Synchronicity for The Day: Music No. 1

First thing this morning, which seems to be a common time for me to experience synchronicities, I was treated to a musical "coincidence." I was lying in bed with a serious headache, an ice pack on my temple, silently cursing every noise in the house at the time. Because it was the normal getting-up time, my oldest (and fattest) cat initiated his usual routine of walking all over me and stepping in my hair on the pillow, pulling it (which is great when you have a headache) and generally using the annoyance of his bulky presence to encourage me to get the hell out of bed and put some kibble in his dish. Despite my annoyance, one of my go-to personal song parodies came into my head: a play on Ram Jam's Black Betty - Fat Kitty. Whoa Fat Kitty, blam-a-lam, Whoa Fat Kitty, blam-a-lam...  I know, that's dumb, but what can I say? I thought of it once, and now with my ever present fatty catty, it comes up all the time. So once I admitted defeat and accepted that the thumping of blood in my left temple wasn't going away, and I got up and moving, I ended up in front of the mirror to put on makeup. Sometimes I like to have some music while I get ready for work in the morning, and today was one of those days. First song up when I put my iPod on shuffle? You guessed it.

What do I take this synchronicity to mean? Well, I am rarely certain what these mean, but I think this morning as I was wallowing in bed, bemoaning my headache, I remembered the Mars transit I'm having right now (let's just leave it at that, and have some mercy on non-astrologers) and I decided that I needed to use that burst of energy I am enjoying thanks to the red planet to muscle through this bullcrap. That I needed to conquer this pain and not let it get in the way of the things I needed to get done. I'd like to think the synchronicity was an affirmation that this was the correct tactic to take. Maybe it meant something else, but it was enough that I noticed Their message if nothing else.

Worth Your Weight in Mustard

Riddle me this: Why is it when you go to a fast food joint it's so hard to get some mustard?

Mustard's a normal burger/hot dog topping, right? Ketchup and Mustard, the ever-together condiment twins. Am I nuts here?

Hey man, I'll sell you this '87 Iroc Z for 2700 packets.

The chick at the counter hands me my tray of food. I ask, "Can I get a packet of mustard?" Rather than just grabbing a couple mustard packets and handing them to me, I usually get one of three responses:  I might get, "You want honey mustard?" with a facial expression and tone that conveys skepticism and confusion. Did I f**king say honey mustard? No I did not. "No, just regular mustard, thanks," I respond. Which can sometimes bring me to the next response, which I sometimes actually arrive at first, bypassing the honey mustard litmus test altogether: the person helping me has to say, "Just a second," and is forced to consult another employee. An entire Mustard Committee must be formed in order to discuss, vote on, and accommodate my apparently freak request. "Do you know where we have any mustard?" they will ask their coworker in a baffled manner like I just asked them for a potted cactus and a can of shaving cream. I'm at a burger joint right? Mustard should not be that weird of a thing to ask for. I get so annoyed at the predictability of this scene that I end sentences like that last one with prepositions. The third type of response I get is the suspicious, "How many do you want?" They have the mustard back there, oh yes they do. But unlike the ketchup, which they will foist upon you in double fistfuls, like they can't give the stuff away, the mustard they guard jealously and mete out like there's a global shortage, or an impending apocalypse and the Wall Street bean counters have predicted that the vinegary yellow stuff will be the new world currency after we fight off all the zombies.

Seriously, am I effing crazy? I see other people putting mustard on things. I'm not the only one. Why are they holding out on me? I had a McDonald's employee tell me that they didn't have any mustard. At all. You're a burger joint for f**k's sakes! Is my family going to have to have an intervention on me and break the news that I am the last living person who wants some mustard on their burger, like they had to explain to that one lady on The View that the world isn't really flat? Is that what's going on here?

Is this important in the grand scheme of life? No it is not. I just don't understand this phenomenon at all. But I think I'm going to start hoarding mustard packets just in case. The first sign of zombies and I'm the next Bill Gates, muthaf**ka.

