“Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation…” Henry Miller and a strange tale…

“Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight are unimportant.”

Henry Miller

Good old Henry Miller – he could always be relied upon to bring sex into everything. And I love the quote! But it is a red herring, folks. This post is purely about what may – or may not – have been an experience of reincarnation. I will, as ever, be most interested to have your reactions.

Spiral of Rebirth
Spiral of Rebirth

Responses to last week’s  X Files post have been intriguing: it generated several purchases of my book “Wisps from the Dazzling Darkness”, and a number of emails telling, very privately, of readers’ uncanny, inexplicable, but undoubtedly real experiences. But no-one was prepared to leave an account of one of theirs publicly in a comment  – thereby validating my own feeling that such matters are so productive of private unease that public exposition is for most of us, a step too far.

It took me a long time and a prolonged period of enforced leisure, to decide to go public with some of mine, for the period 1970-1999. A major motivator was a lifetime’s accumulated knowledge of how common paranormal experiences are, but how little validation our mainstream society offers them. As a rational, sceptical (in the open-minded sense of the word) person, I wanted to add some experiential evidence to that vast body of knowledge which demonstrates that we do not, never have, and never will, live in a universe totally accessible or explicable through the application of rational analysis alone.

 If – as contemporary scientists seems to be telling us– we only have measurable access to 4% of what’s going on, how can they be so arrogant as to dismiss what probably goes on in the 96% of energy in our universe which we cannot measure at all, as yet?

In the previous post I said: “And in my next post, I’ll share one of my own weird stories. You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine!” Well, you did share some of yours, albeit anonymously. So, being a woman of my word, here is one of mine – an extract from the section on Reincarnation – from “Wisps from the Dazzling Darkness”. It would be good if this time, you could share a story or two here. Be anonymous! Call yourself Henry Miller if you like. If you do, I promise not to think that he is communicating from the Other Side…

Lecce, Italy
Lecce, Italy

Lecce, Italy: September 13th 1986

In the Atmospheres section, I set the scene for our 1986 trip to Italy, describing the Apulia Region where we found ourselves as ‘a corner of Italy which was full of atmosphere, some of it quite uncanny.’ In less than a week, we had two experiences which were quite out of the ordinary.

This first one took place in Lecce, known as ‘the Florence of the South’, on 13th September. I still recall what happened very, very clearly. We were on a bus trip with a voluble female Italian guide in her thirties, determined to cram as much local information as possible into the heads of the ignorant Brits in her charge. As a result, not helped by the heat, we reeled off the bus somewhat brain damaged for our hour’s ‘free’ lunch break. As usual, everyone on the bus meekly shuffled behind the guide to the appointed watering hole. As usual, we did not. This was our first sight of Lecce and we wanted some quiet time on our own to enjoy it.

The bus was parked in a dusty square, next to a big old church. I looked all the way up the spire, noticing an empty plinth at the top, and thought “Where’s the Archbishop?” I recall being instantly startled by this thought, as though it belonged to someone else’s brain – after all, I’d never been to Lecce.

Nevertheless, very shortly afterwards, we found him. There was a stone restorers’ yard in a narrow street we wandered into, round to the right of the church. In it, lying on his side, was a rather battered looking statue, his verdigrised copper covering cracked and peeling from the wear of many centuries. “There he is – it’s the Archbishop!” At the same time as I recognised the statue, it felt again like someone else’s thought. I wondered if the heat was getting to me...“Mad dogs and Englishmen….”1

I loved Lecce on sight; it felt uncannily familiar. Missing out on lunch, I took Ian on a fast trot round the immediate area we were in, finding my way around with no difficulty. I pointed out a sunlit terrace above a street not far from the church, where I used to sit at a table and write, feeling that I was a man then, and a writer. Ian almost had to drag me by the ear back to the bus, since I was most reluctant to leave.

I have long felt a strong affinity with Renaissance Italy, despite having never visited the country before. Some day, I’d like to return to Lecce and see what my reaction is then. But I’ll make sure it’s mid-winter, so that I can’t blame a heat-addled brain for bringing me one of my life’s more peculiar experiences!

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ENDNOTES:

1 “…Go out in the midday sun “ Mad Dogs and Englishmen Noel Coward song (1931)

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900 words Anne Whitaker 2016

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Reincarnation Tales for Hallowe’en i) : Beware the noonday sun – uncanny events in Lecce, Italy

Lecce, Italy: September 13th 1986

This first one took place in the mediaeval town of Lecce, known as ‘the Florence of the South’, on 13th September 1986. I still recall what happened very, very clearly. My husband Ian and I were on a bus trip with a voluble female Italian guide in her thirties, determined to cram as much local information as possible into the heads of the ignorant Brits in her charge.

