university days. I was struggling. I went back to the dowsing rods. Was this really the book I should be reading, I enquired? YES. Damn. Do I have to start at the beginning? NO. Oh! So, which chapter could I start at, I asked? The Second Part, Chapter 1, entitled “Actions of Spirits on Matter“. Ok, well that helped me somewhat. I could dive right into the action without all the pre-amble. So I began to read.

Soon I was reading about apports. I have heard my Spiritist friend Mike talk about events where apports happened whilst he was present, and he has told me the tale of an apport that happened to him. In fact, one of the first things that he wanted me to try to ‘read’ psychometrically was a flower that had been brought to him by a spirit to prove its existence to him. He keeps it in a special box as a reminder of the wonders of this world and others that overlay it.

Losing My Wedding Ring

I think one of the most unsettling things that can happen to a married person is to lose their wedding ring. When measured against the weight of the world’s woes it is such a small thing to lose a piece of jewellery, yet when you mis-place or downright lose your wedding ring then it leaves a gap in so many small but unnerving ways that it really starts to get to you. You feel as though you are suddenly quite vulnerable, that you have let your spouse down by being so careless with something of such significance to each other, and you feel stupid for losing something of value but mainly of symbolism and imbued with such affection. To lose your wedding ring is a big deal. I lost mine.

At first I thought to myself, well, it will make an appearance when it’s ready. I’ve just put it down somewhere and once I check all the usual places that I leave it then I will find it. So you check all the usual places, and it’s not there. So, you begin to check the unusual places, the places you wouldn’t normally leave it, but which you might have left it this time. It’s not there. So, you begin to systematically go around your haunts turning them over and checking them twice. It’s not there. Now panic sets in. You re-check all the usual places, all the unusual places, some completely ludicrous places, and everywhere else that it might have been possible that you spent time at. It’s not there, and no-one else has seen it. Now you wonder what and when you should tell your spouse. How will they take it? How should you tell them?

When I told my wife she was remarkably calm. She looked me in the eye and could see that I was genuinely upset about it, and she was calm and cool. She did the list of expected places to check, and we re-checked them. All the pockets of my trousers and jeans. All the coats I may have possibly worn. All the bags I use. All the drawers and nooks and crannies that I usually leave the ring. Then she helped me do another systematic search. It went on and on. We didn’t find it. Now what?

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It is usually wisest to notice signs as they happen and then to act upon them at the time. Less wise is to realise that signs were presented to you and you managed to notice them but do nothing as a result. Well, sadly it was the latter that happened to me recently over the Imbolc festival period. We live and learn, as the saying goes. Let me explain.

I was driving home from work the night after Kal and I had been to Yorkshire in search of inspiration. The sun was just about to set below the horizon, a soft ice-cream sorbet sun melting deliciously below the black rim of the foreground hills. The sky was a clear azure blue prickled with stars that were eking their way into the evening’s display. As usual I was half concentrating on the road and half on the surrounding loveliness. I have learned to be wary of this state of mind for something always happens when I do that. Something happened.

In the remains of the day a sleek ginger fox slunk across the road, barely slowing as it spun its head to check that I was sufficiently slow to allow it to cross only feet in front of my car. Luckily I was going slowly in this residential area, so I got to see its full shiny copper shape. I gogged. I had been doing this route from work to home for the last twelve years and had never seen a fox cross with such nonchalance or so close. Sure, I’d seen what looked like a fox one morning dash at full pelt half a mile ahead of me once, but this was an intimate meeting.

Red fox crossing close

I continued to chase the setting sun. The ambient light was still enough to see clearly, and miles later down the road I was still bubbling with excitement at having seen that fox. What was it doing out that early in the evening, and so close to civilisation and to me? Still, it was a once in a long time encounter that would stay with me until..until I saw another fox crossing in front of the car, this time going the other way, right to left. Just as clear, just as unhurried in its crossing, and with that same lingering look into my eyes as I approached slowing the car as I neared. Wha…? Impo…..how? Why tonight? Within the space of thirty minutes two red foxes had crossed my path very near to me when none had done so for the past twelve years!

