Born at the end of November

Some of the writers who have been mentioned in previous articles were born during the last two days of November. 

Here is some interesting information to mark the occasion.

Born on the 29th
November 29th is the 333rd day of the year (except in leap years). 

Amos Bronson Alcott entered this world on the 29th November 1799; Louisa May Alcott, his daughter, was born in the early hours of the 29th in 1832, thus they were born exactly 33 years apart.

C. S. Lewis was born on the 29th November 1898.

Madeleine L’Engle was born on the 29th November 1918.

Born on the 30th
Angela Brazil was born on the 30th November 1868.

L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery was born on the 30th November 1874.

Influences and connections
For the Alcotts, sharing the same birthday was not the only connection. Bronson died in March 1888; Louisa died 2 days later.

C. S. Lewis died one week short of his 65th birthday and one hour before President John F. Kennedy died.

Louisa M. Alcott, L. M. Montgomery and Angela Brazil all wrote classic girls’ books.

One of Madeleine L’Engle’s main characters is called Meg; so is one of Louisa M. Alcott’s.

Madeleine L’Engle said this about books she read in childhood:

“My favorite was Emily of New Moon by Lucy Maude Montgomery, who is better known for her Anne of Green Gables books. Emily wanted to be a writer. Emily and I had a lot in common. Emily lived on Prince Edward Island and I live on Manhattan Island. Both are islands! Emily's father was dying of bad lungs and so was mine…“

Both C. S. Lewis and Madeleine L’Engle have been called Christian myth-makers. When asked whether her work has been compared to his, she replied:

“Yes, it has. I think that the main difference is that C. S. Lewis has more answers and I have more questions…”

C. S. Lewis created a flying horse, wrote a book called Surprised by Joy and married an American called Joy.

Madeleine L’Engle’s winged unicorn is called Gaudior, which has a meaning connected with joy and rejoicing. 

Being born at the end of November means that they were born under the astrological sign of Sagittarius. 

Flying horses, centaurs, philosophy, joyful religion and angels are all very Sagittarian. 

Two similar painful incidents: curse or coincidence?

Thinking about a fairly recent painful incident has reminded me of something similar that happened a long time ago. 

What these events have in common is both the effect they had on me and the suspected cause:  I was hit where it hurt most and an energy vampire was involved. 

In both cases, administrators behaved unprofessionally and out of character.

The empty bank account
Many years ago, I got a horrible, jarring shock when a letter from my bank manager arrived out of the blue informing me that my account had gone overdrawn, and that while he was not unduly concerned about this he thought that I should be made aware of the problem. 

I was always very careful with my financial affairs so I couldn’t understand how this could have happened - for the first time ever. I was expecting two big cheques from a client; they were overdue but I knew that I had enough money in my account to last until they arrived.

Two positive propositions

Accepting that unseen influences are at work in people’s lives can result in depression - and even paranoia - where some of the negative influences are concerned. Here are some positive ideas to help balance the books.

Reversing the minus sign

A while back, the idea came to me that some of the people who have a very negative effect on others could have an equally positive effect if they would only decide to clean up their act and be a force for good instead of evil.

The more innate power to influence people and events someone has, the greater their potential for either causing damage and destruction or making the world a better place.  The more power they have, the more people they can either save or lead to disaster.

This is similar to being overdrawn at the bank: if the sign were changed from minus to plus, a small deficit would become a small credit but a huge overdraft would become a huge credit balance.

Benjamin Franklin, the Washington Monument and synchronicity

I did some research on Benjamin Franklin yesterday evening, in preparation for a visit that I was intending to make to the London house where he lived for 18 years. This is Open House Weekend so entry is free, for the two days only.

I read about the bone fragments that were found during a renovation of the house. Some people believe that Franklin was involved in Satanic rituals! I followed some references to Freemasons, Illuminati, Washington and other usual suspects and ended up reading this:

“If the weather is clear, anyone standing at the centre of the bottom of the west Capitol steps and looking west at 6.45 pm on September 17th will see the Sun standing exactly on top of the Washington Monument. At that instant, the shadow of the Monument will pass straight down the Mall and its point will look like an arrow at the top of the Capitol steps, pointing to its doors."

http://www.washingtondcschamberofsecrets.com/absolute-proof.html

I froze when I saw the date and time: I read this on September 17th, and the time on my laptop as I read it was exactly 6:45 p.m. I know that there is a time difference between Washington and London, but it is still quite a coincidence. 

