“Sinister [ˈsinistər] ADJECTIVE
1. giving the impression that something harmful or evil is happening or will happen.
2. of, on, or toward the left-hand side (in a coat of arms, from the bearer’s point of view, i.e., the right as it is depicted).The opposite of dexter.“
By now the canny reader will have tumbled to the topics addressed in this post – something evil happening to a left hand. Up front I want to let you know that Alexx Bollen’s fingers healed up just fine.
One characteristic of many psi events – call them precognition, telepathy, crisis apparitions, out of body experiences, poltergeist knocks, doppelgangers, or more – is that they very often happen around strong emotions and close personal relationships. Even people who cultivate skill with these capacities will find that the more striking events tend to erupt around fraught situations with people they care about.
Eric Wargo, our Guru of Precognition via Retrocausation, put it very nicely in a Reddit AMA in response to my telling him the story which I’m about to tell you:
“I think our choices are constantly being guided by presentiments about important revelations and amazing encounters. This is why I call precognition a social-orienting function — it constantly leads sensitive/intuitive people to reach out to friends, where they, voila, learn their friend was in an accident. I think in cultures where intuition isn’t socialized out of children from an early age, life would constantly feel “synchronistic” or “telepathic” this way. Because we are long selves guided by precognition, our fates are “woven.”
The interweaving/interlacing happens across time, and we are oriented toward real-world, in-the-flesh encounters. I think that’s a lot more interesting and exciting than the nebulous “transpersonal” connections described in the Jungian literature etc. Jung lacked a well-developed understanding of time, so he was happy to just “collapse the time dimension.” Precognition reveals much more interesting stuff going on.”
Now, personally I believe that precognition is a big factor in many psi/paraweird events, but I also believe that telepathy, empathy (feeling other people’s physical/emotional state at a distance), PK, and synchronicities happen, too – in real time. Be that as it may, a recent incident illustrates the emotional dynamic and the symbolic/meaning dimension of the typical paraweird event nicely.
I’ve been friends online with Alexx Bollen for years now. He’s a podcaster and writer of magical realist fiction, I love his vision and sardonic, biting sense of humor. I worry about him and he gives me cloaca shout outs on his comedy movie review show, we complain about life’s difficulties and our own foibles, we’re in touch most days. Alexx has hosted me on his podcast a few times on topics important to me, most especially my talk with Professor WHAM about what to be leery of in spiritual teacher/student relationships for which I am very grateful.
In mid-October of this year (2021), I went grocery shopping by myself. I live with my mom and husband, mom and I are both immunosuppressed so my husband has done the vast bulk of the shopping since January 2020. So it was an unusual activity/situation for me. For whatever reason (as I don’t drink) I was struck by the many fun and artistic wine labels in the wine section, and took pictures of several of to send to specific friends and family.
Returning home, I sent the Sinister Hand picture to two of my correspondents, one of whom was Alexx (the other has requested anonymity). I got a return message from Alexx very quickly – he was at the hospital after injuring two fingers very badly at work. On his left hand.
A few observations: the symbolism of the wine label is quite clear in this case, both words apply and both meanings of ‘sinister’ do too. The drawing also jibes – left hand, with black lines (Alexx had stitches on two fingers with black sutures), even the blood dripping (which I didn’t notice until I started preparing this blog post). Which is where I quibble with the precognition/retrocausation theory – I didn’t just have a feeling and reach out to Alexx (though I’ve had experiences in this vein many times). I happened to be, very unusually for me, in a place where I would be drawn to this image specifically representing Alexx’s injury. At about the time it happened.
Basically, why go for straight, efficient telepathy when you can have all these flowery, confounding extra psi steps! It certainly makes for a more dramatic story, and I suspect that that aesthetic sense helps drive the phenomenon, at least in my case.
If this story has whet your appetite for in depth discussion of this peculiar talent for telepathic empathy with other people, you are in luck! I was honored to discuss this exact topic with Roejen Razorwire and Taylor Bell on Taylor’s wonderful Green Lion podcast. Roejen has been very actively engaging with this capacity in himself and in conversation with others for a few years now and has a lot of useful advice and observations which he shared in these shows.
Listen here:
EMPOSIS on the Green Lion podcast Part One
EMPOSIS on the Green Lion podcast Part Two
No matter what may be ‘really going on’ in these weird events, I think it’s important for people to realize that they do happen quite often, to many people – you are not a freak! The particulars may vary, and in this respect it reminds me of music or art in that people have their own preferred mediums, techniques, and aesthetics.
Lastly, I’m going to suggest a way of looking at the emotional content of this event. This applies to many events of this nature which often center around a distressing event. I find that many people get stuck on the distressing event, and start to get freaked out that their psi ability is somehow ‘causing’ or ‘associated’ with the injury or whatever disaster is at the center of the phenomenon.
But I like Eric Wargo’s take on this, and I think it’s correct. Crappy and worse happens in life, it’s the nature of our earth. But focusing on our desire and ability to convey that support to other people, when they are in distress, casts these events in a wholesome and uplifting light.
I encourage people to look beyond the disaster or accident precipitating a psi event, beyond the uncanniness of our consciousness traversing time/space/our own selves, to the active compassion and caring driving the premonition, synchronicity, bilocation, or whatever.
And be not afraid.
Ghost Dog is a Mystery Box 
Fascinating reading as always, Stephanie. I recognise the name of Alexx Bollen, having heard them on a podcast interview once. (“Where did the Road Go?” perhaps?) I should also mention that I have started delving into the work of Eric Wargo as a specific result of your specific recommendation. His favourite topics happen to be almost the exact same ones I have been studying the most intensely the last year, just needs more Kabbalah and rune magic thrown into the mix.
I do find it interesting how many mythological and esoteric religious resonances of symbolism you recognise in everyday life, with many of those weird coincidences having an extremely specific symbolic meaning at that. To the point that if they happened in the plot of a novel, most reviewers would call it unrealistic. If my memory does not betray me, I once described you as someone who analyses their waking life the same way most people analyse their dreams. Which is something I have yet to do to your extent, even if I have re-kindled my interest in dream interpretation over the course of this year…
Come to think of it, “live your waking life according to dream logic” might be a good description of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s “Psychomagic” system. Whose selling point is that the system might be an incoherent mishmash of Mexican folk religion and outdated Freudian/Jungian psychoanalysis from an academic viewpoints, yet still functions as advertised but only if followed to its tiniest details. Notice that Jodorowsky views the creation of his stage plays+films+comic books and other narrative works as alchemical processes. Perhaps there is a lesson in that!
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