Today is the 150th Anniversary of Rudyard Kipling’s birth

Rudyard Kipling was born on December 30th 1865, in India.

His life and his writings have been written about and discussed extensively. I have read a lot of criticism of him and his works and I agree with some of it, but he is still one of my favourite authors.

Kipling is also a person of interest because the kind of unseen influences that I am very interested in appear to have been at work in his life. This will be the subject of a future article.

In the meantime, there is a big coincidence involving a place in Hampshire where he stayed as a child. I have mentioned it in another article, but decided to repeat the story to mark the occasion of the birthday of a very great author and poet.

It came first as a surprise, then, on reflection, not such a surprise, when I first learned that Lorne Lodge, the ‘House of Desolation’ where he and his sister suffered so much as children, was (and still is) in Campbell Road in Southsea. ‘By chance’, Lorne Lodge is just around the corner from a house where my family lived for a while when I was 11 years old. What a coincidence. Although I knew nothing at the time, I always avoided walking down Campbell Road because it gave me bad feelings.

The name of the people Rudyard Kipling stayed with was Holloway; by coincidence, when my family left Southsea it was to go to a house very close to a big thoroughfare called Holloway Road. By coincidence, the ‘terrible little day-school’ called Hope House that Kipling attended in Southsea was run by a man with the same, not particularly common, last name as that of my step-mother, who was behind our move away from Southsea. She disappeared from our lives not long afterwards.

An unusual Midnight Mass: the real spirit of Christmas?

I like this poem very much. It is based on what may well be a myth, but to me it conveys the essence of Christmas:

Eddi's Service (A.D. 687) by Rudyard Kipling:

     Eddi, priest of St Wilfrid

      In the chapel at Manhood End,

     Ordered a midnight service

      For such as cared to attend.

     But the Saxons were keeping Christmas,

      And the night was stormy as well.

     Nobody came to service,

      Though Eddi rang the bell.

     'Wicked weather for walking,'

       Said Eddi of Manhood End.

     'But I must go on with the service

       For such as care to attend.'

     

     The altar candles were lighted,—

      An old marsh donkey came,

     Bold as a guest invited,

      And stared at the guttering flame.

    The storm beat on at the windows,

      The water splashed on the floor,

     And a wet yoke-weary bullock

      Pushed in through the open door.

     

    'How do I know what is greatest,

      How do I know what is least?

    That is My Father's business,'

      Said Eddi, Wilfrid's priest.

     'But, three are gathered together—

      Listen to me and attend.

     I bring good news, my brethren!'

      Said Eddi, of Manhood End.

     

    And he told the Ox of a manger

     And a stall in Bethlehem,

    And he spoke to the Ass of a Rider

     That rode to Jerusalem.

    They steamed and dripped in the chancel,

     They listened and never stirred,

    While, just as though they were Bishops,

     Eddi preached them The Word.

    Till the gale blew off on the marshes

      And the windows showed the day,

    And the Ox and the Ass together

     Wheeled and clattered away.

     And when the Saxons mocked him,

      Said Eddi of Manhood End,

     'I dare not shut His chapel

      On such as care to attend.'

This poem is in the public domain and can be found online in many places, including Project Gutenberg.

Unseen Influences at Christmas

I don’t enjoy this time of year very much. Seasonal depression prevents much enjoyment and turns necessary tasks into impositions; painful memories and feelings surface and thoughts of what might have been become overwhelming.

People are stressed and I pick up a lot of the tension and unhappiness that are in the air.

Even though I am not a Christian, I hate the way that consumerism and secularism have taken over what should be a religious festival. 

Despite not being religious, I did go to a Christmas service once. It was at the suggestion of a neighbour. One fateful Christmas Eve many years ago, I went for the first time ever to a Midnight Mass. It was held in Westminster Cathedral, and I went just for the carols and the spectacle.

The outing was pure delight from beginning to end. I felt very well, euphoric even; I had the feeling that something wonderful was on the horizon; the weather was very mild; we saw some happy looking policemen driving around in a car that was covered in Christmas decorations.

I enjoyed the lights, the surroundings and the music inside the Cathedral very much. Just as midnight was striking, I wished very hard for a good cause to support and a new and exciting interest in my life for the coming New Year. 

