h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Being from a familly where words like "witchcraft" (or is it "witchery" ?) are not really jokes, but make us smile, I found myself to have developped quite a "blas&eactu;" attitude toward coincidences.

When I was a kid, my mum would say "it's a long time we haven't heard of gran'ma". Sometimes, she couldn't finish the sentence before the phone rang and voila !, here is gran'ma calling for a chat.
Or she would be cleaning up her files, and see a patient's chart with stuff still unpaid (yes, being a witch doesn't pay as a full-time job, my mum is also a regular dentist). She'd say "Mr so-and-so hasn't paid his crown yet, I should give him a call", and within a few minutes, his wife would call for an appointment.

These did not just happened once. They are a regular pattern in my childhood memories.
Going for exams, I would usually hear my mum tell me what grade I'd get before I even sat there.
Later, I saw these patterns involving my sister too.

So whether it is my mum reading the close future, or her "waves" reaching out and making people pick up the phone and call her, I have no idea, and I gave up on trying to understand. The fact is, I strongly believe that life is a fabric threaded with these "coincidences" that are actually oriented in one given direction. If you see the direction, you call it "fate". If you don't, you call it "coincidence". In both case, it can be terrifying, of very uplifting. The best way I found to cope with these, is to just accept them and believe most of them have a meaning, and are for the best.

The father of one of my best friends had an ability that was almost a bit spooky, and that made me very envious as a kid:

He would *always* (every single time) win at lottery or tombola, provided the prize wasn't money

...and the spooky part was that he could choose what to win, too - I remember him taking us to a tivoli, and my friend saw this huge lion soft toy (1st prize in one of the stalls) and asked her father to win it for her - and he did!

The idea of an external "force" controlling destiny is much more common than people think. By controlling destiny, I do of course mean just what this posting thread is alluding too. If there is no such thing as natural coincidence, then something must be making these meaningful coincidences occur.

There can be really 3 sources that these changes can come from. Ourselves, other people, and finally, the otherworldly equasion.

There is a popular experiment where you write something you want really badly on a piece of paper every morning 10 times until you get what you want. There are literary references from sources that you would not expect to see them from, Carl Jung, the noted psychiatrist calls the phemomina Syncronicity, there are also plenty of books on the subject, or that touch on the subject, see The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield is an excellent source for this. Even Einstein stated that we alter things simply by observing them. The concept of altering ones own destiny in such a way is old, noted, and something I truely believe in.

As a kid, I used to believe in the balance of luck. I understand now that that was a way I would attempt to rationalise things I was altering. If something good occured to me, I would expect something bad to happen that day, and it would. Alternatively if something bad would occur, I wouldn't feel too bad about it as I would be believeing that something good was in the coming, and it did. As I began to read and understand, I came to the conclusion that each day we live, we alter the course of events, usually by the simplest of actions. As a taoist, I believe this, but I have also researched Wiccan ways, and can see corolations in that. By concentration, will, desire, and simply by recognising a need or want, we alter the world, sometimes just enough.

Now for the interesting topic, if by ritual we change the world, basically, if by focusing our will or simply by focus alone we change the world, and if the more popular ways of focus involve ritual, then with things like Prayer, how much are we changing the world?

Do we strive to alter the world by creating or nudging events brought about by will? Is this measurable? What happens when some people wish for one thing, and others the opposite? Well, then the balance that is required returns. Ever wondered why each week a witch or mystical person isn't recieving a national lottery jackpot cheque?

Because 1.5 million people, twice a week, are wishing for the same thing. I don't think it's a case of who can wish the hardest, it is simply a case of so many people wishing like that can only cause the result to come down to luck.

True Story: I have a perchant for cards, I love blackjack and poker, though have rarely played for money. The thing about cards is I get a feel for the flow in which they come out. Sometimes you win, add to the balance. Sometimes you lose, take away from the balance. However after an hours playing, I can feel the rhythm of the cards. In blackjack I can after a while tell when I will be dealt the ace and ten, because of the flow, and I believe that a certain deal will give me those cards.

In a poker game recently, playing 7 card stud (Channel 4 poker watchers will know what I mean ), there were four cards on the table, two in my hand, and we came down to an all in situation, bascially, all cards on the table, everyone can see what they are, and I can see my opponents. He was winning big style, he already had the run, and I needed one card, and only one card would do it, in order to stay in the game, but that feeling came to me once again. I knew that at the turn of the next card, it would be the one card out of 44 cards that would keep me in the game. I stood up, as is the custom when doing an all or nothing gamble, proclaimed that there was only one card that could save me, and I belived that the top card was that card. It was, and after a little dance of joy, continued the game. I won that game in the end.

"Even Einstein stated that we alter things simply by observing them." Pedantic remark Alert: It was actually Max Born who first noted that the probability of a photon being at one point was proportional to its intensity, which eventually was fleshed out into the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (by Werner Heisenberg, of course). The consequence fo altering something by looking at it with photons of light is really just a practical explanation of the Uncertainty Principle.

- JD