The uncanny timing of an unwelcome letter

I have mentioned in the past a particular form of unconscious sabotage, one that involves timing. Madeleine L’Engle’s Zachary Grey for example is an expert at taking actions that might have been deliberately arranged to deplete or even wipe out his victim’s inner resources and reserves shortly before she needs to draw heavily on them. How could he have possibly known what was going to happen?

I have on several occasions been on the receiving end of such actions myself. The introductory article gives examples of letters that ‘by chance’ arrived at the worst possible time:

“Family letters were infrequent, so the timing of these two was very significant. It is amazing how these unconscious saboteurs can ensure that their victims are hit where and when it hurts most.”

Another such letter arrived out of the blue recently, just before I received some very depressing news. This time however I was not badly affected, just slightly annoyed. If this was yet another attempted attack, it fell very flat!

The unwelcome and unnecessary letter
A letter arrived in the post from a family member I have minimal contact with, offering to send someone round with anything I might need. This was completely unnecessary; I replied immediately that I had not got the coronavirus, had plenty of supplies, could easily get more and had people I could call on for assistance if required.

An hour or two later, I got an email from a friend telling me that her father had died. I knew that he had been ill, but thought that he was recovering. He was an exceptionally nice and kind man; this was not a devastating, heart-breaking bereavement, but I felt very sad indeed to think that I would never see him again.

What a coincidence that the only communication apart from Christmas cards that I have received from this person for many years should arrive just before I had some very bad news, and, conversely, that the only very upsetting news of this kind I have received for many years should have been preceded by this unexpected and unwelcome letter.

Cults, occultists and Stella Gibbons: Part V

Four articles so far; what more can there be to say about Stella Gibbons’s novel The Shadow of a Sorcerer?

One element of particular interest is something I think of as the big anomaly, where people who seem to have everything behave as if they have nothing. They are the exact opposite on the inside of what they appear to be on the outside. They are a combination of glamorous image and empty desperation.

I have some ideas to explore about this phenomenon.

Only one thing to live for

I said in a previous article that it is perfectly natural for some people to feel that there is nothing for them but a life of unbearable drabness. Their lives may indeed be very restricted, and there may be little hope of any improvement in the future.

I also gave examples of cases where this feeling was not natural and not based on reality: it was induced by an unscrupulous black magic practitioner.

The feeling some people have that there is only one thing to live for and that if they lose it or don’t get it they will be destroyed is also understandable in some, perhaps extreme, cases. The last ship might really have sailed or be about to sail. Sometimes one chance is all we ever get. Some people may be devastated because they know very well that they could have made the world a better place for many others if they had only got what they wanted.

However, it is very strange when people with many options, people such as Madeleine L’Engle’s Zachary Grey and Stella Gibbons’s Esmé Scarron, feel this way and behave like desperate predators who have pounced and missed, howling in rage and disappointment because now they will starve to death.

What is going on here? We can only speculate.

Cults, occultists and Stella Gibbons: Part IV

This article covers more elements that Stella Gibbons’s sorcerer Esmé Scarron and Madeleine L’Engle’s Zachary Grey have in common and goes into more detail about the final betrayal and showdown.

Zachary Grey, Esmé Scarron and the big anomaly

These two people are very different when it comes to attributes such as age, generation, nationality, background and lifestyle yet they both have the power to remotely influence people, they both have a similar bad effect on the girls they target and they both behave in much the same way when faced with the loss of the girl. Once again, the similarities are uncanny.

I described a big anomaly in Zachary Grey’s life here. Sometimes his glamorous image disappears and he becomes lost and frightened.

Scarron is much the same. He begins by appearing mysterious, glamorous and charming, then he is shown to be sinister and malevolent and finally he is seen as empty and pitiable.

Just as Zachary tells Vicky Austin that she is all that stands between him and chaos and she is his reason to live, Scarron begs Meg Lambert to help him and says that she is his only hope.

Describing this anomaly and making connections is much easier than finding answers to the questions it raises:

If they are so superior and their lives are so marvellous, why are they so desperate, why do they stake everything on one outcome and why are they destroyed when they lose?

I have had some ideas about this, which will appear in the next and final article in this series.

Cults, occultists and Stella Gibbons: Part III

A few of the common elements in Stella Gibbons’s Shadow of a Sorcerer and the Madeleine L’Engle books in which Zachary Grey appears have been mentioned in the first two articles.

There are more similarities to come, but first here is a summary of the remainder of the Sorcerer story:

How the story ends

The arrival at the language school of a young man called Humphrey gives Meg Lambert someone other than Esmé Scarron to think about. Humphrey is a worthy, dependable type and only 10 or so years older than Meg. Her mother likes him very much. Unfortunately he is engaged, and his fiancée Ruth soon comes out to join him at the guest house/language school in Austria.

Meg, her mother and some of the other students including Humphrey and Ruth take a short sightseeing trip to Venice.

An attempt by Ruth to make Meg see reason about Scarron backfires; her well-meaning criticism pushes Meg into doing something drastic. She tells Scarron on the phone that she will give him her final answer in person at his palazzo. Then, in revenge for the pressure to forget Scarron, she hits back by telling the others in her party a big lie: she says that she has just got engaged to him over the phone. This hurts her mother terribly and confounds the others.

