Immortal Mystery

Everything is number. Or so Pythagorus believed. Stripped down to its essence everything in the universe is an expression of mathematics. This is the essential idea behind the novel and international cult best seller, The Eight by author Katherine Neville who is a fascinating person as well as a formidable story teller.  Biographical detail is very scant beyond references to her being born in St. Louis, Missouri on April 4, 1945, educated in Colorado and New York. She is clearly a multi-talented woman who supported herself at various times as a portrait artist, a fashion model, a professional photographer, a computer systems designer and...a Vice-President of Bank of America!  Neville was a consultant to the oil industry in Algeria in the early days of Opec, is an astute observer of cultural mores and manners, a deeply read polyglot with a facility for languages (including Basque!) and is devoted to her life partner Dr. Karl Pribram, the distinguished physicist most famous for his holographic theory of the mind and universe.

Immortal Mystery

I first read The Eight when it was published in 1988 and today I finished re-reading it for probably the 3rd time. The Eight is a hard book to ignore for those with an interest in the paranormal, history, the esoteric origins of chess, and the story behind the stories we see on the news. The Eight is predicated on the existence of  The Montglane Service, a magnificent - indeed, Royal -  mythical chess set, wrapped in silk and velvet cloth with mysterious figures embroidered on it and played on an embossed board given as a Coronation gift from the "Moors" to Charlemagne around 800 CE.  It is the history of this mysterious chess set that lies at the heart of The Eight.

No one seems to know quite how far back into the mists of time the origin of chess may lie. Ancient Hindus are often credited with inventing the game but it is possible that the Ancient Chinese had a version of the game as well. What makes the game so intriguing - and addictive - is the game pieces themselves. They are archetypal figures in a similar way to the Tarot Trumps. A King, a Queen, 2 Bishops, 2 Knights, and 2 'castles'  or Rooks plus 8 pawns make up a side. The board has 64 squares with 16 game pieces on each side.  A pattern of movement is assigned to each piece to make the game more challenging intellectually, strategically, and tactically. As one who does not in general enjoy formal games, I can nonetheless become enthralled by a Grand Master match because the strategies are so varied and so many that watching two masters play is like watching a great work of art being created.
Imagine yourself watching a match played with magnificent game pieces cast from gold, silver, copper and bronze and studded with precious and semi-precious stones. These priceless chess pieces are more than 1200 years old and once belonged to one of the most powerful kings who ever lived. Imagine further that the chess service and the board on which it is played are engraved with symbols that reveal a great secret to those who know how to interpret them, a secret so important that every head of state in the world has at one time or another sought to find this chess set and possess the secret knowledge that would bestow complete power on its owner. This is the premise of The Eight.

Real Life Game of Kings and Queens

Since its publication in 1988 the book has never gone out of print and to this day has a worldwide readership. So what is it that has so captured the imagination of generations of readers? For me it is the combination of the legend of Charlemagne's chess service set amidst  the actual events of the French Revolution, the inclusion of historical people like the painter Jacques-Louis David, Talleyrand, Marat, Charoltte Corday, Robespierre, Madame de Stael, Catherine the Great, Napoleon, James Boswell, and an esoteric/magical story line that works seamlessly.

The primary characters who drive the action are seen as the living equivalent of the chess pieces. As such, they engage in an endless game involving global political intrigue, espionage, murder, blackmail, and a determination to own the entire Montglane Service. Add to that contemporary characters who must sort out the clues and resolve the game or continue it forever and you have a modern mystery 1200 years in the making.  Add in locations like New York, Paris, St. Petersburg, Marseilles, and Algeria, diamond dealers, secret police, KGB, a Russian Grand Master, OPEC, a fortune teller, disappearing corpses and you have an irresistible plot peopled with fascinating characters and a quest that must be accepted to avoid the secret ending up in the wrong hands.  Obviously, the book has the makings of a brilliant mini-series and perhaps the greatest mystery about the book is why no one has optioned it for that purpose. 

If fiction is not "your thing" but  you are interested in Chess you might enjoy reading a book by Chess Grand Master, Susan Polgar documenting how an obscure Hungarian family rose to the very pinnacle of chess mastery. Susan and her sisters have revolutionised the game by each qualifying as a Grand Master under the coaching of their remarkable father, Lazslo Polgar. The Polgar Sisters beat the odds in every way by excelling in the most demanding 'game' in the world.

Whether you prefer the fiction of The Eight or the real life story of Grand Master Susan Polgar, if you enjoy an absorbing read, both of these books fit the bill.

The books cited above are available  HERE.