As a result, not helped by the heat, we reeled off the bus somewhat brain damaged for our hour’s ‘free’ lunch break. As usual, everyone on the bus meekly shuffled behind the guide to the appointed watering hole. As usual, we did not. This was our first sight of Lecce and we wanted some quiet time on our own to enjoy it.

The bus was parked in a dusty square, next to a big old church. I looked all the way up the spire, noticing an empty plinth at the top, and thought “Where’s the Archbishop?” I recall being instantly startled by this thought, as though it belonged to someone else’s brain – after all, I’d never been to Lecce.

 Lecce, Italy
Lecce, Italy

Nevertheless, very shortly afterwards, we found him. There was a stone restorers’ yard in a narrow street we wandered into, round to the right of the church. In it, lying on his side, was a rather battered looking statue, his verdigrised copper covering cracked and peeling from the wear of many centuries. “There he is – it’s the Archbishop!” At the same time as I recognised the statue, it felt again like someone else’s thought. I wondered if the heat was getting to me…“Mad dogs and Englishmen….” (01)

I loved Lecce on sight; it felt uncannily familiar. Missing out on lunch, I took Ian on a fast trot round the immediate area we were in, finding my way around with no difficulty. I pointed out a sunlit terrace above a street not far from the church, where, feeling that I was a man then, I used to sit at a table and write . Ian almost had to drag me by the ear back to the bus, since I was most reluctant to leave.

I have long felt a strong affinity with Renaissance Italy, despite having never visited the country before. Some day, I’d like to return to Lecce and see what my reaction is then. But I’ll make sure it’s mid-winter, so that my rational self can’t blame a heat-addled brain for bringing me one of my life’s more peculiar experiences!

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footnote: 01 ‘Mad dogs and Englishmen/….Go out in the midday sun.’  Mad dogs and Englishmen Noel Coward song  (1931)

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This account is an extract from my memoir “Wisps from the Dazzling Darkness” – an open-minded take on paranormal experience – now published as an ebook and available  HERE.

Dazzling Darkness
Dazzling Darkness

“…. I was immediately taken by the compelling nature of your words, the honesty, the authenticity and the simplicity…..Your work is incredibly important because you address these issues very clearly and simply and with grace…” ( charty at fablefoundation.com)

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To read the second Hallowe’en Tale, click HERE

500 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2014
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Do we come back ? Some thoughts on Reincarnation in the week of Hallowe’en…

When I first came across this quotation, it made me chuckle…trust Henry Miller!

“Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight are unimportant.”

Henry Miller

Definition of reincarnation: “(in some beliefs) the rebirth of a soul in a new body.” (p 1216, The Oxford English Reference Dictionary, Oxford University Press 1996)

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In Nature’s great cyclic pattern, from the tiny to the vast – gnat or galaxy – the same basic stages apply: seeding, germinating, sprouting, flowering, ripening, harvesting, dying back in preparation for the new. This can apply to a life cycle of a day, and to one of millions of years.

They all hold another factor in common: as modern physics has taught us, nothing that dies, being composed of energy, can ever cease to exist. It merely changes form. Death is a change of  state, not an ending.

Thus modern science validates what humans have held intuitively to be the case from the beginning of our sentient, conscious awareness of ourselves in relation to the universe of which we are part. All cultures across the globe share beliefs that the souls of humans (and all beings, eg in Buddhism) continue in some form beyond physical death.

Only in the narrow, brief context of western secular materialism – over the last two hundred and fifty years or so – has it been believed by some that physical death is the gateway to nothing at all, that life is a random pointless accident in space and time.

Thanks to the meticulous work of the Society for Psychical Research for over one hundred years, and indefatigable individual researchers like Professor Ian Stevenson, as well as many other reputable people, a very large body of experiential evidence is available which appears to support claims since antiquity that one life is not the sum total of our soul’s journey.

I am by nature sceptical in the true, open-minded,  sense of the word. I am happy to read and hear about other people’s experiences – but the empiricist in me demands proof via my own experience in all spheres of life, especially those which lie beyond the range of what our consensus view defines as “ordinary”.

The two stories and the fragment which follow over the next few posts have remained vivid in my memory. They do not provide proof of reincarnation, since a less unlikely explanation is that I was somehow ‘tuning in’ to residues of other lives, rather than experiencing former ones of my own. Nevertheless, they remain intriguing. Over thirty years later, in the case of the first one, and twenty in the case of the second, I still don’t quite know what to make of them!

I would be interested to hear my readers’ views on this great subject which has challenged humans for millennia…do tell!

