When Lydia travels to Amsterdam with her parents, weird incidents plague her stay. Curtains flutter mysteriously, unexplained shadows move through the kitchen. But Lydia is more concerned with the potential move to upstate New York. She ignores the phenomena, blaming everything on jet lag and her migraines. Then Lydia’s father lands a new job and the family moves to an area first settled by the Dutch and the bizarre happenings continue. Soon Lydia must face what she may have inadvertently brought home with her, an unhappy ghost from the past.
“YA Author Ellis Nelson knows how to thread a carefully spun tale with some little known, wildly interesting, historical facts and wonderful family dynamics. She paints memorable portraits of the different countries and eras – including the scents, fragrances, smells and stenches that so clearly define those ancient times in Holland . . . right into the New World!”
5 Star Amazon:
“TIMELESS TULIPS is both fascinating and informative on many levels. Ostensibly, it is a work of Young Adult historical & visionary fiction, and while I know the YA audience will love it, it’s also a satisfying adult read. …Read this engaging tale of visionary insight, historical perspective, and just plain entertainment. It will not disappoint.”
5 Star Amazon:
“Nelson brings the setting, characters, and events to life with a deft hand. Lydia’s timeline is equally unique. Her relationship with her fashion-conscious mother added a nice layer of credibility. Lydia has to be both sleuth and ghost buster before the story ends.”
5 Star Amazon:
“Timeless Tulips is the third novel I have immersed myself in by gifted author, Ellis Nelson. As with her other books, this story is exciting, suspenseful, and definitely unique. The plot twists in unexpected ways and is filled with shadowy circumstances. A wonderful read!!”
Recently I’ve been playing with a function on a software program that allows you to put in certain astrological parameters and find a famous person who matches your chart. Fun stuff!! My best match was a writer I know well and while I was surprised at how well the details matched, I wasn’t shocked at all. It made me smile in that small knowing way. Anyway, the first person who guesses my best match (no more than 5 guesses per person, please), will win a print copy of Timeless Tulips, Dark Diamonds. Sorry, US mailing addresses only, unless you want an E-copy of the book. Contest ends Sep. 15. Challenge on! Comment below. My secret match will be revealed then if no one guesses correctly. BTW- Charles Dickens and I are NOT a match.
Let’s turn to Charles Dickens, whose chart I chose to briefly examine because everyone knows something about him and his work. Who didn’t read at least one of his novels in school? Writing during the height of the Victorian era, Dickens created some of the best-known fictional characters of all time and experienced a level of popularity seldom seen with a writer. His work continues to be read and produced today. Some of his widely recognized works are: A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, and Bleak House. Dickens was also a social critic who pushed for children’s rights, educational improvements, and social reforms.
Evolutionary astrology begins with the premise that we all have lived many lifetimes and we evolve spiritually through the many lessons we encounter along the way. To understand the themes associated with anyone’s past lives, we must look to the south node in the birth chart. Dickens’ south node is in Pisces (4th House). Let’s begin there because it reveals much about what his soul has been through.
With the south node in Pisces, Dickens would have had an understanding that our true nature lies beyond the transitory existence of the physical body and the day-to-day reality. The world may have been experienced as dreamlike or a projection into the matrix. This was probably a key source of inspiration in his writing. Oftentimes, someone with this nodal pattern suffers from a loss of self because Pisces is associated with the boundless where the line between self and other doesn’t exist. Dickens may have had lives in monastic settings engaging in deep spiritual practices including meditations, rituals, fasting, and other aesthetic pursuits. This by itself can cause a loss of connection to the real world. Everyday life may seem strange and harsh. Some examples of the lower expression of the Pisces energy might be someone who falls into addiction or someone who allows others to determine their life path for them. These people don’t live fully in the three-dimensional reality as successful individuals. The higher manifestation of this energy allows an exploration of inner realms and transcendent states which fuels heightened levels of creativity, imagination, and psychic ability (in some cases). Certainly, with Dickens his creativity and sheer volume of work indicates he was using the Piscean energy well.
