Ascensions and synchronicities

In the past week I've experienced a couple of strange synchronicities.  In the first, I was talking with a friend about the strange Swedish musical instrument called the nyckelharpa -- it's sort of the unholy offspring of a fiddle and a typewriter -- and only a couple of hours later, a (different) friend sent me a link to a video of two women playing a nyckelharpa duet.

The second occurred just two days ago.  A post I saw about conspiracy theories brought to mind the be-all-end-all conspiracy theory novel, Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum.  In particular what I'd read reminded me of the character of Agliè, who said he was the Comte de Saint Germain -- a strange figure from French history who claimed to be immortal.  (If you want to know more about this curious fellow, I did a post on him back in 2023.)  Then, later that day, I was on the way back home from helping out my wife at her art show in Rochester, and I was listening to the wonderful radio show This American Life -- and I caught the tail end of a story about, you guessed it, the Comte de Saint Germain.

The Comte de Saint Germain by Nicolas Thomas (1783) [Image is in the Public Domain]

I'm dubious that these kinds of synchronicities Mean Anything.  If it's a message from the Powers That Be, it's a pretty fucking obscure one.  And if this is some kind of Glitch in the Matrix -- well, I'm a little baffled as to why the Matrix works fine in most respects, but struggles with nyckelharpas and the Comte de Saint Germain.  Me, I think this is likely to be nothing more than dart-thrower's bias -- our tendency to notice (and give undue weight to) oddities and outliers, and ignore all the random background noise that fills our daily lives.

After all, yesterday I was thinking about King Louis IX of France (research for my current novel), and no one later on said to me, "So, how about old King Louis IX of France, amirite?"  Most of the random stuff that occurs in our heads never gets weirdly repeated, so we simply forget about it.  But strange, rapid-fire repetitions?  Those we notice.

In any case, the bit of the story I heard from This American Life seemed to indicate that there was some kind of odd connection between the Comte de Saint Germain and Mount Shasta, in northern California, which was new to me, so I thought I'd look into it.

And holy shit.  This stuff makes Glitches in the Matrix sound like hard-edged science.

You ready?

In 1930, an American mining engineer named Guy Ballard was hiking on Mount Shasta, and had an encounter with a young man.  Here's how Ballard himself described it:

It came time for lunch, and I sought a mountain spring for clear, cold water.  Cup in hand, I bent down to fill it, when an electrical current passed through my body from head to foot.

I looked around, and directly behind me stood a young man who, at first glance, seemed to be someone on a hike like myself.  I looked more closely and realized immediately that he was no ordinary person.  As this thought passed through my mind, he smiled and addressed me saying:

"My Brother, if you will hand me your cup, I will give you a much more refreshing drink than spring water."  I obeyed, and instantly the cup was filled with a creamy liquid.  Handing it back to me, he said: "Drink it."

So he did.  At this point, the young man identified himself as the Comte de Saint Germain, who was an "Ascended Master."  He appointed Ballard and Ballard's wife and son, Edna and Edona, as the "sole accredited messengers" responsible for bringing Saint Germain's teachings to the world.

The result was what is called the "I AM" Activity (later called the Saint Germain Foundation), which attracted tens of thousands of faithful adherents despite stuff like Ballard claiming that in previous lives he'd been Richard the Lionheart and George Washington, and Edna (not to be outdone) saying she'd been Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth I of England, and Benjamin Franklin.  They published a couple dozen books, including Unveiled Mysteries and The Magic Presence, before Ballard's death in 1939.

You have to wonder who he was reincarnated as this time.  My guess is Deepak Chopra.

Anyhow, what appears in Ballard's teachings is really nothing more than a rehash of stuff from early twentieth century Theosophy and other occult philosophies, although it is notable that Ballard et al. make the unusual claim that the books they published weren't written by him, but dictated to him (or through him) by other historical figures.  For example, one of them, Comte de Gabalis, he said was written by Francis Bacon. 

What strikes me about all this -- and, in fact, I have the same objection to most "revealed knowledge" -- is that it hardly ever tells us anything we didn't already know.  A lot of it is usually well-intentioned advice (of the "we need to be loving and kind to each other" sort), a lot of it is stuff about famous people who are allegedly now Celestial Guides or whatnot, and almost none of it is anything that would count as a scientific revelation.  I mean, Ballard was working back in the 1930s, so just think of what an Ascended Master could have told him about discoveries which were at that point still in the future -- the nature of DNA and its role in genetics, the plate tectonic model, where to find evidence to confirm the Big Bang, how to make an interstellar warp drive, or even practical stuff like how to make antibiotics and do gene therapy to cure human diseases.

You'd think that Ascended Masters would be eager to give us critical information, instead of vague pronouncements that impress a handful of people for a while and then leave the world pretty much loping along as it always did.

Because that, honestly, is what happened to the Saint Germain Foundation.  After Ballard's death his wife Edna took over; she saw it through the pivotal moment of July 1, 1956, when the Age of Aquarius officially started, at which point Jesus retired as Grand Ascended Master and the Comte de Saint Germain took over (I swear I'm not making this up).  Edna died in February of 1971, but her death wasn't reported publicly for months because -- direct quote -- "The movement doesn't believe in death."  It still maintains a temple in downtown Chicago and presents an annual pageant on Mount Shasta every August, but the number of true adherents worldwide apparently only amounts to a few thousand total.

In any case, I find all this curious, but more because of what it tells us about human psychology and our desire to find meaning than any kind of big revelations about the cosmos and how it works.  As far as synchronicities go, I'm still inclined to attribute them to dart-thrower's bias.  On the other hand, we'll see if the universe decides to teach me a lesson.  If I start seeing random references to King Louis IX of France showing up in unexpected places, I may have to eat my words.

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