This information was new to me; I have been to the Washington Monument, but my visit was in the summer.

This was actually the second synchronous event I experienced yesterday. Something very interesting happened when I was visiting another open building in the morning; that is a story for another time perhaps. I wonder what is so special about September 17th – and what happens in Washington when it is a leap year!

Anyway, I went on a free guided tour of Benjamin FranklinHouse today; I saw the bones. The house is well worth a visit.

Today is the 141st anniversary of John Buchan’s birthday

John Buchan was born on this day, August 26th, in 1875.

His birthplace was Perth, Scotland. The house where he was born fell into disrepair, but together with the house next door is being extensively refurbished and set to be turned into offices. Other than a small plaque, there will be no evidence remaining that John Buchan ever lived there.

John Buchan House, 20 York Place, Perth

The new Buchan Story Heritage Museum in Peebles explores his life and works. They are acquiring, preserving and displaying many interesting exhibits. Buchan was the Conservative candidate for Peebles, which is to the south of Edinburgh, and his family had many associations with the area.

The new Buchan Story Museum in Peebles

The John Buchan Way is a commemorative walking route from Peebles to the Borders.

I am not in a position to make pilgrimages to these far-away places to mark the occasion; London, where Buchan came to live early in 1900, is another matter. I am very familiar with many of the central London locations that he visited, lived and worked in and wrote about. I often go through and past them on the bus.

John Buchan and London, his ‘magical city’
This is a very evocative description:

“The spell of London wove itself around me. Fleet Street and the City had still a Dickens flavour, and Holywell Street had not been destroyed. In the daytime, with my fellow solicitor's-clerk, I penetrated into queer alleys and offices which in appearance were unchanged since Mr. Pickwick's day. On foggy evenings I would dine beside a tavern fire on the kind of fare which Mr. Weller affected. Behind all the dirt and gloom there was a wonderful cosiness, and every street corner was peopled by ghosts from literature and history. I acquired a passion for snugness, which I fancy is commoner in youth than is generally supposed. A young man, a little awed by the novelty of everything, is eager to find his own secure niche…

London at the turn of the century had not yet lost her Georgian air. Her ruling society was aristocratic till Queen Victoria's death and preserved the modes and rites of an aristocracy. Her great houses had not disappeared or become blocks of flats. In the summer she was a true city of pleasure, every window-box gay with flowers, her streets full of splendid equipages, the Park a showground for fine horses and handsome men and women. The ritual went far down, for frock-coats and top-hats were the common wear not only for the West End, but about the Law Courts and in the City. On Sunday afternoons we dutifully paid a round of calls. Conversation was not the casual thing it has now become, but was something of an art, in which competence conferred prestige. 

Also clubs were still in their hey-day, their waiting lists were lengthy, and membership of the right ones was a stage in a career. I could belong, of course, to none of the famous institutions; my clubs were young men's clubs, where I met my university friends. One was the Cocoa Tree in St. James's Street, a place with a long and dubious history, of which the bronze cocoa-tree in the smoking-room, stuffed with ancient packs of cards, was a reminder. At that time its membership was almost confined to young men from Oxford and Cambridge. I belonged also to the Bachelors', then situated at the foot of Hamilton Place, a pleasant resort for idle youth, from whose bay- windows one could watch the tide of fashion flowing between Hyde Park and Piccadilly.”

From John Buchan’s autobiographical memoir Memory Hold-the-Door

Although some aspects are unchanged, much of what John Buchan describes has gone for ever - including the foggy Victorian atmosphere. The streets he mentions still exist, but many of the shops and buildings have gone and the people in these streets are of very different demographics with very different lifestyles from those of Victorian and Edwardian gentlemen. I wish I could go back in time and visit John Buchan’s London!

John Buchan may have felt snug and secure in London, but some of his investigative and hunted heroes saw it as a dangerous and sinister place where they were watched, threatened, pursued and attacked. It is possible to retrace the routes that Richard Hannay and Sir Edward Leithen took and visit some of the featured central London locations, but the traffic and the masses of tourists and shoppers make it impossible to recreate the paranoia-inducing atmosphere that the fictional action took place in. The poor air quality is the most dangerous aspect now.