An interesting biographical detail that can be tied to Dickens’ past life in Pisces, was his membership in The Ghost Club. This paranormal investigation and research organization, founded in London in 1862 devoted itself to studying ghosts, hauntings, and psychic phenomena. Considered to be the oldest paranormal research organization in the world (although not always continuous), predates the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) by two decades. Dickens’ fictional work featured ghosts in A Christmas Carol and The Signal Man, and probably in other works as well.
Charles Dickens south node was found in the fourth house of home and family. Here family must be viewed in a broad context of kinship groups extending to family, clan, or tribe. His past life suggests a pattern where the family defined much of his existence. Family business, expectations, norms, reputations, all limited his life in some way. Some of those restrictions may have been severe. The residual effect on Dickens would have made him very loyal to those he perceived as “family.” This loyalty may or may not have been deserved. It is a remnant from the past where radical commitment and identification to the clan was required. It is possible that feelings of familiarity with people in his current life were rooted in the past. The legacy of the south node in the fourth house suggested that he was likely to have deep but complicated relationships with his family of origin.
Dickens struggled through a tough childhood. Although up to the age of eleven, biographer John Forster describes his life as idyllic, things changed when his father went to debtor’s prison. Charles left school and worked in a boot-blacking factory under miserable conditions. In his creative life, he drew heavily on his experiences of hardship, poverty, and social inequity. Very few details were known of his early life until a biography he had collaborated on was released after his death. Dickens was ashamed of his early life and did his best to hide it. Nevertheless, his loyalty to the family was shown through the provisions of his will. He provided well for all his family members, a wife from whom he had separated, several friends, and all the servants he employed.
Much more analysis could be done on his chart. Interesting to note the strong square to the nodal axis with Neptune indicating the need to release limiting beliefs, religious views, or philosophies. While Dickens was considered Christian, he seemed to despise organized religion. This is certainly an area for more exploration.
This is just a brief glimpse into evolutionary astrology. If you are intrigued about what your own chart might reveal, contact me below. Clients continue to report surprising correlations and stories about how evolutionary astrology reports have helped them. Be aware my fall schedule is filling fast. This is going to be one INTERESTING ride into the new year. Several key astrological aspects are being triggered bringing in fast change.
More Answers and Advice for Parents of Estranged Adult Children- Sheri McGregor, MA
About a decade ago, I became the unwilling member of a group of parents who society has forced into silence and continues to judge and blame. Truth be told, I would have made many of the judgments that were projected on to me. I am the parent of an estranged adult child. Ignorance and silence perpetuate untruths concerning estrangement. Along with this, there has developed an entire philosophy of cancel culture and a business sector within psychology that supports blaming parents. Don’t get me wrong—I realize divorce, drug abuse, alcoholism, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse all can lead to estrangement. But these are NOT fueling the phenomena we’re dealing with. Sheri McGregor’s book is about how “good parents who work diligently and do their best sometimes end up without the sweet fruits of their labor.” Her statistics indicate that as many as one in four families will experience an estrangement at some point. Gone are the days of reasonable parenting producing anything like reasonable outcomes, IMHO. Early in my own search for understanding, I looked for books and found ridiculous nonsense that blamed, shamed, and put the onus on parents for reconciliation. What a breath of fresh air to find McGregor’s book which empowers parents!
In 2016, McGregor released her first book, Done With the Crying: Help and Healing for Mothers of Estranged Adult Children. I skipped that one preferring to go on to the second because the focus of Beyond Crying is about moving the family that’s left behind forward. After years of processing my own feelings and coming to the same place as the author about her own situation, I was more concerned about how siblings handle estrangement and how to prepare for end-of-life choices. In addition, Beyond Crying, offered expanded material on mental health, boundaries, and truths about reconciliation.
The overall emphasis of this book is to help parents recover a strong and healthy sense of self to move forward with purpose. The adult child may never reappear or reappear only to break again. Even reconciliation that is functional will never be what it once was. You can’t go home. Hard truth. McGregor shares many stories from interviewing over 50,000 parents who have walked this path. They are enlightening.