Synchronicity for The Day: Numbers No. 1

So I wanted to start formally taking note of when I see these various synchronicities happening in my daily life, which is all the time. I promise I will make a longer entry about the concept of synchronicity, but let's just say for now that these are the little coincidences-that-are-not-really-coincidences that pop up from time to time. They are The Collective's way of telling you, "Hey! Pay attention! Take note of what is going on right now!" Or also, "Things are right on track for your Life Path right now, everything is humming along on schedule/as planned." Déjà vu is also something like this, but that is a topic for another day.

So this one happened to me yesterday when I was driving home from work (I'm continually amazed at the amount of spiritual experiences and thoughts I have while driving). I wanted to post it last night, and I got all crafty thinking that I would just get the Blogger app for my phone and do it on the fly while it was still fresh in my mind. But of course, like any time I think I'm gonna do something "simple," everything went to hell in a hand-basket and technology thwarted my will once again. Curses!!!  So after installing/uninstalling/re-installing the app and going in circles with it wanting me to use a gmail address and not recognizing my account for my actual blog, I gave up and decided to troubleshoot it (like that will come to any avail) later, on the desktop instead of the phone.

Let's get to the actual synchronicity event again, which will probably be a shorter paragraph than all my complaining above. So I'm driving home listening to a talk show on Sirius, and like many call-in type shows they gave their phone number for listeners to call as they went to a break. The phone number ended in 6766. And right as the show's host was telling us what the number was, and I mean literally as the words were coming out of the speakers, I was looking at the license plate of the driver ahead of me and their plate was 6XXX766. The Xs were actually three other letters, but I decided I probably shouldn't list someone's actual plate number online. But yeah, that was a good one. Very precise. And very simultaneous. Sometimes I see these a few hours apart, but this one was immediate. So that made me feel good. I knew that things were going along as intended, which always makes me happy.

The Collective Breakdown

I use this term all the time: The Collective. It sounds creepy and ominous, like the Borg. Actually, it's something as natural and universally present as air. It is all-pervading, infusing every aspect of life, the workforce and intelligence that is moving behind the scenes to keep the Grand Plan on track, and most people don't even know it's there, or that they are even a part of it. 

I was driving home from work a couple weeks ago when the thought came to me (I wonder from where? Heh) that I would like to have some sort of official written-down definition of what The Collective is. And almost immediately, it began forming in my mind. I mean, I already feel like I generally know what it is, but putting it concisely is another story altogether. How do you sum up something so big in only a few words?  Well here's my initial crack at it:

The Collective is the combined energy, knowledge, and consciousness of every spirit, incarnate and incorporeal.

OK, so to me, that means something, but to others it may mean absolutely nothing. What exactly is a spirit? What do you mean, incarnate and incorporeal? How can consciousness be collective at all? Well, those are all good questions, so I think just to have some structure to break this subject down, I'm going to work through the good old five Ws and see what I come up with:

Who is The Collective?

As I tried to say in my attempt at a definition above, The Collective is you and me. And by "you and me" I mean our spirits or souls or whatever name you would like to put on the unique essence/energy that is the You that is animating your body, thinking your thoughts, and feeling your emotions. This is the energy that while conjoined with your body, enables the body to have a life, but is not dependent upon the body for its own existence in turn. This is why people have "out of body" and near death experiences and that sort of thing; these are some common examples showing how impermanently attached our souls actually are to their vessels. 

The Collective is also Them.  And who are They? Well (and come on the journey with me here for a minute), from what I have learned, when the human body where your spirit is currently residing ceases to function, your soul will detach from the flesh, but it will not simply disappear and become nothing. It's still around, existing, without a physical vessel. It has moved from the material side of The Collective to the immaterial side. Everyone's unique energy, both during its time in a body and its time not in a body, make up The Collective.  My personal search for truth has lead me to agree with the concept of reincarnation, and while many spirits do participate in a repeated cycle of lives in physical bodies, I have also learned that there are entities within The Collective that have never inhabited a body. But they are just as fully-formed of souls as you or me.

What is the Collective?