John Buchan and Portland Place

I have mentioned Portland Place in the Marylebone district of central London in connection with Masonic associations and street patterns that look like Olympic torches.

There are also some connections with John Buchan: he lived at no. 76 from 1912 to 1919; he wrote The Thirty-Nine Steps while he was ill in bed there. Richard Hannay resided in a flat in Portland Place; he was known to the public and the police as the Portland Place murderer.

The Georgian terraced house where John Buchan lived was later demolished together with its neighbour and replaced with a bland, contemporary office building. No. 76 recently became the new home of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

As I was visiting the area this week, I decided to take a look at some buildings of interest in Portland Place, no. 76 in particular. 

The notorious no. 33 appears unoccupied. There is nothing to show that John Buchan ever lived in a house on the site of no. 76; there really should be a blue plaque on the outside. There was once a plaque in the foyer, but it went missing during some recent renovations. All we have now is the photographic record.

John Buchan deserves a much better London memorial than this:

Ayn Rand and the Age of Aquarius

We know that Ayn Rand had no time for anything mystical or metaphysical, so it is unlikely that she ever investigated astrology or studied the history of religions. 

She would probably have been dismissive of and shown contempt towards anyone who tried to talk to her about such topics, which means that she was unlikely to have known much if anything about the impending Aquarian Age, where the influence of Aquarius is balanced by the opposing sign of Leo.

Despite this, there are some references to elements associated with the Age of Aquarius in her life and works.  Perhaps it is all just a coincidence - a very uncanny one though. Perhaps she unconsciously picked up something of the spirit of the coming new age. Perhaps she was an unwitting avatar for some of the subtle forces and unseen influences that affect mankind.

Ayn Rand was born under the sign of Aquarius; she was very logical and rational, which is a major feature of the sign. Her ideology was like a religion for her; we would expect a new religion for the new age to be idea-based rather than feeling-based as in the Age of Pisces.

By coincidence, one of her great novels is called The Fountainhead; the outpouring of water for mankind in the form of ideas is a very Aquarian image:

Ayn Rand, Leo and her lion cubs

One of the main characters in Ayn’s autobiographical novel We the Living is called Leo; he was based on someone she knew as a girl back in Russia and never forgot.

Ayn worked in the studios of MGM, whose mascot is Leo the Lion.

Lion cubs are associated with the waxing Age of Aquarius/Leo.

By coincidence, Ayn Rand owned two small stuffed lion cubs, given to her by her husband as a wedding present. She called them Oscar and Oswald. She drew a sketch of them crying (pouring water!):

Two of her unpublished stories are signed by “O. O. Lyons”.

Yet another string of minor incidents

I recently experienced a string of minor misfortunes while out on a shopping trip.There was a time when such incidents would have been very jarring but not any more; I was not affected at all. I even tried to mentally bring some positivity into the atmosphere.

The first incident happened when the bus I was on swept past a bus stop without stopping. A woman who had wanted to get off there became very angry, all the more because the next stop was a fair distance away so she had a long walk back. She swore at the driver.  He said that she should have rung the bell; she insisted that she had rung it. She seemed a bit disturbed and disconnected, and her voice had a strange, unpleasant tone.

The next incident took place in a small supermarket. A woman left her queue to go back and get some item she had forgotten. She took her time, leaving a lot of people waiting. Someone mentioned this, quite politely, to her when she came back – without apologising for the delay - and she took offence and got into an argument with him. Staff had to intervene.

When I was on the bus on the return journey, there was trouble involving a man in a wheelchair who wanted to get off and a passenger who intervened on his behalf. The driver closed the doors to let the ramp down, but she jumped to the wrong conclusion and thought that he was going to move on without letting the man off. She shouted for him to stop. 

It was just a misunderstanding, but the bus driver got annoyed and said, "I'm not blind!" She got annoyed and said there was no need for him to be so rude. As she got off a few stops later, she told the driver that he should not have spoken like that to someone who was just trying to help. 

Soon after that, the bus made a sudden, violent swerve and I was thrown forwards.

A young tourist asked me if she was on the right bus. I tried to help, but it seemed that her English wasn’t good enough for her to understand what I said, despite all my efforts. This was frustrating. I showed her a stop where she could change to a better bus; she produced a map and other papers and said that she knew where she was; I realised that she didn’t really need any help after all. She seemed rather vague. A very minor incident indeed, but I suspect that it was part of the string.