I decided to do some research to try to explain it. Here’s what I found out about the habits of the fox at this time of the year – Imbolc, late Winter:

“This is the mating season and when young foxes disperse from their natal area. Males follow females at close quarters. This is the period when fights and vocalizations are their highest. Towards the end of the winter, the female will look for a suitable den where she can give birth to the cubs.” (source: TheFoxWebsite.org)

Maybe this is the outcome of the fox-hunting ban that the previous government had put into law? Maybe this was a sheer coincidence. Maybe this was significant? I didn’t see how at the time, but then slowly things began to come together.Let me set the chronology clearly for you. I had been out at a stone circle a few days before Imbolc trying to discover my path for the next part of the year. Nothing happened. I forgot to try even! It was like a door that had got stuck because the hinges had rusted through lack of use – I couldn’t open the way into the Otherworld.

Then I saw the foxes. The next evening I was able to sit beneath an old oak tree and made a connection with it to discover my task for the next part of the year. I was startled out of my trance at the exact moment when I connected with the oak tree. It was a fox – it had reached the perimeter of my aura and had startled itself by touching it. Moments later I crossed the threshold between worlds and got my vision of chakras and sound that would form my journey for the period between Imbolc and Spring Equinox. I can see now how it was the ‘invitation’ of the foxes that guided me to cross the threshold to discover my next part on the journey.

The day after my Imbolc revelation I happened to visit Gwydion’s “Sparrowhawk Haven” website. I had read most of the posts on the blog, and followed most of the links but one link that I had not visited was his “This Month’s Animal” link. I knew the basic concept – he would draw a tarot card from his animal tarot pack each month and that would become the feature animal – the totem for the month’s meditation, if you like, the symbol of the time’s powers and frequency. I reasoned that if I needed such a symbol I would draw my own from my own tarot pack. Anyway, today, a day after Imbolc I clicked the link. I was soon face to face with a picture of a fox!

The Fox Dance in full swing by Mister Fox at Marsden Imbolc festival

Gwydion explains the significance of the fox like this:

“fox…leading its ‘followers’ through a particularly difficult or impassable door.” (source: Sparrowhawkhaven)

I hadn’t connected the three things until Gwydion mentioned that interpretation of the fox on his web site. The foxes has been symbolising some form of release for me – a way for me to break through my stale habits and cross into another dimension. This seemed especially symbolic as they were both crossing a road, from one wild area to another. They were making a crossing, out of their comfort zone, breaking their own habits in search of something primal and instinctive.

Interesting….As if by another strange coincidence or crossing point on my path, this article reared its head just as I was writing this post. It suggests that foxes are able to sense the earth’s magnetic field and use it in order to catch their prey. Well, these foxes just keep getting more and more cunning!

Gwas.

The Hedge Druid blog has reached 300 posts! Thanks to those of you who are reading our posts regularly, everyone who has contributed to the comments section, and to casual visitors who may just happen on by. We hope you are enjoying the journey along The Path. Our experiences seem to resonate with many of you.

Since late 2008 we have delivered three hundred almost-believable, sometimes vaguely interesting pieces of information to you all. For Kal and I the blog began as a means of recording our experiences whilst out dowsing, and for me particularly it was a means to record the cross-over that I was experiencing with my newly-emerging interest in druidry. Since then we have developed spiritually and the metaphorical goal-posts have shifted somewhat.

It has been to my personal delight that you have followed our progress in increasing numbers. Good on you, but shouldn’t you be out in a field kissing a flower or something? Only kidding. It’s great to have you here, and we hope that our exploits inspire you to try some of the unusual things we get up to for yourself. You’ll notice we often leave the detail for you to work out for yourself? That’s deliberate.

Two years after we started blogging we have hit a major milestone. I feel like we readers of this blog are a small band of Spartans facing the hordes of rationalist unbelievers in their many guises and poking them sternly in the eye with experiential evidence. Of course, we’re all mad. We need to acknowledge that, If anyone asks, you don’t believe a word of this, right?

Over that time we have indeed covered many esoteric and “flaky” subjects: crop circles, crystals, healing with energy, earth energy lines, coincidences, elemental spirits, ghosts, power centres…and many more that I can’t bring to mind but which make me muse and ponder. We aim to test them all in time.

Over that few years we’ve been spending less time dowsing and more time on energy work/magick. Dowsing has currently (and unfairly) been relegated to an aide to our other work. In the near future we’re going to go back to re-investigating the dowsing principles because we think there’s more to learn from that. Expect some updates to the Sacred Sites page with its map of energies. Expect some new ideas to emerge from our findings.