Hah! This may be the most difficult concept of all to wrap words around. I may try for some metaphors, because I know that makes abstract concepts easier for me to understand. The Collective in fact, often likes to convey messages to me in metaphors as well for this reason. I've already said that The Collective is comprised of both the Dead and the Living (as I've mentioned in earlier posts, I may just use those terms for simplicity's sake, despite the fact that I don't really care for their connotations.), but for the most part, us living folk do not seem to have much awareness of the Dead, or even our own connections with everyone else in this massive tapestry.  But we're all part of it, all connected, to each other, to the Dead, to everything. It's an entire spiritual ecosystem, all parts affecting one another. Unlike most of us live people, The Dead do not have the limitations imposed by a physical body, and they, in fact, are aware of each other, and of us. This is where it gets interesting. They have access to near boundless information because not only are they aware of each other, and able to communicate, but they are able to do so almost instantly because they do not have to wait for one person to open their mouth and say something and have sound waves travel into the ear canal of the other person, or wait for an email to be sent and read for the other party to receive the information. If one entity has a thought, another can know it. And that's it. There is no necessary medium for the communication. The knowledge of One is the knowledge of All. This is why you can use a talking board and speak to an entity you don't know from Adam, and ask him about your grandmother who passed away. Even if you don't directly speak to her, he can know what she knows and relay it to you fairly reliably. If the living side of The Collective (you and me) has snail mail as a means of communicating, the dead side has the internet with Wikipedia. The mind-blowing part of all of this is that because the dead are all constantly aware of each other, they become, in essence, one consciousness. A single unit comprised of many. My term The Collective is actually short for The Collective Consciousness. Due to its generally unified nature, The Collective much better than more spiritually isolated fleshy creatures like us to act with concerted effort to carry out actions and plans. Which they have. A Grand Plan as a matter of fact. They can see the big picture while you and I are bogged down in what's-for-dinner and doesn't-that-bastard-understand-that-if-he-takes-two-parking-spaces-like-that-his-car's-gonna-get-keyed?

Where is The Collective?

Well... everywhere. The living side is accounted for: see a person - they have a soul. There is a part of The Collective.  As for the dead side? Everywhere we are, they are. Honestly, they do a lot of hanging around us, because a sizable chunk of their activities involve meddling (in a good way) in our affairs. They're trying to get us to do the right thing, follow the path we're supposed to take to learn whatever lessons have been proscribed for us to learn in this life. I always think it's funny that movies and TV imply that graveyards and abandoned creepy houses are full of "ghosts." Sure, there are some of the dead who have their own issues to work out and are shunning the living, but from what I understand, most of them are near where we are. And not a lot of us are chillin' in cemeteries, aside from funeral parties and the people who work there. Why go to a grave to "visit" a loved one who has passed? They are not with that body anymore. Just talk anywhere you happen to be and they will hear you. And if your loved one doesn't personally hear you, rest assured one of Them will be around to hear you and convey the message. From what They have told me in the past, the average living person has about 2 - 3 dead people hanging out near them at any given time. Think about it. Right now, they are there with you. In your living room. At the KFC. At the dentist's office. At the cube farm where you work. They may be "assigned" to you (more on that later) or maybe they are just passing through the area and have stopped to take an interest in you much like we would stop to watch a street performer on our way walking to another errand.

When is the Collective?

That was an awkward paragraph header. Do I go with consistency between the headers or reasonable grammar? Meh. 

Questions of "when", of course, pertain to time, so let's explore Time and The Collective briefly. You and I generally experience time in a linear fashion if our brains are in good working order, free from neurological issues and intoxicants. We can see a clear progression from past to present to future. I have learned that the spirits on the Other Side of The Collective do not exist in a linear timeline, so to speak. One of them once said to me that they are like the point on a three-sided pyramid; they exist in a place where the lines of past-present-future all come together in one place. On a practical level, this explains why when we communicate with them, they are able to discuss past events and even past lives, and also give us their thoughts on what is likely to happen in tomorrow: all of these realities exist at once for them. Quite mind-boggling when you try to wrap your head around it, but there's that flesh container again limiting our avenues of perception.

How is The Collective?

This question could mean many things. How is it's nature? Is it benevolent or malicious? My positive nature makes me want to say benevolent, but I don't know if there is even that much bias. It wants us to succeed in learning our life lessons so that we move along on the path of spiritual evolution, but it also encompasses the universal need for balance. And some of our lives have some unpleasant learning in store for us. By that I mean that even though none of us wants anything bad to ever happen, there is nevertheless a need for both heroes and villains in the world. It is sad, but there are going to be murders as a counter-balance to acts of selflessness. For every nice person there will be a jerk somewhere to even things out. There will always be filthy rich people as well as homeless people, geniuses have to be balanced by dumbasses. That's the duality of everything, and it has to be that way. It cannot be unbalanced. As much as we want everything to be sunshine and rainbows, or things will get seriously out of whack, if I may bandy about some professional jargon.

