What is it with numbers? Especially number 11 and 22, the numbers I've always thought of as *my* magical numbers. There was even a time many years ago when I thought of changing my name so that it would add up to 11 or 22. I didn't. That I thought seriously of doing so and went through all the permutations and variations to find something similar speaks of how seriously I took numerology. I still take note of dates equalling 11 or 22, license plates and clocks. It's the clocks that speak the most. Almost every day and every night I wake up at a time that equals 11 or 22. This morning, 5:33, last night when I had to get up to go to the loo, 12:08. I realise that numbers may appear to appear more regularly because I take note of them. I would notice a 9:49 more than I would a 9:50 but that can't be said for those times when I open my eyes and the first thing seen is an eleven or twenty-two. It's still synchronicity playing a part in my life.

I miss those days when Everything Spoke to Me. I studied Wicca and Tarot and Numerology and Crystals and read read read, everything from Joseph Campbell to Aleister Crowley. I was firmly convinced of the efficacy of magic and sometimes saw through the Veil of Maya. Now I am older and pragmatic and have lowered the veil of habit and illusion between what appears to be reality and reality itself. Of course I smoked alot of dope back then, not that smoking dope demeans the truth of what I knew. On the contrary I suspect an altered state can serve as an introduction to an different but not necessarily false, reality. We put too much store in facts; in what we can count, see, touch, hear, smell or taste. Although seeing and counting what we've seen appear to have become our primary senses. At any rate, smoking marijuana showed me that there was more to what was there then I had known. Of course I fell into the trap of smoking dope just to smoke dope. Like so many others. But mind altering substances have been used for aeons to explore behind the Veil. The difference is they were used as an adjunct to religious practices while western society just wants to get stoned.

So now I'm sober (save for red wine), don't read Tarot or Crowley any more. I haven't given the books away, I occasionally get the Tarot deck out to admire the art work (Karma Tarot by Birgit Boline Erfurt), the crystals catch the light in the kitchen window and the clocks remind me that there's more life than can be found in any philosophy. If I could read Tarot for myself I probably would. I could read for other people and was sometimes uncannily accurate (predicting a pregnancy and illness for two friends, the first had no intention or desire to get pregnant but did anyway, the second had no idea anything was wrong with her). So that was simultaneously satisfying and a little scary. But read for myself? I couldn't do it. I read but nothing I read made any sense or came true.

While I'm writing this, rather than do a reading for myself I am trying one of those free online Tarot spots. This is what I got: The Lovers for how I feel about myself now. At least I know I'm ultimately on my side. Death, for what I most want at the moment (cataclysmic change). The Tower represents my fears, my world falling apart (the quarry and having to move), Temperance for what I've got going for me, a "way of handling difficult circumstances with calm confidence." The Hanged man for what is going against me, being hung up while others (the lawyers and the Courts) decide my future, and for my personal card, The Fool...nothing more need be said.