Here is just a flavour of some of the topics we will be covering soons:-

• Lammas – what it means to me and what I will be doing
• Crop circles – our ideas about where they come from and who’s making them, and how they are made, and what their importance might be
• Stone circles – are they schools for passing on mystical information?
• The newly-discovered wood henge near Stonehenge – our first dowse of it
• The power of numbers : five, seven and eleven

Hope you’ll stay with us for the next three hundred. Charge!!!!!!

Gwas.

“Beyond Coincidence” is the very intriguing title for a book. Its authors Martin Plimmer & Brian King hint at the possibility of a sensible discussion of highly anomalous and unusual phenomena related to extreme probabilistic events. The book tells us many stories that seem to defy the mathematics of probability itself. At the end the authors make a frankly cursory and flimsy attempt at an explanation. Their conclusion? In a world of almost infinite probabilities anomalous events must eventually occur, and the recording of these events in history, when presented together seem more than they are when taken in isolation, and merely demonstrate the vagaries of chance. The book is now selling in the New & Used section for one pence.

When I read this I was more than disappointed, I was annoyed. The authors had gone to all the trouble of collecting and collating stories, some more probable than others, but then ducked out of a viable discussion of the possibilities underlying the events by deferring to mathematics. I was left wholly unsatisfied with the treatment. Since reading that book several years ago I have been collecting my own tales of coincidence. With the addition of Kal’s unusual life events this has become a compendium that now rivals the Beyond Coincidence book in its scope. Take, for example, today’s events. Now, when I tell you this, you will be able to explain it all away easily – the factors involved are probabilistic, in that they all have a potential for occurrence, and the events must, at some point, occur together. I don’t disagree with their inevitability - what I draw your attention to is this: should you turn your own attention to such coincidences in your own life, you will find that mathematical probability becomes seriously warped and it will make your head swim with questions of a philosophical nature. Here’s the story:

Kal was sitting in a cafe in a large town. He is engaged in conversation with friends when he thinks he sees an old friend who he hasn’t seen for many months passing by the window. Except, his old friend looks slightly thinner and her hair is shorter, but nevertheless he is struck by the fact she has walked by and decides that, when he has finished in the cafe, he might have a walk around to see if he can bump into her in order to say hello and catch up on events. So, several minutes later he is walking around the town centre visiting places that she may frequent, but with no joy. She is not there, and now he begins to doubt whether he really did see her. Giving up, he heads back to one of the many car parks around the town. As he makes his way along a street he looks up - there, heading towards him is his old friend. But she is not thinner, and her hair is still long! The woman he saw earlier was not his old friend, but someone else who reminded him of her!

Coincidence, certainly, but it doesn’t end there. I am at work and it’s lunchtime, so I’m on the blog seeing which draft posts I still have on the go. I find that I have one whose subject is itself ’coincidence’. I begin to edit the post in order to flesh out the ideas I had jotted down. I am absorbed with writing, and as I start a sentence with the words, “Kal and I…” I see a new e-mail arrive in my postbox. It’s Kal, telling me the story of his extraordinary coincidence.

How’s that for a bundle of coincidences? Now, that’s all very mundane and ordinary as examples go, but such is the web of most of our lives. What it is an example of is not just coincidence, but rather something more extraordinary than that, and far less mundane.

As we approach the end of the Mayan Calendar, whose end date is 2012 (arguably) people like Ian Xel Lungold and Carl J.Calleman speculate that the planet is going through the latter stages of a change in consciousness. This consciousness change is being manifestly accelerated by our modern inventions, as it always has been. In other words, our society and its overall consciousness is evolving at an increasingly fast pace, and in definite step changes. Lungold makes the case, convincingly enough to me, that throughout evolution there have been moments when consciousness changed to a higher level. The consciousness changes are charted in a 9-step pyramid form as:-

Each stage is a foundation level upon which we build, opening up new levels of consciousness as each cycle is attained. Each stage introduces new laws of possibility which govern our development. Of course it is simple to “prove” the dates incorrect because we were all there at the birth of the internet, right? We all know EXACTLY when that happened, right? Let’s not be bound by an anal kind of exactitude. What is undeniable is the flow of consciousness evolution, and it’s not just human consciousness, but the consciousness of everything. I urge you to watch the YouTube videos in which Lungold explains Calleman’s ideas – it will be three hours of your remaining conscious time that you will never regret.

