Tom JacobsFrom time to time I experience what I call a breadcrumb trail. It’s a series of intriguing clues that leads to an insight or bit of understanding I’ve been looking for.
These are synchronistic dealios set in place by spirit guides, for the record. When we notice coincidences and want there to be meaning, it’s really about us needing meaning. When we feel a kooky and piquing vibration that cannot not mean something, it’s often synchronicities that have our spirit guides’ fingerprints on them.
The first one I really noticed took – if I remember correctly – about 2 years to unfold. It was long before I … submitted to guidance, but it had all the signs. At that point in my life I didn’t know what to make of it. It served to open me up just a little bit to the fact that there was more going on than what my linear, logical mind had decided was going on.
It had to do with the name Orlando, also as Roland. First it was a pen with the name “Roland Construction Co.” on it that kept popping up. As in, I had so many pens I never used that to see one pop up accompanied with an odd vibration – as though I should pay attention – did get my attention. Over the (I believe) 2 years there were 6 or 7 major strongly-vibrating breadcrumbs. One was that my sister right after this moved to Orlando, Florida and I just had to visit her. I stayed a month, feeling something important was happening. Another was being inexplicably drawn to The Song of Roland, a medieval book that’s part of the Western cultural malfunction re romanticism. To know me then (near the end of college), you might not have been surprised that I was reading it but I was not drawn to what a friend called “mouldy oldies.” My interest was in 20th-century stuff – Joyce, Beckett, Camus, Orwell, Genet, and others. So I was surprised that I just had to read thing in which I would normally have no interest.
Finally, it became clear that it was to get me to read Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando. When I did, I got certain things about gender and society that had been on my mind as questions for a long time. For reasons that are too much to go into here, I didn’t like the models of masculinity I had seen around me and so presented a bit as gender-neutral (the best way I can describe it). The result was that my Mars in the 1st house and my Scorpio Sun were terribly underserved and unhappy, and over and over again that left my Venus in Libra on the Libra Ascendant as the loudest thing about me … which had people assuming I was gay. Nothing wrong with being gay in my mind but I knew that wasn’t me. So getting to that book (and the film based on it) began to open a door to see things a bit differently, which was my guides’ answer to a question I was having. And there have been numerous such breadcrumbs over the years as I’ve learned to interpret and trust the signals around me that I have learned are spirit guides working to guide me to answers and experiences that I need, often in answer to questions I’m asking of them and life.
Kind of a long introduction to say that now I’m on some trail to do with “clay” or “claymore.” But I wanted to give you some context so you can see why I take these synchronicities seriously.
This one started a few weeks ago when I was guided to some movie that had something in the story that blows up – a Claymore is a type of landmine developed during World War II, named by its Scottish developer after a two-handed Scottish sword. The word “Claymore” spoken by a character vibrated as though I should listen, as so many words over the years have vibrated when my guides are feeding me info and leading me to experiences to help me answer questions I’m asking. A couple of other references to “clay” and “claymore” – including characters in other things I was guided to watch over the following few days – followed and I knew a pattern had developed.
Next came a documentary on the American screenwriter and director John Milius, who wrote and directed war-like and violent movies like Conan the Barbarian, Red Dawn, and the first two Dirty Harry movies, and wrote the screenplay for Apocalypse Now (which has, in fact, played prominently in its own Tom Jacobs-specific breadcrumb trail since high school). I was drawn to watch this documentary and his story was so entirely but weirdly Plutonian that I looked up his chart. At that point, I thought his Pluto in Leo on the Leo North Node could be why I was drawn to it, as he’s a great illustration of that placement and I’m working on a Pluto book to fully explain my approach to working with it. So, I thought, perhaps he’s to be an example. And then I got to the part in the documentary in which he goes to his favorite shooting range to shoot clay pigeons and “clay” in is in the name of the place, and the word on the sign vibrated in a serious way. So I knew it was about “clay” and perhaps nothing else.
And then last Friday at the rock lab, where I cut and polish crystals, I was kind of robotically nudged to go ask the shop monitor – there to help everyone using the equipment and very knowledgeable about rocks – if the yellow in the mookaite I was polishing was arsenic, which I had learned would require protective breathing gear stuff to work with. But I already knew it wasn’t because he had told me before that yellow in other rocks can be arsenic but mookaite is calcified mud and its yellow is most definitely not arsenic. So I walked over to him while wondering why I was doing it – actually I felt silly because I knew I knew the answer. I asked him like a good little guided person and he said, “No, that’s not arsenic. Mookaite is originally clay that became calcified.” And “clay” vibrated.
And so this is all about me working more with mookaite … or the trail continues – hard to know just yet. I’ve been making small, polished pieces of mookaite for a week or so, not sure yet what I’m going to do with them. In other words, I’m being guided to create the pieces but not yet being told the purpose of it. It could be that the trail of breadcrumbs this time is to keep me focused on making more mookaite pieces because if I don’t know why I’m doing it, my interest might stray. As I write that, that feels right on! Whew.
In fact, months ago I felt that I was going to do more with mookaite than just have a piece for me to play with (it’s on my desk with the other crystals I use regularly), but there was no qualitative info from Djehuty on what I might do with it. He’s been peevishly silent about it. I asked if I would be asked to charge it or simply sell them as is – and got nothing. His silence to a question like this is often the energetic equivalent of a Cheshire cat’s grin – it used to me nuts. But most of the time I’m okay with not being let in on why I’m guided to do what I’m doing – all good with me at this point. But I think the “clay” breadcrumb trail may be meant simply to keep mookaite on my to-do list when I go to the shop.
So, perhaps, stay tuned for more on mookaite. Or not – who knows! Among other properties, it helps one identify new solutions to old problems. In fact, it was being a gift of mookaite by a friend in Australia that inspired me to look up to see if I could take a lapidary (rocks & gems) class here in Tucson after a year of looking for the right kind of cut-and-polished pieces ready to go that I wanted to charge.
Read about and view the charged tiger iron pieces on my site to get a feel for what I’ve been up to lately with crystals. You can get one to help with self-confidence, health issues, staying grounded, supporting creativity and self-esteem, and opening your intuitive side.