Journeys into the bright world

Again, the reality-testing part of my mind jumped in, making it supremely important to discern whether the sky really was this color. I wanted so much for that azure stretch of heaven to accord with my garden world, and for subjective and objective realms to blend in a single interacting continuum. "It's impossible. The sky can't be that blue just because I so much want it to be. Is it really the color or am I just imagining?"

"It's blue." Howard assured me, laughing. Indeed it was, and remained so for another ten minutes, at which point the clouds closed in and the heavens returned to their usual lowering gray. Assured of being back in our charcoal-shaded dimension I stole another glance at Howard. His was still the face of the icon, and I still loved him to the point of blasphemy

For several years I had been giving much thought to the issue of synchronicity- the so-called meaningful coincidence. A long chapter on this subject contained in my book Astrology and Time presents the thesis that it is within the power of the mind to manufacture helpful or adverse coincidences. In my own case, as long as there is a sense of being alined with the universal Will items craved appear with absurd regularity a few days, or even hours, after the desire is formulated. Larger benefits also come but require longer to materialize.

Ever since our encounters with the goddess Ketamine synchronous events had been occurring with astounding consistency, as though the distinctions between inner realms of thought and outer realms of mundane circumstances were melting away. Etymological-ly, the word "psychedelic" derives from the Greek psyche (mind) and delos (manifesting). Now this term was acquiring new depths of meaning as chance happenings dovetailed with the thought processes that were manifestations of our individual minds. Omens, signs, and portents justified themselves while the whole universe seemed plastic, so easily did its lineaments conform to the conjurations of my visions, dreams and reflections. Yet I desperately wished to refrain from deluding myself on this issue.

An example of synchronicity had occurred the previous spring when my friend John Dunshee died of cancer of the bone. For several months I had been living in my motor home which John kindly allowed me to park in the oak grove below his house. Gazing at the largest of oaks, a gnarled giant of a tree, I kept thinking, "That tree is going to fall down." The thought saddened me because in some way the oak reminded me of John.

"That's nonsense," my friends replied when I voiced this fear. "That oak has been there at least five hundred years. Why should it fall down now?" That winter, however, the tree did fall down and shortly thereafter John died.

Now musing over the blue sky which my mind seemed to have solicited, my thoughts turned again to John and the tree and to the growing synchrony between objective and subjective spheres of our departmentalized existence. Was that our purpose in being-to manifest the archetypes of which our physical plane selves are but dimly focused projections? To what extent are we all living legends, the dreams of some great mind that imagines our coming and goings in order to amuse Itself with the play of creation? By any standards it was becoming spooky-as though I too could make things happen through wishcraft. This was the stuff of which paranoia is born, but yes, the sky had been blue, and Howard's countenance in that particular state of repose indisputably was the face on the icon.

Later that day I picked up Eden Gray's A Complete Guide to the Tarot from our bookshelf and turning to the page entitled "The Empress" read: