Smoke Signals of the Fire Bird

When I had first connected Smoke Signals to communication, I had done so in a mostly one-sided fashion. I saw smoke as something that obscured - and contemplated that it may be a harbinger of an internet shutdown. In that sense, at least on a micro-scale, I was correct. You may recall that I ended up losing my own internet connection for a while. However, there is that flip-side that I only touched on briefly: though smoke itself clouds our eyes, when it is harnessed, it can facilitate communication. A Smoke Signal is just that.

There's a ton of fire symbolism flying about lately, not the least of which was the manufactured Terry Jones 9/11 Koran-burning fiasco.

So let us peer into the smoke and try to read what it's telling us, eh?

Back in July we traveled through South Dakota, and stopped at the Crazy Horse Memorial. I had a dream the night before that I befriended and was playing with a wolf. I didn't know that I would end up on the land of the Dances with Wolves Lakota the next morning.

Alongside artwork featuring men communicating via smoke signals, there were images of peyote ceremonies. Not only did I see our old friend the Blue Bird, but he was there as a very literal representation of the smoke itself talking to us.

Since we're now looking at plant consciousness that is talking to us from the smoke, we see that these two patterns have a lot of overlap. And, just a few weeks ago, the peyote bird came back into my sights again. Melissa received a wedding gift via the mail from a friend that could not attend. I just thought it was a very pretty necklace and nothing more. But a few days ago, she asked me to help her put it on and the clasp caught my eye.

The bird shape, with the bird's head being used for the loop, gets cut down into the shape of a mushroom, does it not?

That reminds me, I looked into the etymology of the word "Ombudsman" the other day, for unrelated reasons. This bit struck me:

"The origin of the word is found in Old Norse umbuðsmann (accusative) and the word umbuds man, meaning representative (with the word umbud/ombud meaning proxy, that is someone who is authorized to act for someone else)"

Ask any hippie what they would consider to be "the Om-Bud," and I'm pretty sure I know what their answer would be. I'll give you a hint, it starts with 4 and ends in 20.

Now, cannabis and mushrooms are two different creatures and I don't want to over simplify the issue at hand, but "proxy, that is someone who is authorized to act for someone else," sure sounds a lot like words spoken by Terence McKenna and others. I used this quote once before but it bears repeating:

I couldn’t figure out whether the mushroom is the alien or the mushroom is some kind of technological artifact allowing me to hear the alien when the alien is actually light-years away, using some kind of Bell nonlocality principle to communicate. The mushroom states its own position very clearly. It says, ‘I require the nervous system of a mammal. Do you have one handy?’

-Terence McKenna

My own theories take "alien" to be the same as "other." That is not to say that alien intelligences may not exist off-world, simply that they are still a component of the universe (or myself) which I associate as being separate. It is no different if I speak of a man living down the block, or a lifeform living across the galaxy, or a mushroom spore or you the reader of this text right now. There is me AND there is you.

Our commonly recognized ampersand character is a typographic ligature - the combination of two very loaded letters.

ET is the other. This AND That.

"ET phone Om"

We have spent much time looking over the fire-in-the mind pentecost symbolism, but these images remind us that is just as important that we talk of a fire in the heart, as well as a fire in the mind.

"Paranoia happens when you start getting messages via the third eye chakra

with out opening the heart first."

-A Few Shots to Shaman, May 25th

Of course we want our synapses to FIRE....

But what of other elements? WATER on the brain is something we are told we surely do not want. And no one likes being called an AIRhead.

But, EARTH is also seen as positive. While "Healing The Divide," Tom Waits and the Saturnian Kronos Quartet tell us we should always keep a diamond in our mind:

In another song, Get Behind The Mule, he mentions the importance of keeping "a Sapphire in your mind." The sapphire is something I've been collecting notes on for months, but I'm not ready to say what it means yet. I'm thinking it goes back to this image from the first time I wrote about the blue bird:

Another thing that hit me the other day was that the flaming tongues sprouting from the heads of those in the Pentecost images...

...sure look like they've got an idea as to what's going on.

Is the lightbulb, as symbol of our modern flame, a hint to a new sort of divine light, aided by our technological advancements? The internet and computer intelligences have helped me get to the point where I am now. How about you?

Maybe it's a little bit of everything. All of the others. Maybe we're being aided by plant intelligence, and computer intelligence, and extra-terrestrial intelligence, and animal intelligence - even insect.

"Holy Spirit, Batman, my cosmic awareness is tingling."

Now, if you ask me, I'd say we basically have two possibilities. One, is that we're all one infinite consciousness and all these seemingly different entities are an illusion (as are you and I). The other option, is that we are all intertwined, yet separate - and that we need to start looking at ways to coexist in symbiotic relationships.

Spider-Man, the comic character who should know better since he's got those flaming tongues sprouting from his head, put a dangerous spin on the term "symbiotic" for a whole generation if not more.

In the third movie, the black costume just basically lands in Spider-Man's lap with no explanation. It was an alien lifeform that was carried here on a falling meteorite, just like mushrooms may actually have been. (This also syncs nicely with the Flaming Hare, Fiery Birth, iCrator and Step-Ember posts as well as a powerful dream I had two nights ago).

The original comic version of the "symbiotic costume" is a little different. He gets the new alien costume during Marvel's "Secret War"

Interesting that we should be having this conversation while we are currently in the midst of our own Secret War, as narrated by Christopher Knowles.

An interesting factoid from the comic run, the symbiotes were harmed by two things, Fire and Sonics, both of which have become increasingly important symbols in my work.

Click here if you really need a fix of super-geeky symbiote history, but suffice it to say that Spider-Man comics make symbiotic relationships seem evil. Parasitic even.

We've all been in relationships that were one-sided, we've all been taken advantage of. But we should never confuse that with a symbiotic relationship. True symbiotic relationships are founded on trust and love, they provide us with the opportunity to live in harmony.

Whether we are one single universal awareness, or an intricately connected web of individuals who then make up something larger, or a seemingly paradoxical combination of the two - is not something we need to argue over at the moment, since the moral is really the same either way.

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Serpico: starring Osiris, Knowles and Grissom

Gonna make this fast, but I couldn't resist putting this out there. The Mrs. and I are enjoying sunny (but surprisingly cold) California on our Honeymoon. We decided to relax tonight by watching Serpico. I was constantly told I looked like Serpico throughout 2004/2005 and in the film he has a romance with a Ballerina, whereas I am now married to one. What fun!

The movie starts with Serpico getting rushed to the hospital after getting shot just below the eye. Mind you he doesn't lose an eye in the process, but the symbolism is blatant enough. Right away, a chief Green is called to the scene.

I always have my eye out (no pun intended) for Osiris resonators, and maybe more so now that Green is my last name. But this guy disappears from the cast as we go into a feature-length flashback. Finally, Chief Green gets re-introduced in a full scene and what does he immediately say? Only that he had a hard time fitting in with the police crew because of his circumcised member.

Will circumcision have to stand in for castration in this Osiris metaphor? You better believe it! His next line?

Ah, St Patrick's Day, better known around these parts of the interwebs as St Osiris Day.

I first learned of that by reading The Secret Sun blog, done by our good friend, Christopher Knowles. So imagine my surprise when a scene two minutes later begins by someone mentioning that name to someone off screen - who is never seen or heard of in the film.

Just one of those random names of random characters that get tossed around in the back of films and probably mean nothing.

That is until the next time a name is "randomly" called out over a PA system and that name just happens to belong to a figure that our Mr. Knowles is studying in depth.

To learn more about Gus Grissom and his cultish name-dropping in films, hop on over to the Secret Sun.

I should add that it is Osiris-resonating Chief Green that finally gives Serpico that which he wanted for so long. His gold star. Plus, the dirty money that Serpico disdains is referred to over and over again as "the Nut."

StarCup: A Hare in the Grail is Ni in the Bush

A bit back, the Sync Whole did a series on the Star Cup, which overlapped with a lunar eclipse and dealt mainly in the idea of a merging of two perceived opposites - you know, Union.

A few days before Melissa and I got married - celebrated our Union - we needed to unwind from the stress of planning and preparing for the big day. We chilled and watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail for what must be the buzzillionth time. This image from the inside booklet struck me as if I had never seen it before.

Putting the rabbit in the holy grail adds a whole other spin to the image. We saw how the rabbit and the moon already go together in the Flaming Hare post, but note the quote that reads "Inspired Lunacy!" Luna, of course, meaning the moon. So here we have a quite literal representation of the StarCup with two big nods to the lunar eclipse.

But perhaps I should go into the idea of the StarCup a little further. It was explained as being the union of This and That, Male and Female, Yin and Yang, Ego and Id, etc. etc. etc.

This obviously plays into questions of Individuality and Oneness.

While many will debate the finer points of these two seemingly opposing ideals, the StarCup was meant as a metaphor to teach us that both are true at once. We are both Separate and Whole. (And if you're ready for a bigger mindfu3k, realize that we are also creator, created, creating [and destroyer, I might add] all at once as well. See Toure's iCreator post for more on that beautiful truth).

How much of our dualistic thinking is a product of Hegelian constructs? What is the fate for succumbing to duality?

In the same Python movie, there is a famous scene with "The Knights who say Ni." These knights shout the word "Ni" as a sort of verbal weapon. We had just examined the fact that "Ni" in Japanese is "Two." So, perhaps the reason Arthur and his round table were so flustered by the word "Ni" is because they were being shouted at in Hegelian terms of duality. While they were seeking union with the holy grail (StarCup) others sought to divert them from their path with thoughts of "Two." Bear in mind, the last obstacle/distraction the Knights who say Ni throw before Arthur is a red herring.

So, if we are seeking to find balance (or Union) between our seemingly opposed halves - we should learn to integrate all that they have to teach us.

I just covered some of the Eco/ECCO/Echo syncs I'd encountered in the last post. I am now thinking that this may be a product of and/or a representation of the Id and the collective unconscious.

I just saw a bus ad for a show that looks like a rehashed Dharma and Greg, but that would also seem to confirm my hunch.

Ego meets Eco.

Ego meets Id.

See how the "Ego" and "Id" resonators each hold a cup?

This synopsis of the show describes the "Ego" character as a "Playboy"

Playboy=Bunny

Everything begins to (e)merge in Union

I don't often write about politics anymore - much of that conversation just seems like noise and an unnecessary aspect of human existence. But, I understand that the interest I had in political affairs a few years ago was something I needed to experience or I never would have met my wife. So allow me a brief-as-possible backstory, then we'll dive into the synchro-goodies:

The journey

Though no one in my family ever discussed politics or paid it much attention, I grew up drawing cartoons of a character named Umpa, a monkey that was forced into slave labor for a television studio that oppressed the masses via tv programming. Umpa spearheaded a rebellion. I had no politics, sans seeking freedom and opposing authoritarianism. Probably a normal emotion for a child to express - though perhaps an unusual way to express it.

Immediately after 9/11, when I saw my skyline altered and the place I had my HS prom demolished, I was not angry but a bit saddened. However, over the next few days and weeks the propaganda was turned on full force and I was admittedly swayed into the camp of blindly angry Americans.

In 2005, I had my first psychedelic experience and all the programming flew out the window. And I mean all of it - not just the post-9/11 fear-mongering, but all the stuff that had been put into my head throughout my life. This is something that can only be fully understood by someone who has had an ego-death experience.

I existed for a short while with a great inner peace and felt as if I was at one with creation. But, slowly, my ego began to rebuild itself - albeit with new parameters. I felt as if I had to atone for my role in supporting Bush's attack on Iraq and worked to hold him accountable. I attended a lecture on the Impeachment process at a church up in Harlem. That was it - I attended a lecture. I was now considered a terrorist. Over the next few days, I was repeatedly visited by federal agents in black suits who wanted to intimidate me. They broke into my house and searched through my belongings (which, according to the Patriot Act, I cannot tell you about or I am committing another "crime"). It was at this point that I realized what these guys would do to hold onto their imagined power structure, and I was driven to do more research and spent a good deal of time in the depths of conspiracy literature.

When the 2008 election-cycle came about, I supported Ron Paul's candidacy and worked on what I thought was a campaign against tyranny. By February 2008, Ron Paul's run was essentially over and I had to catch up on all my personal responsibilities that I had let slide during the campaign. Realizing that campaign politics were a product of the very system I opposed, I looked for an outlet that better suited me. I began to write about Umpa again, after oh so many years, in a book that would become Look At All The Happy Creatures.

Months passed, and I received a phone call asking if I wanted to go with some of the Ron Paul supporters from NYC out to an event he was holding in Minnesota. It was being held next to, and in opposition of, the RNC. Something told me I had to go - a feeling deep inside, that I had not heard in a long time, told me to say yes and make the trip.

Very often, this is how synchronicity works. We have to travel the long road to get to the right place at the right time.

On September 2nd 2008, in a crowd of 10,000 people, I spotted her. An intense wave of - what can I call it but destiny or a guiding light - drew me to her. Melissa had a glow about her and I knew that she was my future. I tapped her on the elbow and said, "excuse me miss." Two years later, to the day, we married.

Union

There has been much talk lately, both on the national political spectrum and on a personal synchromystic spectrum, of gay marriage. California's Prop 8 was featured on the Sync Whole and is still resonating over on Michael's blog, where he has connected it to the now-familiar 88.

I guess this is a product of my own journey, but what amazes me is that people are still looking to be recognized by The State. Why seek a license (essentially permission) from anyone? I don't care if you are gay or straight, if you find love in this world, you'd better embrace it - and screw what anybody else thinks.

There have been many family members and friends that have offered their advice over the last few months - telling us that we should register for a marriage license, that it would make life easier. But, that's something that doesn't even pop onto my radar anymore, and, if I am forced to think of it, I am repelled by it. What does a third-party bureaucracy have to do with love? What does it have to do with anything?

Though I categorize the political philosophy of Happy Creatures as Libertarian, that's really because it is a less loaded word than anarchy. My biggest issue with Libertarians is that, try as they might to oppose the system, they are still playing somebody else's game. I'm done opposing anybody's system - be that governmental or conspiratorial shadows. I'm not going to fight anybody or anything. I just disregard the noise. I embrace the love.

Kurt Vonnegut, while very often espousing poor political advice, inadvertently gives an amazing metaphor for this way of thinking in the prologue to Timequake. He's talking about a method for writing. I'm talking about a method for living.

"Ernest Hemingway in 1952 published in Life magazine a long short story called The Old Man and the Sea. It was about a Cuban fisherman who hadn't caught anything for eighty-four days. The Cuban hooked an enormous marlin. He killed it and lashed it alongside his boat. Before he could get it to shore, though, sharks bit off all the meat on the skeleton.

I was living in Barnstable Village on Cape Cod when the story appeared. I asked a neighboring commercial fisherman what he thought of it. He said the hero was an idiot. He should have hacked off the best chunks of meat and put them in the bottom of the boat, and left the rest of the carcass for the sharks.

It could be that the sharks Hemingway had in mind were critics who hadn't much liked his first novel in ten years, Across the River and into the Trees, published two years earlier. As far as I know, he never said so. But the marlin could have been that novel.

And then I found myself in the winter of 1996 the creator of a novel which did not work, which had no point, which had never wanted to be written in the first place. Merde! I had spent nearly a decade on that ungrateful fish, if you will. It wasn't even fit for shark chum.

I had recently turned seventy-three. My mother made it to fifty-two, my father to seventy-two. Hemingway almost made it to sixty-two. I had lived too long! What was I to do?

Answer: Filet the fish. Throw the rest away."

This is also good advice on how to write a blog post, so let me assume I've made my point and give you what you really came here for...

In our last post, we overlapped heavily with the Fiery Birth post from the Sync Whole. The US Open logo I wanted to write about looked exactly like the meteor impact placard they found near a Canadian lake. They later added more content to that post, and made it even more in sync. They went into tennis syncs as well and then wrote about two weddings that started a conversation on Union. All this, days before our wedding!

Here is the US Open poster I had stared at in the subway. It makes the logo look even more like a meteor by the way it flies over the city. See the Sync Whole's follow-up to the Fiery Birth, a post about a meteor crashing in Columbia on September 5th, for a record of just how strong the flow is these days. The hits just keep on coming!

