Category: Synchronicity

A Powerful Convergence

Posted C. LaVielle7 CommentsPosted in Getting Published, Gifts from the Multiverse, Goddess, Synchronicity

When we think of a convergence, we usually envision two or three shining planets coming together in the velvet black night sky and astrologers urgently discussing what such a striking event might mean. But that’s not the kind of convergence I’ll be musing about here. This post is about the convergence of choices/events; how one thing leads to another which leads to another which leads to a point in time where they all converge and, with lots of help from the gods, something amazing happens. These convergences occur all the time. They are the small and large miracles of our lives and most of them go unnoticed. But there was one recent convergence that the whole world noticed. On January 17th Kaleb Whitby had a miraculous escape from certain death. In the dark, cold predawn his pickup was completely squashed between two big rigs during a freeway pile up on I-84 near Baker City, Oregon. He crawled out of the wreckage with only a few… Read More »

The Way to Elefsina

Posted C. LaVielle3 CommentsPosted in Greece, Synchronicity

The ruins of the site where the Eleusinian Mysteries were performed are in Elefsina, an industrial town located on the Saronic Gulf between Athens and Corinth. We almost decided not to go there because the guide books were very unenthusiastic about the place, giving descriptions like “surrounded by oil refineries and factories” and describing the ruins as “scattered”.* But all our pagan friends who had been there looked at me in horror when I told them we were going to skip the site. “Oh, but you must go!” they said. “It’s definitely worth the trip.” So we went. But it wasn’t easy. As we drove out of the car rental at the Athens airport it looked like a simple trip. Almost every freeway sign said “Elefsina” and had a big, white arrow pointing the way. Little did we know that this would be our first encounter with the Greek street sign trick of being obvious and clear until you get close to where you want… Read More »

Yup, It Really Is All Connected

Posted C. LaVielle3 CommentsPosted in Major arcana, Synchronicity, Tarot

While I was researching and writing my posts on The Tower two catastrophic events happened in our household:  My husband developed water on his lungs from a previous fall–he’d landed on his left side. The symptoms mimicked a heart attack and we went through a harrowing emergency room ordeal. They drained 1.3 liters of fluid from between the plural linings around his lung that looked exactly like Killians Red ale. It even had a nice head of froth. I don’t think either one of us will be able to drink that beer again.  Leo, our cat, fell out of a tree trying to escape the 4th of July neighborhood fireworks. Who’d a thunk the heavy artillery would start at three in the afternoon? He suffered some severe internal damage and emotional shock. A friend of ours is a shaman that is very good with animals. She did some work with him and said his soul had shattered into many pieces and eight entities… Read More »

Synchronicity Strikes Again

Posted C. LaVielle2 CommentsPosted in Synchronicity

The same day I published my blog about rites of passage, I went to visit a 93-year-old friend of mine who is dying of colon cancer. I asked her how she was doing. “Not well,” she replied. “I’m waiting for my sons to get here so I can say good by, and then I plan to do away with myself.” “Is it the pain?” “No, I have medicine for that. I’m just so tired. I do nothing but eat and sleep. It’s time for me to go.” The next day I went to visit another elderly friend in an assisted living center who had fallen and broken her hip. I worry that she won’t walk again and that this is the beginning of a downward spiral. When I got home, my husband and I went to visit my niece and her family. Zeus, the family dog who had welcomed both of their girls into the world, was feeble and in pain and had quit eating.… Read More »

Happy Beltane!

Posted C. LaVielle5 CommentsPosted in Synchronicity, Wheel of the Year

Spring is bursting out in Portland. The flowers are amazing this year. We have a huge, century-old Gravenstein apple tree in our back yard that usually puts out a few blossoms every year just to remind us that it really is an apple tree. This year it was covered in pinkish white froth and smelled divine. Flowers always remind me of Beltane 2007, which I spent in Glastonbury, England at Chalice Well Gardens. We stayed at the Chalice Well guesthouse, so I was in the gardens as much as possible, drinking the healing waters, meditating, and admiring the flowers. The Gardens have an immense presence and vitality composed of the combined spirits of its plants, insects, spiders, fungi, and bacteria. It’s almost palpable. One morning as I was meditating and playing in the powerful energy lines that pass through the Garden, I heard a faint hum. I opened my eyes and saw a bee, hovering so close to my face that my eyes almost crossed.… Read More »