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ps. To read the first of the uncanny tales, click HERE

Changing Bodies - Reincarnation
Changing Bodies – Reincarnation

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500 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2014
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page

“Wisps from the Dazzling Darkness” : an open-minded take on paranormal experience

Wisps from the Dazzling DarknessTalking publicly about experiences which many people have but few are prepared openly to admit, seems to a natural sceptic like me to be a useful exercise in showing respect for both the rational dimensions of life and those ‘other’ dimensions which send the reductionists into a lather of (non-rational!) fury.

In Wisps from the Dazzling Darkness I offer my account of thirty years’ experiences of atmospheres, dreams, ghosts, mediumship, mystical experience, poltergeist phenomena, prediction, premonitions, reincarnation and telepathy. I also attempt to provide an explanation for those experiences by setting them in the context of contemporary scientific research which is open to the idea that we may live in a multi-levelled universe which is not only stranger than we suppose, but stranger than we can suppose….

Praise for “Wisps from the Dazzling Darkness” – extracts from a selection of public comments on the serialised version (2010-12)

Submitted on 2011/10/21 at 9:37 pm by charty at fablefoundation.com
I came across your site quite by chance…. I was immediately taken by the compelling nature of your words, the honesty, the authenticity and the simplicity…..Your work is incredibly important because you address these issues very clearly and simply and with grace. Discernment is the key to making it thru the challenges of the next decade….you are really helping us all by your work and I salute you for it!

Submitted on 2010/09/23 at 12:53 pm by rob at robpurday@yahoo.com
Hi Anne thanks for opening this space – in fact, in an age of dire scepticism and ‘Trollery’, creating a safe space for people to talk about their experiences is essential, when we lack cultural endorsement …. Looking forward to more!

You can download a free two page sample from Wisps from the Dazzling Darkness as a PDF (66KB) and if you like it, why not buy the entire book (126 pages) for $5.00? Just press the Paypal button below and I will send you the PDF by email.

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An astrologer at work: Part Two

(This is an edited version of a longer interview, published in Connections magazine,
Scotland, UK  in February 1996. It appears on the website in three parts – click An astrologer at work: Part One to read the first part.)

extract from Part One….” The purpose of the “Not the Astrology Column” theme on this website is to introduce open-minded readers to the in-depth astrology which lies behind the entertainment facade offered by the Sun Sign columns. We are living in a time where awareness of the ‘interconnectedness of all things’ is fast returning to the forefront of public consciousness across the world. The evidence is piling up increasingly starkly: what happens in one part of our biosphere impacts everywhere.

The ancient maxim ‘As above, so below‘ has thus never seemed more relevant. The art and practice of astrology has been based on that maxim for at least six thousand years. Astrology links what happens in the individual and collective lives of human beings to the movement of the planets through the solar system of which we are part….”

Now read on!

The Principles and Practice of Astrology

“Connections” Editor Ian Holland interviews Anne Whitaker

Part Two:

IH: A series of interviews were  done with members of the public who came to our last Alternative Health exhibition, asking them their views on New Age matters, and whether they had any negative comments. The main criticism was of the relentlessly positive way of putting things which new age practitioners tended to adopt. Telling someone who has been through absolute tragedy that this is perhaps something that was meant to happen, and presented an opportunity to grow….I feel that attitude shows great insensitivity to a person devastated by brutal experience.

AW: I would entirely agree with you here. I think that life has always been a difficult process for everybody, and as far as anyone knows it will probably continue to be so. I have now had my fair share of experience of people coming to me who have had terrible trauma, and I think that it’s extremely disrespectful, insensitive and glib to tell somebody who is in pieces that this is a learning and a growing experience. I don’t think that I have the right to say that. And I certainly wouldn’t say it.

However, if they were trying to grope for some sense of meaning and understanding in order to cope better, then I would very gently and tentatively attempt to help them to do that. But it is not my job to tell people how they should receive their personal experience. And I’ve been through sufficient personal and family tragedy of my own to respect people’s struggle to come to terms with life’s brutalities in THEIR way.

IH: I was reading a book a while back on medical astrology . Can you predict physical illnesses or ailments that a person may be subject to ?

AW: I think it’s enormously important to work within my levels of  competence. If anyone ever contacts me specifically re health advice, I always refer them on to my colleague who is a recognised authority in this field. What I would do, since I consider myself absolutely no expert in medical matters, is to confine my comments to areas I feel confident enough to comment on.

You can tell for example when a person is temperamentally quite highly strung, and likely to express their nervous tension in physical ways – and advise them to take up things like meditation, or yoga, to help relax them.