The expression “Be very careful what you wish for as you may well end up getting it” is becoming a platitude but is very relevant here. A ‘chance’ meeting with a stranger on New Year’s Eve brought me exactly what I had wished for. For good or evil? I still don’t know. It led to some of the best and some of the worst moments of my life, including a Christmas that I still can’t bear to think about. 

Prison guards and parents: two memorable passages

I was reading about the author and explorer Sir Laurens van der Post recently, and came across something that he wrote during his captivity in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.

Once, depressed, he wrote in his diary:

"It is one of the hardest things in this prison life: the strain caused by being continually in the power of people who are only half-sane and live in a twilight of reason and humanity." 

Van der Post’s words summarise his experience very well; they are of particular interest and significance to me because they could also be used to describe some people’s experience of childhood – as seen in retrospect rather than at the time though.

Van der Post was an adult at the time of his internment; he had experienced freedom; he had seen a different world and lived a different life; he knew what reason, sanity and humanity were.

He had gone from the normal to the abnormal.

It is another matter when we are born into what seems like imprisonment and into the power of people who are more like prison guards or hostage-takers than caring parents. There is an extra dimension to deal with: we need to put everything into context and learn from first principles how decent human beings behave, and what reason and sanity are. 

Carole Nelson Douglas summarises this stage very well in Cat in a Midnight Choir:

“...no anger, no fury is stronger than the final, unavoidable realisation that the protector has betrayed his role and is really the destroyer. But it takes a while to find out that the unthinkable is not the status quo, and that your daily 'normal' is very abnormal to a larger world.“

People from dysfunctional families need to go from the abnormal to the normal.

It certainly does take a while, perhaps because after living so long in the twilight zone we can only take the truth in small doses and need to adjust to reality very slowly. We need to deal with some devastating realisations. 

Our lives may indeed have been as far from normality as Laurens van der Post’s life in the prison camp was.

The Rothschild house of flint

An article in the Daily Mail about an unusual new house has caught my attention:

“If you want a house that stands out, blending in, it seems, is the way forward.

This wedge-shaped house in Buckinghamshire has been awarded House Of The Year in the prestigious Royal Institute Of British Architects (Riba) awards. Commissioned by Lord Rothschild for use by his family, Flint House rises out of the ground with step-style roofing that disappears into the sky.”

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3334722/Built-lot-wedge-Inside-incredible-tapered-home-named-Britain-s-House-Year-2015.html#ixzz3sbEqcyFF

This house seems symbolic to me: thin end of the wedge, ascending step by step…

The architects have created a colour gradient: the walls fade from dark to light, starting with dark grey flint near the ground and ending with white chalk at the top.

People’s opinions vary in a similar way: at one extreme this ziggurat-shaped house has been described as reminiscent of an Aztec temple; at the other, the pebble-dashed effect reminded one commenter of a public convenience in Worthing!

In the middle, it has been called a staircase to nowhere, a motorcycle jump, a doorstop, and likened to a slice of cake.

No one has started talking about Mesopotamia, Illuminati ceremonies or sacrificial temples yet, but this is probably just a matter of time!

Another recent string of minor misfortunes

I wrote about a bad day I had in a previous post. I have had a few more bad days recently, and I have a good idea what caused them.

I kept walking into and tripping over things at home, giving myself some bruises.

I went out on some errands. I fell very heavily just outside the library: all I did was step on a tiny stone, but it rocked forward, threw me off balance and tipped me right over. I was very shaken; I got some more bruises and I grazed my hands. 

Inside the library, a machine took my reservation money but did not credit my account; luckily the library staff believed me when I said I had paid, and they sorted it out.

I had a jarring shock when my internet connection suddenly stopped working when I was in the middle of something important. I did get it working again, but I had some bad moments.

Robin Jarvis’s witchmaster Nathaniel Crozier: Part I

Nathaniel Crozier is a key character in A Warlock in Whitby, the second volume of Robin Jarvis’s wonderful Whitby Witches trilogy. 

He is the husband of the witch who called herself Rowena Cooper, but was really Roselyn Crozier (called Roslyn Crosier in The Whitby Witches). He is not a witch exactly, but he is a black magician and he does control a group of witches. 