Vampires, Sevastopol, and Leo Tolstoy

Posted C. LaVielle6 CommentsPosted in Synchronicity

There are an amazing number of chilling accounts of what we would call vampirism in the historical records of Eastern Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. (see The Secret History of Vampires: Their Multiple Forms and Hidden Purposes) And so I decided that the vampire in my second novel would be from 19th century Sevastopol. He was a civilian doctor there during the Crimean War and the Russian army “requested” that he stay and work in the field hospital when the British and French fleets arrived, captured the area south of the city, and began bombing. The Siege of Sevastopol has been lurking in the back of my brain since I studied it in high school European History. I don’t remember anything I learned about it and I’m even a little shaky on the particulars of the Crimean War in general, but the name sounds so romantic and exotic that I thought it would be fun to have Iskander, my vampire, live in Sevastopol… Read More »

Wish Me Luck!

Posted C. LaVielle6 CommentsPosted in Getting Published, Synchronicity, Young Adult Fantasy

The rewrite of the first few chapters is complete. After several back and forth e-mails of suggestions on her part and revisions on mine, Jessica, my editor, says it’s “in good shape.” She wanted me to tighten it a bit more, and I tried, I really did, but I was only able to pare it down by a sentence here and there. She doesn’t like the title either. She says it needs to be more active and let the reader know that this is a fantasy. I’ve thought about shortening it to The Remaking, or possibly Forging the Blade. I also had Kris, a friend who teaches English and Writing at a community college, take a look at it. She critiqued the manuscript in a totally different way than Jessica. As an English teacher, she mostly looked at sentence structure and length and word usage. And because she’s only read the first three chapters she was able to give me a viewpoint of someone who’s… Read More »

Major Arcana, The Hero’s Adventure: Wheel of Fortune: Epilogue

Posted C. LaVielle14 CommentsPosted in Major arcana, Synchronicity, Tarot, The Hero's Journey, Uncategorized

The Wheel turned for us today. I was fixing breakfast when my husband walked into the kitchen and handed me the phone. “This man is saying Paris (our cat) is dead. Talk to him, I’m going up to get dressed.” “Where are you?” I asked the caller. He was right outside the house. Two of the utility guys that were putting in a gas line at a neighbor’s house met me as I came running out. Their faces were grim with concern and sympathy as they handed me Paris’s collar. “We were over there working and when we looked up he was laying in the street. He was up on our rig earlier saying hello. Really nice cat.” “Where is he?” “He’s just over there ma’am,” One of them said. He put his arms around me when I started to cry and patted me gently on the back. “If you let me know where you want me to put him, I’ll take him there for… Read More »

Two of the Worst Things That Could Happen Just Happened (Continued)

Posted C. LaVielle12 CommentsPosted in Getting Published, Major arcana, Synchronicity, Tarot, Young Adult Fantasy

Thing 2: A few days after I got The Letter I went to the library to find a book to read. I was too lazy to check my list of books that I need to read, I just wanted something to relax and entertain. It would be nice to be able to to say that a sense of foreboding settled over me as I approached the New Books rack, but it didn’t. I just picked a likely looking book, The Last Days of Madame Rey, skimmed the blurb, and checked it out. It was several days before I got a chance to sit down and begin reading it. The prologue was titled “The Fool”. Oh good, I thought, a book with a tarot theme. When I got to the first chapter and it was titled “The Magician: I began to panic. I looked ahead. Sure enough, the second chapter was “The High Priestess” and the third was “The Empress”. To my horror, A.W. Hill, the… Read More »

The Earth Serpent

Posted C. LaVielle2 CommentsPosted in Major arcana, Synchronicity, Tarot

My husband is a geologist and a geotechnical engineer. Every day we sit together at our computers. I’m writing blogs and books and also bills for his consulting business. He’s writing reports and doing “research”. As he works, I hear the occasional mutter about “test boring 1” or “shear strain” or “pore pressure”. But the other day I heard “Amazing!” and “Just like a huge serpent moving through the earth!” “What?!” I yelped. I’d just finished the Lion Serpent Sun blog and had snakes on the brain. The Geomancer elucidated, and I will paraphrase his words: The Cascadia Subduction Zone runs offshore along the coasts of Northern Oregon, Washington, and Vancouver Island. It’s where the Pacific tectonic plate dives under the continental plate and causes earthquakes. No surprises here. Every first year geology student understands plate tectonics. Seismologists in the US and Canada have come together to form the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN). They’ve installed a vast array of sensors from northern California through… Read More »