And I know that if you read this far, you’re wondering—why. Why did my estrangement happen? Like many of the parents in the book, I don’t know why. I never will.
Added: 7/22 To get a feel for how adult children are counseled in current psychology to drop parents from their lives simply google “no contact with parents.” Be prepared for some terrible stuff.
For the last few weeks, I’ve been working on a directory of posts from the blog. Although not all encompassing, hopefully it’ll help anyone looking to read about specific topics. Below is a sampling of categories and articles. Eventually, I’ll make an index page. Also note that WordPress didn’t seem to retain anything prior to 2014, although I started this blog in 2012. If anyone knows why, please share below.
Saturday, June 11, 2022, all across America marches to support gun control will take place. Find an event near you here. Click on the link below! I’ll be at the Denver march.
If you think nothing ever happens, things never change, please know that NY State passed a bill to increase the legal age to own assault weapons to 21 this week. Florida did the same after the Parkland shooting in 2018. Things can change but not without us!!
There were some good speakers and many committed people at the event. Amazingly, this rally was organized by teenagers in high school who have all been directly impacted by gun violence. One speaker talked about the need to reach out to bridge the separation everyone feels in the country. Specifically, calling on gun control advocates to address the constant hammering of untruths by “big guns” (the gun industry) with reality. Please see how to answer gun advocates on http://www.coloradoceasefire.com.
I remember Sandy Hook. It was the morning of December 14th, 2012. I woke from a fitful, awful, disturbing dream unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. A gunman shooting cats, blood everywhere, sickening, and the phrase pounding “slaughter of innocents.” I noted the time on the alarm clock and tried to dismiss the dream as turned to daily chores. Later I’d learn that my dream occurred when the first 911 calls were coming in on the shooter at Sandy Hook.
One, two, skip a few… ninety-nine, one hundred. Sunday morning, May 22, 2022, we readied ourselves for our first major road trip marking an end to Covid and our new dedication to travel again. My husband and I had a trip planned to the Four Corners region of Colorado. I left the kitchen to see to some last-minute details when suddenly, my husband let out a god-awful gasp.
“What?” I called from the next room.
“Don’t come in here!” His tone was firm. “The hawk has the baby bunny.”
My heart sank. The both of us had watched two, tiny bunnies in our yard for the past couple of weeks. Even showing them to the grandkids. (Damn redtails! I hate when they hunt in our yard. I do my best to feed the squirrels where they have cover but what can you do for bunnies?)
The morning felt off, being marked by death. Later in the car, my husband remarked on how he thought the bunny had been safe so near the lilac bush but that the hawk had come from behind and swooped down on him.
The drive toward Mesa Verde took us into part of Colorado that neither of us had ever seen. My husband spotted the first dead deer on the side of the road. More followed. I started to point out my own roadkill. Why so many? If I’d known there’d be so many, I would have paid attention and actually counted but surely it approached a dozen. I’ve been on lots of road trips, but I’d never seen so much death. I commented that death seems to be with us (my husband’s (fairly) accustomed to my sunny humor after all these years, but he didn’t respond). I felt unsettled at the sheer clobbering message of death we were getting but as is often the case, what can you do with insufficient knowledge?
Dreams, premonitions, omens. Being out of news media range at the National Park where we had no TV in the room, it wasn’t until the day after the Uvalde shooting that the details started to emerge for us. Honestly, I didn’t want to hear about the carnage. BUT— here we are again. THE SLAUGHTER OF INNOCENTS!!
When we returned home, I spent a few days doing my civic duty. Writing my Senators, making donations to groups for gun control, lobbying for an assault weapons ban, sharing posts about upcoming marches. I watched Facebook (with my liberal friends, mostly) post some obligatory responses and then within a week put their heads down and give up. In a community of people who (I think) regard themselves as “spiritual,” I watched my postings be ignored. Many “friends” took absolutely no stand, as if being spiritual elevates them so high they can’t deign to come to earth to take a stand for the weak, the young, the vulnerable. I’m ashamed of them.