He is a person of interest because some of the things he and his followers say and do are very familiar.

An introduction to Nathaniel Crozier
Nathaniel Crozier casts a dark shadow ahead of him: he is briefly mentioned in The Whitby Witches, where he is introduced as Roselyn’s God-awful husband. They performed foul ceremonies together in Africa. They are described as a hellish pair who deserve to hang. I couldn’t have put it better myself.

The prose gets purple in A Warlock in Whitby:

“Nathaniel Crozier: historian, philanderer, warlock, high priest of the Black Sceptre and the unseen hand behind countless unsolved burglaries of religious relics from around the world…the most evil man on earth.”

There is nothing on this earth that he cannot make yield and bow before him.

How strange that such a man should wear worn and shabby clothes and be unable to enter a dwelling without an invitation! 

He seems to have very little to show for all his studies, efforts, powers and stolen magical artefacts. 

Injury and revenge: Part I some general ideas

This article was created to get some general ideas about injury and revenge out of the way, clearing the decks for action in preparation for a forthcoming article about the way that unseen influences may be at work in some special cases. 

Injuries
Where injuries are concerned, self-help guru Vernon Howard suggests that it is not possible for our real selves to be hurt, just our egos or the false images that we have of ourselves. 

This is worth thinking about, although the implications may be very unwelcome.

Thoughts of revenge
People may have fantasies of revenge, but if they respect the truth they will realise that these ideas are usually childish, excessive or unrealistic. 

As Vivianne Crowley says in Your Dark Side:

“The more disempowered we are in real life…the more elaborate and sadistic our revenge fantasies will be.”

This statement is very true in my experience, and provides another unwelcome insight.

Taking responsibility for our part in the affair
There may be no action that we can take other than to do some inner work and try to understand how and why we let ourselves be victimised and what sort of person our victimiser must be.

We also need to think about what we can do to avoid or prevent similar incidents happening in the future.

This is what better people do.

Do inner demons sabotage our lives?

It is important to take responsibility - where appropriate – when we do stupid things, make mistakes, and experience setbacks, accidents and misfortunes. 

I know very well that becoming tired, stressed and overloaded is asking for trouble, so I do what I can to avoid getting into those states.

I do sometimes wonder though whether hostile unseen influences are also at work, subtly taking advantage when people are distracted or not functioning well.  They do whatever they can to cause trouble, sabotage lives and damage their victims’ environments.

I have noticed that ideas that lead to trouble or even disaster sometimes slip into people’s minds. The man who had the ‘good idea’ of moving his daughters into the basement because bad weather was expected only for them to be drowned by flood water during the night, is an example of a very bad case.

Some much less serious examples from my own life come to mind. While I definitely need to take responsibility for getting so absorbed in reading or preoccupied with research that the real world disappears, so when forced to do something I deal with it with the back of my mind, other factors might be at work too..

On one occasion, I was immersed in a book; I became aware very slowly and dimly that something wasn’t quite right. There was a faint smell that I automatically and mistakenly assumed to be medicinal; an inner voice told me that it was just the vapour balm that I had been using for a cough. 

Eventually, I came down to earth and realised what was happening: I had not replaced the lid of a bottle of nail varnish remover properly, the bottle had tilted on its side and the liquid was ebbing away. I was too late to save most of it. It was definitely my fault for not putting the top on properly and for not immediately investigating the source of the smell, but I was misled by that small voice.

Person of interest: Madeleine L’Engle’s Zachary Grey

Zachary Grey is a character in several young adult novels by Madeleine L’Engle. Confusingly, he becomes Zachary Gray in the later books.

Madeleine L’Engle is not one of my favourite authors and her books do not inspire me to produce a series of articles, but some aspects of the behaviour of her character Zachary Grey and the destructive effect it has on people around him are relevant to my ideas about energy vampires and unseen influences.

About Zachary Grey

Zachary Grey, often known as Zach, is a bit of a Bad Boy. He is very rich and throws money around. He is moody and troubled; he is wild, reckless, unpredictable and sometimes self-destructive; he likes to hurt and frighten people; his outlook on life is cynical, amoral, nihilistic, negative and pessimistic: he is always saying, “What’s the point?” and wondering whether there is anything worth living for in this lousy world. He sees nothing but doom and disaster ahead. 

