A Mystery - Time Discontinuity; Geomantic Readings

[emmanuelg]

There was an incident in my life (maybe 1992?) where the memories and physical evidence were in conflict. I suspect something happened to me, but have never been able to figure out what it was. Perhaps Geomancy could shed some light on it?

Here's the incident as I remember it: I was in a weekly dinner and discussion group with people from my church. We met weekly in each others' homes, had a potluck dinner and a discussion, and had done that for a number of years at the time of this incident.
That week, we were meeting at the house of S*, about a mile and a half from the house where my wife and I lived. My wife was ill but stable, and decided to stay home that week. S* would often drive her large car to different peoples' houses and picked them up, and that week was no exception, even though she was hosting the gathering. She picked up 4 other people including me, and drove us to her home. We had dinner and a discussion, and she drove the same 5 people including me back to our respective houses, about 9 PM.

The car pulled away and was gone by the time I had carried my empty covered dish to my front door. I quickly found that I did not have my keys. This single fact was and is very VERY unusual for me. I have always worked in an industry where I have high-security, un-copy-able keys to one or more extremely secure workplaces. I never, never-ever, go anywhere without all my keys. They are attached to my belt and can't be easily unattached. So this was a potential work catastrophe--As well as that I was locked out of my house at 9 PM. I turned every pocket of my pants and jacket inside-out and emptied everything out of them. No keys. It was unheard of.

I beat on the front door and yelled until the neighbors' lights started to come on. My wife, sick in bed, did not wake up. Perhaps my keys had detached in S*'s car somehow. My first thought was to walk the mile and a half to S*'s house, knock on the door, and see if the keys were there. Nope, that was a bad idea. It happened that S*'s husband was out of town on business. S* was always well-behaved, but I could tell that she liked me a lot. Better not to risk putting both of us into a situation where something might happen that we would regret.

I remembered that I had given an emergency key to my brother, who lived a mile and a half in the other direction. So I left the stuff on the porch, walked the mile and a half to his house, collected the key, and walked back home. I was upset at losing my keys, grumpy at my wife (who was STILL asleep), and arrived past my bedtime.

When I woke up the next morning and started getting dressed. There were my keys, attached to the key ring, attached to the belt on the pants just like they always were. What the heck happened? Feeling like a complete idiot, I returned the spare key to my brothers house, but was faced with a mystery. Where were my keys the previous night, and how did I get them back?

I have never figured this one out. So maybe Geomancy could shed some light on it;

Question 1: Were my memories somehow altered after the keys incident?






(BTW, thanks SDI for the image generator--works great!)

So I cast Via, Via, Populus, Populus for the 4 mothers and got Populus for Querent, Quesited and Judge.

What the heck is going on!? Initial reading seems to say, "Everything was changed."

House 1 and 2 - both Via. Transformation/Change. 2 includes personal property (my keys).

House 5, 6, 7, 8 all Fortuna Minor. Luck/swiftness. 8 is 'My magic,' also death, spiritual entities.
5 - parties, 6 professionals/illness, 7 spouse/partnerships, 8 spiritual entities/my magic.

S* was a teacher at the time, so a professional. My take is that something happened swiftly; a chance happening, spiritual entities were involved. The rest is a good description of the evening.
Populus everywhere else. Could mean 'nothing else changed,' or perhaps 'everything else changed.'

Question 2: Did something unusual happen during the keys incident?




Q1 - Caput Drac - Beginnings
Q2 - Laetitia - Joy
J - Via

Again, what the heck?

Cardines:
1 - Beginning - Laetitia - Joy
10 - Middle - Carcer - Locked in/stability/trapped/imprisoned.
7 - End - Rubeus - Conniving/Wild behavior/full engagement/mischief
4 - Aftermath - Populus - Multitude/more of the same/passivity

5 - Amissio - loss (including lost heart). Hmmm, maybe S* had stronger feelings than I thought.
6 & 7 Rubeus - Trickery/wild behavior. Professionals/lover-spouse. Did S* try to set me up?
2 (Quesited-keys) & 12 - Conjunctio. I got my keys back by intervention of authorities?