Or maybe the "how" refers to organization. Does this Collective have any sort of structure or is it total chaos, every spirit out for himself? Yes, so far as I have seen there is some sort of structure. Do I know the full blueprint of the entire building? No. I have only been down a couple of hallways so far. The parts I have explored have taught me about a variety of duties/jobs/positions that different spirits have on the other side, and that some are more "in charge" of affairs, if you will, than others. One thing I have asked in the past was whether there was a single entity at the top of any sort of hierarchy and they responded clearly that this was not the case. That there was a type of hierarchy but that no single person was in charge. I will probably explore this again, but it's one of those Big Questions that is really involved and difficult for them to explain to me in a way that I will understand, and those seem to take a lot of time and energy on the board, not to mention that there are some things we have discovered that they are "not supposed" to tell us.

Have I covered it all? Not hardly. But I'm sure I have elaborated long enough that if you have made it this far you deserve some sort of internet medal for Blog Perseverance or something. Thanks for hanging in there. These won't always be so verbose, but at the beginning here I am getting a lot of background information out of the way.

Until next time!
Love and Peace.

Incident: Hearing Mother's Regret

Instances of spontaneous communication from The Collective are something I would like to make an effort to document, so that I don't forget them. I have the short-term memory of a goldfish and so I need to take notes and make lists or I will forget even the barest necessities like putting on shoes or blinking.

An incident occurred last night that I wanted to write down before it fades from memory. I was attending a meeting of the Southern California Astrological Network where we were hearing a presentation on Family Constellation Work. Honestly, don't ask. It's way too long and involved to explain here what that entails, suffice to say that the facilitator for the presentation announced that her friend and client (I will change her name to "Connie" in this post, for the sake of her privacy) would be our guinea pig for the night as an example of this type of energy work.

As soon as the facilitator (Krista) began explaining what our group was going to attempt during the demonstration, and pointed out that Connie would the focus of our session, I immediately started experiencing/hearing what I felt was a mother or maternal figure who was violently grief-stricken. This being made repeated tearful apologies (obviously not literally tearful, since this was someone from the Collective and not a physical body, but the vibe of what I was hearing felt tearful) for what seemed like something that had happened in the past that was some sort of secret event, that she had not been able to apologize for or rectify during her time incarnate. And then, oddly combined with the regret and grief was also a feeling of very emotional anger. The phrases "should have told someone sooner" and even "f**k you!" surprisingly flashed though my consciousness.  This only took about a minute in real time, and I kept it to myself as I sat there and listened to the lecture. But upon hearing/feeling this I knew right away that this was a message or thought that was meant for Connie.

The lecture continued and we moved into the presentation for the evening. As the process took place, it eventually came up that there was some sort of secret that was causing pain for Connie. After the presentation ended and everyone was packing their things, I felt that I needed to approach her to relay the message I had received earlier.

It is always awkward to approach a total stranger with something of this nature. This setting reduced some of the tension, since astrologers and their friends are usually spiritual types, and can be more accepting of this sort of thing than most, but in normal circumstances, I probably would have kept the information to myself, running home to tell only my husband and having no confirmation whatsoever. I like to get confirmation to these sudden insights as often as I can. I never want to buy into anything when it is first presented to me; I always want proof.

So I approach Connie, my heart racing, hoping I am not about to say something stupid, because, you know, it totally matters what this person who I am likely to never see again thinks of me. I say to her that I'm sorry if this seems weird, but that I sometimes have these sudden flashes of information come to me and I related what I had experienced earlier in the evening and that I felt it was in relation to her.

She told me that it definitely sounded like her mother and admitted that it "made [her] heart pound" to hear that. She told me that she hadn't told anyone else at the meeting this, but that she discovered later in life that her mother had had another baby before her and had to give it up for adoption. She discovered this because she found the sister she never knew about at age 40, and this all came to light after her mother had passed.  She said she learned later that her mother had been very torn up about this event, and the emotional burden of having to keep the secret.