There are times when he hates just about everyone: he drives them away then tries to cajole them into staying.

Zach has a weak heart; he knows that he could die at any time and uses this as a weapon to control people: if they don’t do just as he likes he might have a heart attack. He uses hysterical outbursts to manipulate his parents into giving him what he wants; they are under his thumb.

Zach has a death wish and courts danger; he habitually does things he knows he shouldn’t do. He is always getting kicked out of schools for smoking and cheating and not turning up for classes. He does this for kicks, because he is bored. He intends to study law just to learn how to get away with things and get the better of and outsmart the phonies who run this lousy world.

Zach believes that money is everything; he has nothing but withering scorn for religion: he thinks that all religious people are phonies; he thinks that people care only about number one and that the only way to get on in the world is to step on people. His goal in life is to have what he wants, do what he wants, go where he wants and get what he wants. 

Zachary Grey is a devil’s advocate.

Ian Fleming and his lump of ambergris

The first reports of the finding of a valuable lump of ambergris on a beach in Wales earlier this week by a man who was walking his dog appeared in Welsh newspapers: 

“Ever fancied spending thousands of pounds on a big, yellow and black piece of vomit? Well here’s your chance as an auction house is offering exactly that for sale later this month. Now confirmed as whale vomit – or ambergris – it was found by a dog walker on an Anglesey beach.

The material is used in the perfume industry, making it very valuable, which is why auctioneer Chris Surfleet has slapped an estimate of £5,000-£7,000 on the lump weighing just over a kilogram and measuring little more than eight inches long.

A 6lb lump of ambergris found on a Lancashire beach sold for £100,000 to a buyer from the perfume industry.”

The idea that a substance secreted and cast off by whales is very valuable and can occasionally be found washed up on beaches by anyone who happens to walk past is widely appealing to the imagination. The story was picked up by many other papers and even appeared in yesterday’s Washington Post.

Seeing the headlines reminded me of something I read about Ian Fleming many years ago. This anecdote can be found in The Life of Ian Fleming by John Pearson:

“…Fleming told of how he found his first treasure - he was a compulsive treasure-hunter all his life - at the age of nine… One afternoon he found in a cave a lump of ambergris ‘as big as a child’s football’. He knew it was ambergris from the adventure books he had been reading – it was a real treasure: 

‘Now I would be rich and be able to live on Cadbury’s milk chocolate flakes and I would not have to go back to my private school or indeed do any more work at all. I had found the short cut out of all my childish woes.’ 

He carried it back…but the ambergris began to melt and soon he was a dreadful sight. ‘What did I care? There would be no scoldings or punishments ever again.’

 … It was then that one of the waiters explained that the ambergris was really a lump of very rancid butter from a supply ship that had been torpedoed off the coast.”

I see this as being very symbolic. Some people habitually mistake bad things for good, horrible people for decent ones and dead ends or paths to destruction for great opportunities. 

Some people are blinded by wishful thinking. When their imaginations run away with them in this way, the result is often crushing disappointment.

In addition to the fool’s gold and inverted values aspects, this story shows how some naïve people have very unrealistic ideas about what achieving great riches – or some other goal - will do for them: “If I only had x, everything would come right and all my troubles would be over for ever.”

I found two more amusing anecdotes about Ian Fleming in an article in the Saturday Evening Post: 

 “One night in 1941, a member of British Naval Intelligence stops by the Estoril Casino in neutral Portugal. He is Lieutenant Ian Fleming, stopping over in Lisbon, on his way to secret talks in Washington. But tonight, he’s in his civilian clothes and trying his luck at the baccarat tables. He notices two players at another table, and recognizes them as Nazi Intelligence agents. 

Fleming, a gambler with a high opinion of his skills, has a sudden inspiration: he decides to play them and take them for all of their secret funds.

Instead of taking the Nazis, however, the Nazis took him, and Fleming sheepishly had to ask his chief for more travel money...