As you can see, the final stage is still to come. The change we have just entered is “Galactic Consciousness” in which we realise that the power structures upon which we rely are actually unreliable, and we enter into an ethical structure that takes greater responsibility for what we consciously create. The final stage – “Universal Consciousness” – involves a realisation of the process of conscious co-creation. It will be the realisation of our ability to consciously and clearly co-create experience with each other and the rest of existence. To put it plainly, we will make the world what it will be through our thoughts and actions. We will integrate our consciousness in a working relationship with Nature, or The Other, and the unfolding of time.

That’s the theory, but what might it mean in practise? Who knows. I certainly don’t think that all the planet will be affected by these changes at the same time. I think these timings and stages of consciousness as defined indicate the threshold points where human consciousness can CONCEIVE OF them. Once we conceive of something as a possibility, then we slowly begin to make it happen in reality in our own time. It’s like the inventor – he can’t invent something until he has conceived of the possibility of it first. His next step is to theorise as to what is possible, and finally to make it happen. I think these processes may unfold in the same way. What they represent is the potential to begin to make these changes manifest in the world of human consciousness on a meaningful scale – i.e. if enough people “get it” then it begins to take shape in the everyday reality of more and more people until the change becomes integrated as the new reality that everyone accepts and can understand.

We may be heading for just such a change in possibility soon. Certainly, my own spiritual journey seems to be timed to coincide with these events. If I look back at how I thought only two years ago many of the concepts I now consider to be integrated and everyday were so outlandish and unproven to me that they were irrelevant. Now I have experienced conscious co-creation and coincidence more regularly I have the experiences to back up my newly evolving thought processes and my boundaries of possibility are extending.

The extent and pace of the progress also seems to match the speed of approach and trajectory of 2012, but I still don’t know what to make of that, other than that Ian Xel Lungold’s theories are the only 2012 theories that make any sense to me, and which have practical manifestations in the world around me and in my head.

What I’m suggesting, in relation to the story of Kal and his old friend and myself, is that we are beginning to consciously co-create events in conjunction with the flow of the universeTo join with the flow of the universe is to follow a natural progression in tune with Nature’s own direction of development. Religion has called this concept “following the divine will”, but then has proceeded to make it a law, rather than a useful option for personal and communal progress. itself. As we progress along our spiritual paths we are increasingly entering into the flow of consciousness and its evolutionary timescale. As we synchronise with this flow these events begin to occur more frequently, and we become much more involved in their occurrence. The world changes from being a mechanical, Newtonian, pre-defined, mathematical, quantifiable entity to become a world of imaginative magical possibility when one joins the flow and steps beyond coincidence!

The whole concept particularly resonates with me because the final step into Universal Consciousness begins on my birthday in just over a year’s time.

Gwas.

p.s. After publishing this post I went downstairs for a drink. Whilst there I switched on the TV to see what was on. It was “The Matrix”. The last five minutes. I joined the film at the point where Lawrence Fishburn’s characters says “He’s starting to believe” until the point where Neo overcomes the matrix through an evolution of consciousness…into conscious co-creation! Sometimes when you’re in the flow, the coincidences let you know.

A few minutes ago I published my last post which contained a riddle posed by the oak tree that I had communed with: “The Sun is the Key, the Moon is the Door.”

I had mentioned that I would ponder this. Anyway, I picked up my “Sacred Geography” book (see book recommendations on this blog site), and opened the page where I had last left off a few days ago. The first paragraph talked about attuning to a place. The second paragraph made me stop and made my eyes boggle. Marko says:

“Sometimes the first step (grounding yourself, etc.) is sufficient to attune. In other cases, a second preparatory step maybe needed. We need to ask for the key. Why? Places are coded to protect their identity and their proper place within the given holon. Sometimes the pristine flame of the perceiver’s heart is sufficient to open the door of perception. In other occasions, especially if we wish to enter more intimate layers of the place, we need to ask for the key. The key may be given in the form of a specific quality, a vision, an intuition, or in some other way. The image or quality given can be later used during the geomantic exploration of the place.”

Apt? Pertinent? Timely? Coincidental? All these. What I failed to explain in the blog post was how difficult I found it to attune to the place. I didn’t feel the same level of connection that I had previously with the birch trees. In some ways the oak was “harder” to get to know. One time around Delamere I had tried to attune to an oak tree and it had sent me on a wild goose chase to some of the most horrible parts of the forest! I knew then I wasn’t quite ready for that particular relationship.

Just one of those coincidences, I suppose? Just another to add to the massive pile that has been created since I started this journey several months ago.

Gwas.
Follow your true path