© Delia O' Riordan 2014

www.psychic-delia.com

Imagining God

Imagining God

I've never much liked the Judeo-Christian notion of  "God". I mean, the Father God of the Old Testament YHWH/Jehova was a real piece of work.  Bad tempered, blood thirsty, jealous of other Gods and especially the female ones,  intolerant, over-bearing, loud, and in general, a big bully who demanded to be worshipped despite his all-too-human character disorder.  As if all this weren't outrageous enough, he was cruelly capricious, inconsistent, illogical and vengeful. Now I ask you, honestly,  what's to like about this alleged "God"? For me, obviously  there was nothing. So I rejected the whole notion of "God The Father". Having been brought up Catholic, however,  it seemed to me that the long-suffering human "father" Joseph was far more worthy of love and respect. He didn't demand any sacrifices. There is no evidence of misogyny in his treatment of Mary or cruelty in his treatment of Jesus/Jeshua.  He even has a flower named after him:  St. Joseph's Lily.  Now that was someone I could warm up to.

Mary, on the hand, has gone through a variety of revisions. She was so widely and fervently revered in the early days of the Christian era that by the Middle Ages she had become a major headache for the hierarchy. Mary was becoming too popular by far and that would never do in a Patriarchal Religion. Worse, some of her epithets echoed those of Goddesses of pre-Christian times.  Remember, according to the "Fathers" of the Church, although Mary had been "chosen" by God to bear his Son, she herself was not divine. But was she an ordinary human woman? Well, not quite. The Church declared that Mary was conceived "without stain". She was the only human exception to the rule that proclaimed all humans are born in a state of  "Original Sin".  What was Original Sin? The "sin" of Eve who defied "Yahweh" by seeking knowledge that was supposedly available only to Yahweh. So ultimately Woman was responsible for introducing "sin" to the world and since all human females were her "daughters" we necessitated the "sacrifice" of Yeshua. Neat, huh?

Where did that leave Mary? Hmmm. Those clever "Fathers" concocted a solution: she was impregnated by the Holy Spirit, the third wheel of the "Holy Trinity".  Pregnant by an invisible power. But how could she still be a Virgin at the time of the birth? A miracle, of course. Best of all, the language of Yeshua, Aramaic contained the perfect explanation. The Aramaic word for Virgin did not mean an intact Hymen; it meant an unmarried or independent woman, not attached to any man. According to the myth, Mary was affianced to Joseph but since she was pregnant and they had not yet married, she was still technically a Virgin. Ingenius! By the way, when did they get married? The New Testament is silent on this issue…

Imagining God

To complete this "Holy Family", we have the "Son" of "God".  According to some accounts, this "Son"  was descended from the House of King David which was used as a flimsy argument in favour of his right to Kingship should the need ever arise...Hmm...another question occurs to me: If the "Son"  was already "God" why would he also need to be  "King"?  Surely Yeshua could "pull rank" any time he wanted to!

Further along in the Gospels we're told that Yeshua grew up working in Joseph's modest carpentry shop. Not exactly Kingly material if you get my drift. But that, too, was turned into a virtue by making  it possible for us non-royal nobodies to identify with him. He was flesh and blood just like us and grew up in modest circumstances. But what of his character? To be fair there were a few pluses: he won a debate with some old fuddy-duddies called Pharisees whose speciality was splitting semantic hairs.  So far, so good. But he did disappear for 17 years between the ages of 13 and 30, surely a crucial period of development for any man. So where was he for those 17 years? He could have been enmeshed in a life of debauchery for all we know and then suddenly 'saw the light' and turned into a holy man. That would make him the prototype for today's rehabilitated celebs and TV evangelical ministers which would earn him a mention in People, at least.  But Yeshua was supposed to be a man who was all man and at the same time a 'God' who was all 'God'. Wrap your head around that one if you can! I, personally, cannot.  All in all, Jesus/Yeshua might be tolerable as  a potential deity but something more was needed to win him followers on Facebook: he had to perform miracles and then be persecuted for them and finally, in the ultimate act of love, become a blood sacrifice for the sins of men.  That I could live with if it applied only to men who like blood sports anyway. But what did Yeshua know of women?

We're supposed to believe that this divinely conceived man was always 'chaste' yet he showed "mercy" to women accused of adultery and even included in his closest circle of followers. I guess we women are supposed to feel grateful for that. By the way, did you notice that in this scenario only women are associated with sins relating to sex?  And "He" died for our "sins", right? So what specific sins was he atoning for in men? Their disbelief  even in the face of his unparalleled miracles? Not believing the evidence of their eyes - could that be  the sin of men?  (Just watch an episode of "Haunting" and you'll see how little that has changed!)  Most of all, we were supposed to love Yeshua for forgiving his executioners who the Church claims were acting on our behalf!  Hey, I never asked anybody to do that for me. That sacrifice thing was entirely the idea of "God The Father" who, instead of dying himself, had his 'only begotten Son' do it for him.  Looks to me like Jehovah strikes again - eliminates the competition before he can get more popular. My, how paganly Zeus-like.

Whose "God" is this?