On one memorable occasion when he and an assistant were required to question a capture U-boat commander to find out which routes the U-boats were taking through the British minefields in the Kattegat, Fleming had a flamboyant idea. Instead of grilling the commander in a grim prison office, why not soften him up by bringing him to London and questioning him over good food and fine wine?

The German and his first lieutenant, of unmistakably Teutonic bearing, were escorted to Scott’s Restaurant in Piccadilly in civilian clothes. Fleming and his aide were in uniform. Everyone spoke German throughout. Fleming ordered a bottle of Rhine wine and another and another. While the Englishmen were getting progressively drunker, the Germans stayed rigorously sober revealing nothing. In the end Fleming gave it up and blearily took a taxi back to the Admiralty.”

So in both cases Ian Fleming’s ‘good ideas’ and plans for success backfired and he got the exact opposite of what he hoped for! 

Camila Batmanghelidjh and Kids Company: a connection

It seems that Camila Batmanghelidjh, who has friends in high places, wears colourful clothes and has raised large amounts of money for charity, got away with a lot. Kids Company, the charity she founded, was not well run and the money was not always put to good use. 

This raises the question of how it could have happened. How did she get away with so much for so long?

Prime Minister David Cameron is described as being ‘mesmerised’ by her. In this connection, one of the first thoughts to come into my mind when the story became front page news is something I once read about Marie Corelli. 

The Revd. Stuart Scott, a longtime admirer of her books, visited her and found her very disillusioning in appearance. However, he went on to say that after talking to her, his reservations disappeared and his critical faculties refused to function.

This is very interesting. What could be at work here? What stopped people from paying attention to the woman behind the curtains? Unconscious hypnotism, mind power, a smokescreen, psychological black magic even? 

Something else that comes to mind is the idea that inauthentic people are suckers for inauthentic people. 

Perhaps all the involved celebrities, politicians and ‘leftie luvvies’ took her – and each other – at face value, falling for each other’s glittering - and in her case bizarre - image. They all expected to be taken at their own estimations.

I once encountered Camila Batmanghelidjh and got very bad feelings. I formed an impression of someone who was cold, arrogant and contemptuous – this was when she was dealing with ordinary, working people. Perhaps she saves the charm and glamour for her rich and powerful friends.

A recent string of minor misfortunes

I had a bad day recently, the exact opposite of what I expected. 

I had planned a circular walkabout that would combine fresh air, exercise, errands, a treat and a visit to a park. 

Unfortunately, it was more of an endurance test than an enjoyable experience. It was just one thing after another, so I gave in and went home. 

Unfortunately, that was not the end of the misfortunes.

It all started when I went to get some money from the cash machine. When I pressed the button, all I got was my balance on the screen. I felt paranoid, as though I had been cut off from my money. After a few more tries, I realised that the menu text on the screen was misaligned with the buttons. I got my cash out and went on to the library, where I found that my library card wouldn’t go through any of the machines so had to ask the librarian to do everything manually.

I got some takeaway breakfast items. My plan was to eat them in a local public garden. I walked down a steep street and along the park railings. The gate I wanted to use was chained up: there was a lot of construction work going on. I had to walk all the way back to another gate, past all the vans and workmen.

Mayor and Llewelyn Davies connections: a tangled web

This article consists of material left over from my recent post about convenient deaths associated with the Austen, Mayor and Disraeli families. While doing the research for that post, I came across some information, leads and connections that I wanted to follow up. I decided to stick to the main subjects and leave the extra material and further research for another time.

Mary Sheepshanks and her connections

Flora M. Mayor was a lifelong friend of the social reformer Mary Sheepshanks. Mary Sheepshanks knew Flora’s fiancé Ernest Shepherd; Flora at one time believed that Ernest preferred Mary. Mary actually had feelings for someone else:

“In 1905 Mary Sheepshanks fell in love with Theodore Llewelyn Davies. However, he was in love with Meg Booth, the daughter of social investigator, Charles Booth. After she refused him, Davies committed suicide. “

Suicide is only suspected: he drowned while bathing alone in a pool in the River Lune. It is thought that he hit his head on a rock. He was 34 years old at the time.

Theodore Llewelyn Davies was uncle to the five Llewelyn Davies brothers, one of whom also drowned in a suspected suicide pact.