So this was my confirmation that the voice I heard in my head was not just my own internal ramblings, and if felt good to deliver the message. Although this family secret of hers is a sad subject, I was personally on a emotional high for the rest of the night. I love it when I can get communication so direct when I am not using the board. I have nothing against the board, far from it, but this freestyle stuff is happening more and more often and it tells me that I am growing in my ability to discern what is me and what is Them, and because of this they are more willing to talk to me.

As always, everything happens for a reason. Connie and I came together in the same room for our mutual benefit. She to hear a message from her mother and I to be given a confidence boost in regard to my growing proficiency in hearing the Collective.

You'd Better Have a Good Morning. Or ELSE.

I have to say that I find the social obligation to greet everyone you meet first thing in the day with a cheery "Good Morning!" is a bit oppressive for me. Even after specific formal training I have undergone that has helped me understand the logic and value of being a smiling, friendly, font of joy, I still cannot force myself to manufacture enthusiasm for at least a couple hours after I wake up. Never have. What can I say? I’ve never been a morning person. I just can’t seem to get excited about leaving my warm comfy bed before I’m good and ready, which I assure you is almost never at the time of the morning that I have to get up for work. For whatever reason, once I’m physically out of bed, I need an hour or two to become Socially Awake. My interpersonal coffee needs time to brew, if you will. And I’m not alone! I know lots of people who aren’t shot out of a cannon in the morning, and if I know so many non-morning-people, I’m sure everyone else must be aware of their existence as well.  So why is it then, that people in a workplace cannot seem to live and let live in the AM? It’s like, We know that not everybody is super-enthusiastic in the morning, but people better fake it or there’s going to be an interrogation, right here in the breakroom. And if I can struggle past the obligatory Good Morning, some people even feel the need to take it one step further, and want to also know How I’m Doing. And you’d better not come back with a simple “Fine” either. You’d better be Great! “How are you this morning?” “Fine.” Disapproving tone: “Well that doesn’t sound good.” You can almost hear the tisk-tisking, the implication hanging there, heavy with disgust, like Why can't you just get your shit together and just be theme-park-ecstatic like everyone else? Why is it unacceptable to be having just an average day? Why are you made to feel like something is wrong with you if you aren’t singing and dancing at the crack of dawn? No one wants a real answer to the How Are You Doing question anyway. “How are you this morning?” “Meh. I’d rather be home asleep in my beat-up sweatpants and green furry socks that make my feet look like a Muppet's, but I’m here anyway because I’ve got to pay the bills and the boss won't just let me stroll in at whatever time I feel I've had enough sleep and am ready to tackle the day.” Just chew on the reaction you’d get to that one. One of my favorite responses is “I’m alive.” That's my go-to expression for days when I'm just not in the mood to play the False Enthusiasm Game. Somehow this always gets taken as a negative, rather than what it really means, which is, hey, things are humming along at about the normal rate; the needle is not jumping around that much on the seismometer of my life. Not bad. Just average. Nothing wrong with that, in my opinion. There is a much lower tolerance for honesty in our daily lives than one would expect. If you want me to put on an act for you right after I wake up, then I’m gonna need you to pay me Scale.

A Talking What? How Does That work?

I work frequently with a talking board. That's right, you heard me. No, not a Ouija Board, as I have previously decried, but a fairly unique round board labeled (in appropriately new age jargon) The Mantic Message Mat.  I didn't name it, cut me some slack.

What is a talking Board?

A talking board is a tool that can be used to increase the ease of communication between us (the living) and The Collective (the dead and other non-inhabiting entities). I don't really like the terms "the living" and "the dead", because I feel this has positive and negative connotations, as well as implies a level of activity versus inactivity, however for the sake of time, I may use these words.  Also, technically the living are also a part of The Collective, but since we are typically so unaware of it, I may also use this phrase when talking about them (spirit entities not inhabiting bodies) as opposed to us (live people). 