Scarron sets out for Venice. He has asked his ex-wife and daughter to keep away from his palazzo, but this backfires and they go there to sabotage his plans. This is their big chance to take some revenge for what he has done to them. They reveal many of Scarron’s secrets to the Lamberts, including his age and his experiments on his son and daughter.

Scarron makes one last attempt to capture Meg by bombarding her with more waves of pity, but it doesn’t work.

Cults, occultists and Stella Gibbons: Part II

Going through Stella Gibbons’s novel The Shadow of a Sorcerer in the light of what I have learned about cults, occultists, energy vampires and other relevant topics since I first read it has provided enough material for a whole series of articles.

I am particularly interested in the connections I can now see between some of the material in this book and material in previous articles about cults, very different books and very different people.

The first article introduced the two main characters and ended with a description of some of the harm Esmé Scarron had done by abusing his powers and knowledge.

The next topics to be covered are the dreadful effect that Scarron’s attempts to influence her have on his chosen disciple Meg Lambert and the cult leader/cult member aspect of their relationship.

Many of the unpleasant symptoms that Meg experiences are very familiar: they are typical of the negative effects that energy vampires and black occultists have on their victims.

The unbearably drab existence

Early on in the book, thinking about the delightful and exciting life that Scarron could offer her makes Meg’s life and future in England appear unendurably drab in comparison. It seems that there will be nothing for her back home but ordinary people and pastimes, ageing morons, a dull colourless existence with no beauty and no sense of romantic excitement and nothing to look forward to.

Many people have had a taste of this feeling, especially ambitious people of ability who feel trapped in a limiting environment and are desperate to escape from a godforsaken place full of deadbeat losers, but in Meg’s case there is something sinister at work.

Another look at Madeleine L’Engle’s Zachary Grey

I thought at the time that my article about Zachary Grey - or Gray - contained all the relevant material of interest; I have since found a few more significant points and incidents and noticed some intriguing connections.

The bad boys are a bad omen

In The Moon By Night, Vicky Austin and her family stay in a series of camping grounds as they travel across the USA. 

There are some unpleasant incidents during these stopovers. The first one happens just before Zachary Grey comes into Vicky’s life, and it could be interpreted as a bad omen.

Vicky feels edgy and rather scared when they arrive at one campsite, and these feelings are soon justified. As Vicky and her family are eating a meal, a car drives by very fast. It passes them again, and one of the occupants throws a glass bottle out of the window; it hits the side of the Austins' station wagon, shattering with a sound like a bomb going off. The car comes back again, and a gang of young ‘hoods’ gets out. One of them is wearing black trousers and a black leather jacket, a cheap copy of what Zachary Grey often wears.

Vicky’s father gets rid of them, but not long afterwards the Austins hear a vehicle approaching and are afraid that the gang of thugs is returning. This time, it is Zachary Grey and his parents. This is Zachary’s first appearance in Vicky’s life.

The black bear is a bad sign

I described Vicky’s symbolic encounter with a skunk and its connection with a letter from Zachary in the first article; this time around I noticed an incident involving a black bear.

Soon after meeting Zachary for the first time, Vicky walks around the campsite with him and hears his cynical and pessimistic philosophy of life. Later that evening, while walking back from the wash-room, she sees something dark behind her. At first she thinks it is one of the gang, but then realises that it is an animal, probably a bear. Her family don’t believe that she saw a bear.

Twice during the night they are wakened by a loud crash: something keeps knocking their ice-box over. In the morning they see large paw marks everywhere. The ranger tells them that it was a black bear and it was looking for food.

Cults, occultists and Stella Gibbons: Part I

I have both learned about and been reminded of many things since I produced the article about white and black magic in the books of Stella Gibbons. 

While re-reading her biography recently, I saw something that prompted me to take another look at her novel The Shadow of a Sorcerer. I noticed a lot more relevant material this time around and made some new connections, so there is something to add to what I have previously written about this book.

First, what I saw that gave rise to this article:

Stella Gibbons and Aleister Crowley

When I first read Out of the Woodshed by Reggie Oliver, I was mainly interested in the details of Stella Gibbons’s early life. Much of the other information didn’t register, and I overlooked two references to infamous people. This time around, their names jumped out at me. One was Adolf Hitler - his connection with Stella Gibbons has been described elsewhere - and the other was the occultist Aleister Crowley. 

Her nephew tells us that Stella Gibbons once saw Crowley outside the Café Royal in central London. I don’t know the date, but guess that it was in the 1930s. 

Her impression was unfavourable. When her nephew asked hopefully if this was because of Crowley’s air of supernatural malignancy, she said no, what repelled her was that he had the look of a man who was desperately trying to attract attention. 

This is spot on. Such people have forfeited their inner sources of sustenance and are often disconnected and empty, so they need to live off others to fill the void. They may be prisoners and hostages too, desperate for someone or something to save them. 

After reading about this encounter, I remembered Esmé Scarron, the evil occultist in The Shadow of a Sorcerer, and wondered whether Stella Gibbons had used Crowley as the inspiration for this character. Her book was published in 1955, so there were many years after the sighting in which she could have talked to people and done some research.

Whatever the source, Esmé Scarron is a person of great interest.  

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 whatever 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.