9 & 11 - Cauda draconis - Ending of a long journey, Ending of hopes and wishes.
So possibly, S* set me up, but things didn't work out. Hopes and wishes ended, intervention of authorities.

Question 3: "Does S* remember the keys incident?




This is a question about a third party--
Q1 - S* would be in the friend/neighbor category, so Q1 is Conjunctio in the usual house 3.
Q2 - the keys - In the rotated chart, house 4 is now house 2, so Q2 is Via.

Cardines - Usually 1 - 10- 7 - 4.
In the rotated chart, I am looking at 3 - 12 - 9 - 6

3 - Beginning - Conjunctio - Meeting/Agreement/Contract/Treaty
12 - Middle - Amissio - Loss/Lost heart
9 - End - Acquisitio - Gain
6 - Aftermath - Puella - Girl/love

So a transformational experience for her as well.

2 & 5 - Via - transformation in keys--and sexuality/fruitfulness/crops

From the shield chart;
Q1 Fortuna minor - swiftness/chance
Q2 Populus - More of the same, lots and lots
J Fortuna minor - Swiftness/chance

Whatever happened, it came out of left field and happened quickly.

Summary

I still don't remember any new details of the keys incident. Geomancy could possibly be telling me that I went back to S*'s house to recover the keys where we had some sort of romantic encounter, and that spiritual entities re-set the realities so that none of this ever happened.

Or a more simple explanation could be that I was set up by spiritual entities to endure an initiation of some sort. "Would I take advantage of the situation to take advantage of S*'s feelings for me?" Since the answer was "no," they returned my keys.

Strange experience. Maybe I'll never know.

Comments

[tunesmyth]

Hi Emmanuel,

I just caught up with this. Wow, fascinating story!

Something disappearing that seems impossible to lose, only for it to show up later, is a classic plot line in fairy/nature spirit encounters. Especially and particularly with keys! So upon reading your story, that was immediately my take, even before seeing your readings.

You're reading these as House charts, but including analysis of the court. My own current rule of thumb here is, for yes/no questions, to let the perfections in the House portion give the answer of yes or no, and the court to be an overall statement of the answer, without necessarily following the traditional guidelines for ascertaining yes or no with only a Shield court reading.

READING 1: "Were my memories somehow altered after the keys incident?"

The most notable thing that jumps out is the sheer amount of repetition. Four Fortuna Minor and six (!) Populi, not even counting the court! Triple Populus in the court suggests you were swept up in some sort of mass event, and that you weren't the specific target-- though you were certainly changed on an individual level by the experience, as reflected both by how you approach the memory now (1st House Via) and the aftermath of the event (Reconciler Via).

To me, this question is clearly a 12th house matter, as it concerns magic performed against the querent, as well as enemies the querent doesn't know about; though with an eye on the 8th, as you suspect the involvement of spiritual entities. As a 12th house question, it perfects via Mutation in the 2-3 houses. (There are also a boatload of aspects that I'm not going to even begin to touch right now-- with that much repetition, I'd wager a roughly even balance between positive and negative aspects, but I'm not certain without going through the gruntwork.) Mutation implies that the answer to your question lies along an unexpected path. I agree with Lincoln Lynx's critique of the first question itself, and I suspect that perfection in this roundabout manner may be the way that the spirits are addressing the matter: yes, your memories were altered, but not quite in the way you were thinking when you posed the question. Lincoln's suggestion is certainly one possibility-- that your perception when searching for the keys was altered, and thus your memories in turn.

As for looking at the 8th House of spiritual entities, it's part of that string of Fortuna Minors. Fortuna Minor is exactly what I would expect from mischievous nature spirits casting glamour on you. Short-lasting, powerful flows of magical energy.

My read on this chart is that it was a night where the spirits went a-roaming, and you were one of the convenient rubes they chances across. Given all that repetition and especially the triple Populus court, I would then go on to ask if it's possible that the night in question was on a traditional night of spiritual havoc a la Beltaine or Samhain or some local equivalent; or whether the area you were in was prone to UFO sightings or the like.