Disraelis and Mayors: more convenient deaths

I have written elsewhere about the convenient – and possibly suspicious - deaths of the men who were engaged to be married to Jane Austen’s sister Cassandra and J M Barrie’s sister Maggie.

In both cases, the bereaved young women remained available to their siblings as their main source of companionship, emotional support and admiration. In other words, both Jane Austen and J. M. Barrie benefitted from the deaths of the men who would have been their brothers-in-law.

I have found two more cases of interest, with similar elements.

Alice Mayor and F. M. Mayor

Flora Macdonald Mayor wrote novels and short stories under the name F. M. Mayor, mostly between 1913 and 1929. She had an identical twin sister, Alice. Just like Jane Austen, Flora had brothers but only the one sister.

Flora spent some time at university, where she did not do particularly well. She spent the next seven years looking for an occupation. She hoped to succeed as a professional actress, but that too did not turn out very well. The life was hard, the glamour faded, and she became tired of the lifestyle and the squalid lodgings.

People in such situations often dream of deliverance. Salvation came in the form of a young architect called Ernest Shepherd, who, just like Cassandra Austen’s fiancé, could not afford to get married immediately so hoped to make his fortune overseas. 

He was accepted for a well-paid job in India, and this enabled him to propose to Flora. He then left for India. Although she was not happy at the prospect of being separated from her family, Flora agreed to join him later in the year: they would then get married.  Unfortunately, he died of typhoid fever out there while she was still in England.

Alice MacDonald Mayor had not been in favour of the marriage. She was desolate at the thought of losing her twin to India. Just like the Austen sisters, the two Mayor girls lived closely together for their remaining years. Flora died at the age of 59; Alice lived on for another 29 years.

Some small synchronicities from 2013

Big, spectacular synchronicities – such as the encounter with Archbishop Trevor Huddleston for example - for some reason seem to be a thing of the past.

I have posted my best memories, but the record is not complete. I wish I had made notes of all of the small synchronicities that I experienced over the years but I didn’t, so some of them are probably gone forever. 

I have started to record on here any current interesting coincidences that occur in my life, just to keep a record.

I have just remembered a few synchronicities that occurred almost exactly two years ago. During 2013 I was doing a lot of research and posting the results on the David Icke forum as part of a huge dot-joining operation. While this was going on, I experienced some interesting small coincidences which are worth bringing together and posting on here. 

The little smile and the gleam in the eye: another sinister scenario

There is an unpleasant phenomenon that occurs in some people’s lives. Unlike other unseen influences, energy vampirism for example, there is not much information available about it. Finding a new example recently was the inspiration for this article.

Stella Gibbons and the little smile
I first became aware of this phenomenon as something that happens in other people’s lives when I was reading about Stella Gibbons’s turbulent early life. 

Her father was domineering, violent and melodramatic:

“In one memorable incident when she was 11, her melancholic father threatened suicide and her mother begged Stella to intervene. Even at that age, she recognized that her father was secretly enjoying the agony he was inflicting on his family, and this pretense and emotional cruelty left a deep impression.”

http://planetpeschel.com/2009/09/stella-gibbons-kills-a-genre-1932/

The little smile is mentioned in Out of the Woodshed: A Life of Stella Gibbons by Reggie Oliver:

“As the ranting went on Stella noticed that Telford had a slight smile on his face and was deriving a secret pleasure from the scene, much as an actor might do from tearing a passion to tatters. She was appalled. To suffer from a fit of despair was one thing; but actually enjoying causing a scene was quite another.” 

This incident speaks for itself; it has been described as a turning point in Stella’s life. Reading about it was a turning point for me: I remembered seeing a few secret little smiles myself, and realised that I was not alone in having such experiences. 

Hebden Bridge and Parliament: a strange suggestion

The Houses of Parliament are reported to be slowly turning into an uninhabitable ruin; an option under consideration is moving MPs and peers out for five years.

A news article about a possible move sees it as something positive:

“…with both MPs and peers in Parliament and the Queen in Buckingham Palace facing the possibility of decamping while renovations are made to their historic homes, is it now the time for power to shift in the UK?”