And, speaking of great balls of fire, I would be remiss if I did not point out that the US Open is held at the Arthur Ashe stadium!

By passing through the center of the tennis racket, the ball becomes even more resonant of a sun by creating a circumpunct. It also reminds me of a bullseye. Kinda like the Martian impact crater (formed by more falling celestial bodies) we were shown on August 4th of all days.

Perhaps, telling us to find our center, this bullseye is found again on the cover for the Pink Floyd collection, Echoes.

Note how much of this current study stems out of a look at the symbolism of the fires of the Pentecost, and the man who has just passed the bullseye (emerged from his center) is on fire.

Echoes

The word "echoes" is another familiar sign these days. Just as I was typing "echoes" into google search to find that album art, the auto-fill gave me "Echoes of the Rainbow," a movie with a poster that brings us back to the August 4th double-rainbow and features a cross (X-marks the spot).

But I can't think of "Echo" without thinking of John Lilly's ECCO, you know, those beyond-our-perception buggers who control coincidences here on earth. While I can't attest for the things Lilly believes he discovered while exploring the human limits of psychedelic intake - I do not entirely dismiss them either. Lord knows I learned a lot from my experiences.

I like how the artwork done for Lilly's ECCO from the futurehi website features dolphins. Which brings us to Ecco the dolphin - a game brought to us by Genesis. I never knew this, but that game also involved time-travel and space beings.

Dolphins crossed paths with meteors and comets again recently in this NosisTV video:

After watching that video, what's funny to me is that, with so much talk of Panspermia lately, I had used the Peach tree as an analogy for the possible propagation of plant consciousness. I said that a peach tree gives you delicious fruit for you to eat so you'll crap it out at a distance with your own fertilizer. Would not the Mushroom spore or Cannabis plant invite you to cultivate it so that it can continue on and use your nervous system when necessary?

That's an explanation for "the green movement" I haven't heard yet.

That reminds me, you may have noticed the name change over on the side there. When I realized that it may be the cause for all the Osiris-syncs I was experiencing, I had briefly mentioned that I would be changing my last name to Green in an older post. In one of our first phone conversations, Melissa and I spoke about favorite colors. We both adore the color green. I said, super early on in that first or second conversation, that if we ever got married we could change our last name to Green. And so we have.

We passed through the center...merged...

...and emerged green.

Oh, and we passed through the marriage stargate at exactly 4:02:32 PM.

My initials change from (AJA)111 to (AJG)117, which is Melissa's birthday, so that's pretty cool. That also means that I'm now AG which is 17 in numerology terms and the element silver.

Green is the color of the heart chakra, and therefore quite appropriate for a celebration of love.

But green has its modern connection to Echo/Ecco as well, since we often see the pairing of "green" and "eco."

gotta love that green sun there, eh?

We held our wedding at Bear Mountain, which encodes the B&M combo that is always familiar around here, but that wasn't the only interesting sync. There are four cabins at Bear Mountain (Beaver, Spring, Echo, and Summit) and we were going to rent one out. The closest one to the wedding site was Beaver, but I didn't want to tell people I was getting married at the Beaver lodge - just gives off the wrong vibe. I didn't like Summit, so we had to decide between Spring and Echo. "Spring" sounds nice, but a bit plain. I wondered if "Echo" was a bit too loaded.

Then, as we're making this choice, a guy on the street randomly hands me this book:

Suffice it to say, we chose "Echo"

And, there is another explanation to "Echo" besides that provided by Lilly. I recall that I had made a connection between The Green Man and reverberating sound. We had about 50 people at our wedding. Knowing us, it was probably 51.

I know this post is a little all over the place, but that's how it is. Our wedding was a wonderful celebration from the heart - and it overlapped with all these other intellectual pursuits. I don't wish to give the impression that I believe our day was controlled by John Lilly's ECCO or mushroom spores floating through space or anything else. Instead, I think that following a non-judgmental path of synchronicity we were able to recognize patterns even within our most special day. Honestly, there's just too many to recount here. But, that's the way Melissa and I have travelled together since we met. Never judging, always flowing, always loving.

On September 11th (boy is it cheap to fly that day) we leave for our HONEY-MOON in the fire-resonant land of Kali-Fornia.