A tool is something you can use to make a task easier. We could do all that long division, sure. We learned how in school. But most of us own a calculator and pick it up at the mere hint than an equals sign might drop into the conversation.  Need to remove some really tight lug nuts? You could bust out the old tire iron and some elbow grease, but why would you if you had an impact wrench right there? Sometimes doing things the hard way is good to keep oneself in practice and one's muscles in good order, and there is no shame in that whatsoever. In fact it's always good to make sure we don't get rusty. Usually, however, we'd all like to make the most efficient use of our time. When it comes to talking to The Collective, this is where a talking board comes in handy.

There are many ways to converse with The Collective. Too many for me to even list here. One of the more difficult ways (for most people, natural psychics excluded) is to just literally listen for them to talk to you and answer back, and have yourself a whole conversation. There are many terms associated with different versions of this method: Psychic, Clairvoyant, ESP, etc.  Intermediate methods many people call Divination, and these typically utilize various media, skills, and abilities to obtain information. Many of these are familiar to us: Tarot Cards, Rune Stones, Tea Leaves, Pendulum, I Ching, and many more. Most of the time there is some object that is "randomly" (but of course not randomly, the selection is influenced by what The Collective wants you to know) selected or arranged and then the Reader interprets the meaning. The most direct, easiest method (for me anyway) has been the talking board. Ask your question, get answers. No, it's not always as simple as that, but that is a blog for a later date. I almost feel like I'm cheating somehow and I'm just waiting for some sort of spiritual auditor to show up and insist I do things only the hard way. Which is not all bad for me, I must say.

Most talking boards have a few features in common: they are printed with the letters of the alphabet, usually a "Yes" and "No", and perhaps some other shortcut words like "Maybe" to make communication not so tedious. For more information on the many talking boards out there and a bit more on their history, check out Museum of Talking Boards - they have a great collection and a lot of info. Our particular board has the above mentioned text as well as names for family members (Mother, Father, etc.), days of the week, numbers, and around the outside a zodiac wheel  complete with all signs of the western zodiac (Capricorn, Libra, etc.) and an assortment of additional appropriate astrological associations for each sign and house, including dates. This enables a lot of shortcuts in getting information across without having to spell out every single word. The other thing common to almost all talking boards is a leaf, or planchette (as you prefer). This is a smaller instrument  that usually features either a pointer at one corner or an "eye" through which to view the desired letters, and upon which each participant places their fingertips and lets The Collective make use of their bodies' energy to move the leaf around the surface of the board and get their message across.

Focus!

As a tool, the talking board acts as a focus for the people wanting to receive information. To some extent, we can all hear The Collective, even without a board, but many of us (myself included) frequently have our minds so cluttered up with ongoing chatter and nonsense that we are lucky if we hear anything relevant at all. And if we did, we would just assume it was more of our own brain rattling around in our head and dismiss it as nothing of worth. When you use a talking board, the moving leaf (pointer) can cut through all of that clutter and get right to the matter at hand. Imagine being in a crowded room where everyone is talking and someone  across the room is trying to say something to you, but they are not able to yell. Good luck hearing them. But then imagine they pick up their cell phone and call you. Now they can speak right into your ear and their voice is separate from the din. This is what it is like to use the board. And unlike other Divination methods, like Tarot (which I do not disparage and in fact use myself), there is far less interpreting that must be done. I don't feel that I have to second-guess the message when it is spelled out for me and I have the opportunity to ask for clarification if I don't understand. Again, not to say this can't be done with other methods, I just personally find it a lot harder, and some of that stems, to be quite honest, from a lack of self-confidence in my abilities.

Round Boards Versus Square

Our talking board has a round design, which I have been told is the preferred shape for such a tool. Who told me this? Dead people, of course. Why should I believe them? Well, in short, because they are right about a whole lot of other stuff, which I have no room to explain here. I will, just not today. They have explained that the round design allows for a circular flow of energy to happen as the leaf is making its way around the board, and this circular pattern is what attracts useful energy to the board (i.e. talking to someone who has something pertinent to tell you, or just has a helpful attitude) and keeps out less useful energies (entities who are trouble-makers or possibly not "all there" to whom talking will do you no good). I try to put reasonable terms on types of energies, as I don't like to get into "Good and Evil Spirits". Ooooooh!! Booga Booga Booga!  That's all very dramatic and Hollywood, but to be honest, the dead are pretty much the same mix the living: most are good and want to do right, some have issues, some are a pain in the ass. But no one is going to come through a talking board and possess anyone. So let's everyone calm down with that nonsense, OK?  Sure, you can get a rectangular board to work for you, but you have an increased likelihood of conversing with an entity who only spells out swear words and other useless babble. Demons? Possession? Not so much. Not to say no one has ever caused some nutty stuff to happen, but a supreme amount of dumbassery, which you would have to go out of your way to accomplish, is necessary for that.