LSE Professor Tony Travers makes a bizarre suggestion:

“…perhaps this is the perfect opportunity to move power out of London. There are compelling arguments to decentralise the UK by moving Parliament...why don’t we move it to...” he trails off, reaching for Google Maps “... now, where’s sort of in-the-middle? Hebden Bridge! We could put it there.”

Hebden Bridge is just about in the middle of the British Isles, although it is not one of the official geographical centres and is considered to be far up north to people who live in the south of England. Even so, it is a very strange place to select almost at random from a map when there are other, better known places in the area, big cities such as Leeds or Manchester for example. 

Professor Travers may have been joking about moving Parliament to such a small market town, but Hebden Bridge has associations and connections that make a place of interest for several other reasons. 

There are some coincidences involving Parliament too.

Recent small synchronicities

I have a few more curious coincidences to report. 

Best one first:

I came across a hard-line sect called the Exclusive Brethren one day while doing some research for a client. I had heard of the very similar Plymouth Brethren but not these people. I spent some time reading up on them. 

I decided to take a break from work and have a look at a consumer forum that I am a member of. 

Someone had just started a new thread – about the Exclusive Brethren! 

I searched for other references to the EB on the site, but although the forum has more than 10 million signed-up members and huge numbers of posts and has been running since 2003 this was the very first time these Brethren had been mentioned. 

The synchronicity here is scary.

Speaking about energy vampires: some good results

This may just be coincidence, but the person responsible for the recent attack whose effects I described in this article has just left the neighbourhood. 

A move has been on the cards for around five years now: she has been stalling people and stringing them along. Suddenly it all came to a head, and now she is gone.

I am now wondering whether my identification of the source and cause of the familiar symptoms I experienced had anything to do with her sudden departure. Are there unwritten rules about this? Had I blown her cover?

I always felt worse after encountering her as she was hostile and unpleasant - I had been avoiding her for many years because of this - but I did not use the words ‘energy vampire’ to myself until after the recent attack. I used the recovery time to join some dots.

Two more small synchronicities

The tiny coincidences continue.

I was reading a thread on a consumer forum where people were discussing an episode of Dragons’ Den in which a would-be businessman was applying for funding for a parking scheme that he had devised to extort money from people. 

A poster said, “Not watched it but I can imagine it's a horse face looking ‘entrepreneur’ looking to milk that cow, the motorist. I hope he didn't get a penny.”

At that exact moment, an advertisement for an asset management company came on the radio, and I heard someone use the expression ‘carthorse to cash cow’.

I was watching a film on TV called The Eagle, a drama set in Roman Britain; I started reading forum posts when it got too gruesome for me. I heard someone say, “Get your thumbs up” (during a gladiatorial fight scene) just as I was reading the words ‘thumbs up’.

I can’t see anything significant in these expressions, but they are good examples of very minor synchronicities.

Attacks by energy vampires: some details and theories

I am recovering from a recent attack by an energy vampire.

The bad effects are wearing off; I have decided to post the details in the hope that they will be useful to anyone who may have experienced something similar. 

The symptoms lasted for several days: I was continually yawning; I felt very slow and stupid; I was disinclined to do anything except lie around reading and looking for new posts on a forum or two of interest. 

I felt cursed, as if I were under an evil spell. I experienced strange and unpleasant sensations and an inner state that is difficult to convey in words. I felt very depressed; further descriptions that come to mind include feeling desolated, disconnected, doomed, exiled, hopeless, lost, mortally wounded, paralysed, sabotaged and useless. 

I had unpleasant dreams and woke up feeling terrible, sucked dry and fit for nothing.

I missed opportunities to get out in the sunshine because there is no point in just going through the motions while feeling dead inside and unable to enjoy anything. I had also learned the hard way that distress signals attract predators. 

I also had a string of minor accidents. I tripped over a cable and fell heavily, hurting my knee on top of an old injury; I intended to open the lower door on my fridge-freezer and opened the upper one by mistake, banging myself very hard on the forehead; when I did go out I nearly fell down the stairs on the bus. I stupidly walked up several flights of stairs at a station, not even thinking to take the lift or an escalator. This made my knee much worse.

Good role models: Part I Acceptance of responsibility

I knew I was moving in the right circles when I heard several people take responsibility for recent setbacks that they had experienced.