READING 2: "Did something unusual happen during the key incident?"

Well, clearly something did-- I'm not sure what you were driving at with this question, and it might have done with some fine tuning in the phrasing. Again, it seems to me a 12th house question, though it's a little less cut and dried this time around. (That's one reason it's good to decide in advance rather than retrospectively.) Assuming for now that this is indeed a 12th house matter, then, yes, there's a perfection by Translation 1-2. Querent (Laetitia, perhaps indicating being "high"?) in put into contact (Conjunctio) with the forces messing with you (12th house) via your personal belongings (2nd house). Beyond that, given the vagueness of the phrasing of the question, I'd be wary of assigning too much weight to the identities of the figures in the other houses, like spinning scenarios where S* is messing with you somehow.

READING 3: "Does S* remember the keys incident?"

Here you've (after the fact?) assigned S* to the 3rd house, but I think this is an error. Friends and associates belong to the 11th house; or, if the relationship with S* was more characterized by her being your teacher, then perhaps 10th house of authority figures. It's true, she is kind of sort of a neighbor if she lived a mile and a half away; but the relationship with you is characterized by the friendship, not by neighbor-iness. (3rd house can be thought of as "3rd parties"-- rumors, news, gossip among 3rd parties.)

If an 11th house question, then yes, she remembers. If 10th house, then no, she doesn't.

By the way, is it all possible that you told anyone about it afterward? If she remembers, could it be that you mentioned it to her the next week? Perhaps a more useful question, if you genuinely suspect S* was somehow involved in hiding your keys and then breaking into your house to replace them on your belt before morning or somesuch, would be "Was S* directly involved in hiding my keys on the night in question?" or the like.

[emmanuelg]

I remember telling my wife, and S*, and several other friends about this incident, but they were pretty dismissive.
S* said, "Maybe you left them at home that night."
My wife said, "Maybe they were in your winter coat."

So the other principles in this event seemed to be unaware of anything unusual at that time. S* was a public school teacher at that time, but about the same age as my wife and me, so a local friend or possibly neighbor for purposes of the readings.

However, I would need the key to lock the front door on that house unless it was locked from the inside. But this was unlikely since she was in bed sick at the time I left and didn't get up until the next morning. If I had left the keys at home, the front door would have been unlocked and I could have gone in with no problem. I had to have the keys when I left, because the door was locked.
Again, it was unlikely that they were in my winter coat, since they were attached to my pants. I would have had to take my belt off to remove the keys from my pants. And they were on my pants the next morning when I woke up.

That it could have been a night when there is usually a high amount of spirit activity--Hmmm, I had not thought of that. It would have to have been a Thursday night in late Fall, since we met every Thursday--probably in 1991. It was cold outside, about 40 deg F. I was definitely wearing my winter coat. Probably mid-November to early December, but not Thanksgiving or Christmas. Maybe I can find an old calendar with holidays marked in, or do another reading to ask specifically about spirit involvement.

[tunesmyth]

It seems reasonable that S* might remember it, if the conversation was an unusual one at all, without her actually having been involved in any way.

Apologies about bringing up the 11th house business; since it perfects either way so it's not really important here. When I started writing that, I was assuming it would mean it didn't perfect but it turned out it did. (This might just be a case of what sdi has mentioned, where the nice geomantic spirits cause perfection in the correct house as well as the mistaken house.)

Seriously-- losing important, impossible to lose items, only to have it show up where it would have been physically impossible to miss-- that's a really common form of spiritual mischief. You may be interested in The Fairy Census, which is available to legally peruse online here. You're in Canada, I guess? At one point I actually saw a Canadian documentary about people's fairy experiences, many in Canada (I think mainly Nova Scotia?) called "The Fairy Faith". Worth checking out.

Probably mid-November to early December, but not Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Not November 1-3 by any chance? Obviously this kind of event can happen at any time; the massive amount of Populus in the first reading just suggested that it might be a particularly mass-effect sort of time.

If you figure out anything more about this incident, feel free to share!