Our Board - The Mantic Message Mat

Our talking board, as I mentioned above, is titles "The Mantic Message Mat." It has a copyright date of 1973 on it, and notes Glendale, California as the location (see picture at right). This board was clearly made by a professional printer, but my husband and I have never encountered another board like ours anywhere else. The story, as it was told to us by his grandmother (from whom we obtained the board) is that a friend of hers designed it and wanted to make a test batch to be able to give a few to her peers and see how they performed. Apparently this woman had a friend in the printing business who ran a special lot for her of around 30 boards. Hubby and I are in possession of 2 of them, and we do not know where any of the remaining boards are at this time. It does not appear that after the initial run of boards that any additional were made.  I have heard debate that this board must have been mass produced due to its construction and there must have been at least several hundred of them made as most commercial printers have fairly large minimum quantities, however this is discounting the board's designer's personal friendship with the printer which allowed her to obtain a quantity far below the minimum as a favor. Our board has a four-sided leaf made of metallic gold plastic that has indentations of each side of the leaf for people's fingertips to rest, and a round viewfinder in the center.

Various sessions on our board have seen The Collective referring to the board as a Matty. At first we thought that this was just a cutesy version of the Mat in Mantic Message Mat.  At another point we were under the belief that Matty was the name of the entity who instructed the board's original designer on the layout of the board. I do not remember if this was folklore that my husband brought with him from before I came into his life, or if this was something that we were told together in a board session. It has been many years, and unfortunately I was not documenting these things at the time. But now we have pressed again for information, and we have settled that Matty is a general term for any such design on a physical object that is made for The Collective to work with us for some purpose. Any functional talking board is a Matty. I think you could even count it as a Matty when people use an upturned glass and a smooth table with letters on it for the same purpose.

Two Heads Are Better Than One

A two-person team is usually the best configuration (and typically the minimum number of persons needed) to properly work a talking board. Sure, it can be done with one person, but usually not on a round board (a solo flight might happen on a rectangular board), and usually the communication will not be as clear. By the way, this is just what I've been told by The Collective. If you have solo board experiences that worked out well for you, I am more than happy to hear about them. I have personally attempted to get movement out of our leaf and board by myself and nothing happens. Not a twitch. Other people jump on with me and the leaf usually starts right up like my reliable ancient toaster that's older than I am. Anywho, you two-person board team should consist (for maximum efficacy) of a Speaker and a Battery. The Speaker is the person who will do most of the talking: asking questions out loud of The Collective, spelling or calling out the letters or other text as the leaf indicates, and so on. This is usually the more extroverted of the two people, the more masculine energy. Note that I am using masculine in the archetypal sense, I am not literally referring to who is the most manly. Masculine energy projects, feminine absorbs. The Battery will be the person who acts as primarily a power source for the entity who is attempting to communicate. They can still talk and ask questions, but they are chiefly better at receiving information and being, well, a battery. They will usually have the more feminine, introverted energy. This masculine/feminine, Speaker/Battery duo gives the necessary balance for ease of two-way communication. A board may be used with two people of the same type (both Speakers or both Batteries) but the conversation tends to be less clear and more difficult. The leaf will move more slowly around the board, acting very stubborn. Words spelled out sometimes make less sense than normal. More embarrassing, if there is in fact an available Battery person in the room who is not using the board, the board may refuse to function unless that person joins in. This has happened many times to my husband, the Battery in our house. If you're not sure who might be suited for what role, a good starting point could be your Sun sign. Fire and Air signs tend to make better Speakers, Water and Earth signs tend to be more suited as batteries. Not a hard and fast rule, just an idea.

So talking boards, not so scary, right? Next time I'll get into what it's like to actually use the board and maybe try to cover some of the common fears and myths associated with the use of this tool.