A colleague who had been staying up very late every night for a week trying to restore his PC told me that he had completely messed up an installation. There was no cursing and swearing, no blaming the software manufacturer, the PC, the instructions… just an admission that he had bungled the upgrade. 

The same man got into some trouble with property and finances; he told me that he had listened to bad advice from an estate agent and not to good advice from friends in the property business.

Another example came from someone who had to dismiss her incompetent assistant and re-do all the work he had done on the database. She said that she made a big mistake when she recruited him: she had ignored a few doubts and based her decision on what was on his CV, disregarding her intuition.

Two recent fires in Central London: areas with masonic connections

There have been two fires in Central London recently that are of great interest to people who study unseen influences: one was an underground electric cable fire in Kingsway, the other was in the lift motor room on the roof of a building in Great Portland Street. 

The second fire broke out this afternoon. Both fires caused black smoke to rise into the air over Central London.

Both areas have masonic connections: Freemasons’ Hall, the headquarters of the United Grand Lodge of England, is in Great Queen Street, just off Kingsway; Great Portland Street is close to Portland Place, where No. 33 has some interesting associations:

"The Holroyds were a very well connected family and often had influential guests to stay. For a period after 1835, for instance, Lord Charles Townsend, an immensely wealthy gentleman and Grand Master of the Freemasonic Lodges, inhabited the premises. Many residents have since chanced a glimpse of Lord Charles’ ghost drifting down the main staircase clad in Templar robes!"

Read more about No. 33 Portland Place here.

Speaking about unseen influences: be selective and be careful

I remember reading a long time ago something to the effect that if you start to speak from your heart, in your own voice and your own words, one of two things will happen: some people will vanish from your life and some will change and join you on your new level. 

The first group will feel uncomfortable because you have departed from their scripts, stopped playing their silly games and are no longer enabling and reinforcing their programs; the others will enjoy interacting with an authentic human being, someone who sets a good example, someone who brings out the best in them as opposed to dragging them down and forcing them to act out various scenarios. 

I would say that this is true up to a point, particularly where speaking about everyday topics is concerned. Like attracts like and people find levels where they feel comfortable. It is beneficial to talk to someone whose conversation is positive, direct and nourishing as opposed to being defeatist, confusing and equivalent to junk food; it is enjoyable to talk to someone whose conversation is interesting, informative and helpful as opposed to being predictable like a tape recording and full of useless generalisations and platitudes. 

Speaking about anything related to unseen influences is another matter. 

In my experience, the majority of people will react as if nothing, or nothing interesting or important, has been said or as if a foreign language has been spoken; some will quickly change the subject; a few will vanish as if threatened; a few will seem disconcerted, ‘thrown’ and confused; a few will viciously attack and a very few will step forward and say, “Tell me more”.

Small synchronicities

I have a few further coincidences to report. They are nothing like so spectacular as the ones in the article about the green men, but even small synchronicities seem worth recording.

Red Dwarf
I was sitting on a bus recently thinking about the many outside errands I had planned for the day, when I suddenly remembered that this was the day that all of the episodes from one of the later series of the TV science fiction programme Red Dwarf were being shown. 

I didn’t want to miss anything – I had seen this particular series only once before - so I decided to go straight home after visiting the first shop on my list and save the other tasks for another day. 

Just as I made this decision, someone in the seat behind me started whistling the Red Dwarf theme song:

“It's cold outside
There's no kind of atmosphere
I'm all alone, more or less
Let me fly far away from here…”

I didn’t like to turn round and see what sort of person might have picked up and reacted to what I was thinking about, so now I will never know who it was who read my mind!

Reading and thinking in synch with the TV
I wish that I had made notes of the numerous occasions many years ago when I was reading or thinking about something only to hear the same word or phrase synchronously being spoken on the TV.

It happened so often that I came to think of it as normal.

It is still happening.

For the first time in many years, I started to think about someone I used to work with. He once made a ‘T’ sign with his hands and told me that it was a way to ask for time in baseball. 

Just as I remembered this, someone on the TV made that same sign. 

I was just reading “Open your eyes” in a book when I heard this expression on the TV. 

I have started to record recent occurrences of this phenomenon. Any more really good ones will be reported on here.