Mythological Saturn/ Saturn's Symbol
Mythological Saturn/ Saturn's Symbol

The planet Saturn is particularly connected, in physical manifestations of its symbolism, to bones and skin ( what holds us up, and what holds us in! ) –  if this planet is prominently placed in the horoscope, especially close to the Rising Sign, and has tense rather than flowing links with other planets, this is a pretty clear indicator of a predisposition to skin and/or bone problems as a way of expressing held-in fear, anger or frustration. Since a progressed horoscope can provide specific timings, it is very helpful for individuals prone to such difficulties to be alerted to periods when these problems might be more likely to manifest than others. Thus they can take some kind of prophylactic action through physical and or emotional work in advance – or during the time period where their horoscope indicated them to be at risk.

It is important for astrologers to have confidence in their own competence,  otherwise they are not going to do a good job for their clients. But it’s also important for them to be honest and clear about their own limitations, especially in areas like health.

IH: Where do you think that these predispositions indicated in the Birth Chart come from ? Is it an accident of birth, or….

AW : I think we’re back here to the fate/free will question. As I said earlier, the symbolic map of our point of entry into this world powerfully suggests that we bring in certain qualities and themes, from family inheritance perhaps, to be lived out and hopefully worked with. But at the heart of the question regarding the primary origin of what we bring in, lies a great mystery. Perhaps only the Deity can answer that question….

IH : Are we into the past life issue as well ?

AW : I prefer not to comment on the past life issue – although I’m interested in it, and I’ve had some experiences which I can only usefully explain to myself in terms of reincarnation, being a pragmatist I consider that my job is to live this present life as well as I can….so if someone wants to have this kind of astrological discussion specifically rather than tangentially, I will refer them on to a practitioner who has a particular interest in that area.

IH: What about the wider social and political context ? What does astrology have to say about that ?

AW:  A great deal. On the 17  January 1995 a major planetary event occurred – the planet Pluto, which had been travelling through the 30 degrees of the sign of Scorpio since 1984, moved into 0 degrees of the sign of Sagittarius. On that day a major world event occurred – the Japanese earthquake which devastated the city of Kobe and killed thousands of people. The horoscope for the start of the earthquake is very powerful and has very strong links with Japan’s horoscope. This is just one example of a fascinating area of study  – Mundane astrology, the study of the links between planetary movements and world affairs. There are always striking planetary patterns to be found symbolically reflecting  major events in the world.

(note: see‘ Interesting Times – an astrologer’s view’ for some comments on the recent shift of Pluto from Sagittarius into Capricorn at the end of November 2008) )

IH: I notice that the Abbey National Building Society have started publishing their guide to investment –  it ‘s done tongue in cheek – but do you believe that astrology can be useful in planning investments ?

AW : I don’t think that popular sun sign astrology is useful in any specific way to any individual person or business, because it only takes one feature, the sun’s position, into account. But there’s a whole branch of astrology which looks at the charts of companies, and these charts’ links with overall market cycles. Business astrology is widely used though very few business people would admit it! There’s a very good book out called ‘Money and the Markets’ by Graham Bates and Jane Bowles which deals in detail with this topic. My husband works in the investment field and wishes I’d take up business astrology – but I’m more interested in the spiritual, psychological and educational dimensions, to his chagrin !

So astrology can be used for a range of different things.  Mundane astrology concerns national and world affairs – from the Latin mundus, meaning the world. There is business astrology, and then you have personal or natal astrology which is largely what I do; synastry which brings the charts together of eg parents and children, friends, lovers, business partners; and  horary astrology  which asks a question at a particular moment in time like ‘should I marry Fred ?’ and from the chart cast for the time of asking, a series of complex rules of interpretation are followed which come up with an answer.

There is medical astrology which we’ve touched on, and then there is electional where you choose a favourable moment for launching an organisation or a ship, getting married, etc. If you wanted to launch another magazine, Ian, you could get me to do a chart for you to select a good time. Inceptional astrology looks at the chart to determine conditions in force at the outset of a venture– eg for the launching of the Titanic – so that we can all be wise by hindsight !

IH: There was an amazing story on television recently concerning a young woman who had been adopted and wanted to find her birth mother. Apparently her letter of enquiry to the adoption agency arrived on the same day as a letter from her birth mother wanting to trace her! Is that an example of the heavens at work ?

AW: I suppose that’s an example of what Carl Jung called synchronicity – where things occur in the same moment in time and are thereby held together in significant interrelationship. To a member of the public the story you have just related looks like a fascinating co-incidence. To an astrologer, if you were able to look at both the girl’s chart, the mother’s, and the chart of the day of overlap, you should certainly be able to see in symbolic terms a powerful inter-relationship between the individuals and the overlapping day – and perhaps some clues regarding the nature of the significant event. But I doubt very much whether you could describe the exact event.

Part Three follows shortly

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