I understand frustration! I’m frustrated, too. I don’t like that the Senate is highly unlikely to pass anything that will prevent another Uvalde! I do get that! But what’s the alternative as an individual? Do nothing? (Well, apparently!) I also wonder about individuals who remain silent because they don’t want to ruffle feathers because it might cause conflict on FB and other social media. Pretty weak, huh? But it’s there. It’s also there with those who have clients on different sides of the political spectrum and hey money (MY money, that’s more important than kids…I guess).
My bottom line for this rant is that if you are spiritual (in any way, shape, or form), you don’t get to sit it out. Nope! THAT IS YOUR FREAKIN’ CALL!! From that place of spirit, you are called to act. To protect the weak, the vulnerable, the young, the old.
The world has watched in astonishment as Volodymyr Zelensky has led Ukraine in its stand against the formidable Russian invasion. I’ve heard more than one person ask how this former comedian and actor has the internal resources to rise to this occasion. That intriguing question led me to take a quick peek at his birth chart to see what evolutionary astrology might have to say about him. As it turns out, quite a lot, actually.
Evolutionary astrology begins with the premise that we all have lived many lifetimes and we evolve spiritually through the many lessons we encounter along the way. To understand the themes associated with anyone’s past lives, we must look to the south node in the birth chart. Zelensky’s south node is in Aries (11th House). Let’s begin there because it reveals much about what his soul has been through.
Aries is associated with war. This is an adrenaline driven energy. Raw energy is available, and confrontations are likely. Suffice to say, Zelensky has known war, at least on some level. It is very possible that he experienced first-hand, the violence of the battlefield and that this has been a recurring pattern for him. However, it may not be the only context for the use of the mars’ energy. There can also be situations which involve challenges or do-or-die scenarios which involve an individual challenging themselves in hazardous situations. These are things that get that adrenaline pumping. Think mountain climbing, car racing, high stakes gamboling, and even political contests. Regardless of which of these happened, astrologer Steven Forrest has written of the Aries’ south node individual, “There are, inborn in this soul, the reflexes of a warrior.” So as the world keeps asking about that Ukrainian comedian, perhaps they are missing precisely who Volodymyr Zelensky really is on a soul level. That comedian mask hides the warrior and he’s done the warrior-thing for lifetimes…
The 11th House placement also gives us further insight into Zelensky’s past lives. This house is associated with fellowship and the groups we belong to because we share a common interest. Zelensky had past lives where his sense of individuality was overtaken by the interests of the group. There were collective social forces that did not allow him to fully express himself. Because of the connection to Venus in his chart, this was probably more about him going along with the prevailing belief system and playing by conventional societal rules. Nevertheless, Zelensky has a history of being caught up in broad historical currents which occurred in previous homelands. He identifies with the collective and has a pattern of sacrificing his inner self for the sake of the group.
I hope all this makes you smile a little more when next you hear something about that Ukrainian comedian!
Much more analysis could be done on his chart. This is just a brief glimpse into the power of evolutionary astrology. If you are intrigued about what your own chart might reveal, contact me below. Clients continue to report surprising correlations and how evolutionary astrology reports have helped them.
The Jupiter/Neptune Conjunction: 4/12/2022 Perfecting today but ongoing throughout April. Rare planetary alignment occurring about every 165 years (the next one in 2188).
Indications: Heightened intuition Perception of synchronicities Increased creativity Vivid dreams Blissful states Opportunities for connecting with Cosmic Unity Feelings of forgiveness, tolerance, compassion
I bless the night that nourished my heart To set the ghosts of longing free Into the flow and figure of dream That went to harvest from the dark Bread for the hunger no one sees.
All that is eternal in me Welcome the wonder of this day, The field of brightness it creates Offering time for each thing To arise and illuminate.
I place on the altar of dawn: The quiet loyalty of breath, The tent of thought where I shelter, Wave of desire I am shore to And all beauty drawn to the eye.
May my mind come alive today To the invisible geography That invites me to new frontiers, To break the dead shell of yesterdays, To risk being disturbed and changed.
May I have the courage today To live the life that I would love, To postpone my dream no longer But do at last what I came here for And waste my heart on fear no more.
ellisnelson 