So what is my point? It is simply this: that our images of God are made in our own human likeness and not the other way around. There is no 'one size fits all' image of "God" because there cannot be. If we are all unique in our genetic make-up and if we are made of the same "stuff" as the Universe - what Carl Sagan called "Star Stuff" and what Deepak Chora calls "Cosmic Soup" - we must conclude that if there is any "God" in the sense of a creator of all that is, it would either have to contain all of the "Star Stuff" (which would put us in the awkward position of worshipping ourselves)  or it would have to be entirely separate from its creations and therefore unknowable by us.

Either way we have no idea what such a Being would look like. But I'm willing to bet, it won't be anything humans can imagine.  Perhaps, rather than trying to create images of God, we should love and care for our planet and its life-forms and learn as much as we can about the existence of all life-forms in the Universe so that we may appreciate what "God hath wrought" before we try destroying any part of it.

© Delia O' Riordan 2014  www.psychic-delia.com

The Mystery of Synchronicity

The Mystery of Synchronicity 

In the years since I started doing psychic readings professionally, a number of clients who had been trying to find the right psychic to consult often came to me as a result of a chain of improbable and mysterious Synchronicities that defied the laws of probability as we know them. One case in particular came to mind this morning when I was meditating. The client, Marina, was from Trieste, the only person from that city that I had ever met. She had emigrated to Canada in 1981 and settled in a rural area outside the city where I lived. We eventually met in 1995 but the string of coincidences that led her to me started about four months before her appointment with me.

Marina loved animals and had long wanted to have a dog. She had a strong preference for Terriers and began her search for the perfect pet by joining the Canadian Kennel Club. There she met dozens of breeders and made friends with lots of dog owners who were active in showing their animals. The first co-incidence that would eventually connect us was Marina's introduction to a friend of mine who happened to be a judge of dog shows. Fred was both a breeder and trainer of show dogs and when my husband had to travel overseas we boarded our dog, a West Highland Terrier, with him. Marina met Fred when he was showing his prize Westie for the last time before retiring him and, true to form, Bridie took first place in his set. Marina was drawn to the Westie but she had decided on a different Terrier breed and kept looking.

Synchronicity And Then Some...

Months went by whilst Marina continued her search concentrating on Tibetan Terriers as her breed of choice. Then, she visited a local book shop that specialised in books of interest to animal lovers. They had volumes on everything from breeding racehorses to rare breeds of tortoises and even how to care for highly venomous spiders! Searching through the books on Terriers, Marina met a woman whose speciality was training animals for commercials and films. She worked out of Toronto but spent a lot of time in L.A. where she was working with a Tibetan Terrier who was slated to play the Dalai Lama's dog in an upcoming film. Marina had recently visited a city in the American mid-west where she had participated in the Kalachakra Initiation conducted by the Dalai Lama, a concidence which led the two women to form a friendship that eventually brought Marina to me as well!

As it happened, Leila, the dog trainer, had planned to attend a weekend retreat that I was also planning to attend and,  as luck would have it,  we were assigned to share a room.  It was a silent retreat except for an hour each evening but ,when we chatted, Leila and I discovered that we had a friend in common, a vet who looked after her animals and also happened to look after our Westie. In addition, Leila also knew the breeder where we had found our dog.Synchros 2 and 3.  The breeder would be offering a new litter for sale within two months around the time of the annual Highland Games. It just happened that the Games were to be held within a mile of the breeder's kennel. Synchro 4. My husband and I usually attended the Games with Scottish friends and their kids who always insisted we bring our well-loved Westie along. Leila had never been to the Gathering of the Clans but she decided to come and to meet my husband and me there. After the games,  we would visit the breeder together on the way home. Meanwhile,  Leila went on to invite Marina to the games as well with the idea that Marina might yet fall in love with a Westie. Synchro 5  on the chain.

The day of Games dawned hot and muggy, a typical August day and,  if I hadn't committed to meeting our Scots friends and Leila there, I might have begged off. As it happened, a thunder storm cooled things off before the Games began and made the entire afternoon far more pleasant than the morning had promised. Leila eventually found us and introduced us to Marina who was immediately charmed by our Westie. To top it off, our friend Fred (another Scot) attended the games that year (Synchro 6) and we all finished up going together to visit the breeder. The breeder was delighted to see us all approaching and the puppies she was offering for sale were even more so. After lots of petting and playing with a few puppies, Marina ended two searches that day: one for the perfect dog (she took home an adorable Westie pup named Archie) and, as a result of our conversation, she decided to come to me for a reading. Synchro 7.

I can't help but wonder at the underlying pattern of connections that let to the final outcome. Could there really be some 'grand plan' at work in our lives? The phenomenon of Synchronicity certainly seems to suggest it. Whatever the case, I can safely say that sometimes our desire to find a particular thing in life leads to finding other things like friendships, pets, and even psychics!

© Delia O' Riordan 2014

www.psychic-delia.com