New Book Just Released, January 1, 2015 "Sweet Synchronicity: Finding Annie Besan,t Discovering Krishnamurti"

Like the film, ‘Julie/Julia’ this book is a true story based on the lives of two women who lived at different times and places but who had uniquely intertwined lives. Elizabeth Spring, astrologer and aspiring writer, finds Annie Besant because of unusual similarities in their astrology charts. Annie was a passionate social reformer who lost custody of her children because of distributing information on birth control in 1875. After trials and depression, Annie becomes a passionate spiritual seeker, being mentored by the Russian psychic Madame Blavatsky, head of the Theosophical Society. As Elizabeth struggles to write a screenplay of Annie’s life she discovers the heartfelt and obsessive story of Annie’s adopted son, the young mystic J. Krishnamurti. Elizabeth questions the role of fate and reincarnation in her own life by what she uncovers about her mysterious relationship with Annie who was born exactly 100 years earlier, in Victorian England in 1847. ~

Available on amazon.com

Book Excerpt: Chapter One: Sweet Synchronicity, Finding Annie Besant, Discovering Krishnamurti

It was a crisp October day in the upscale bucolic village of Litchfield, Connecticut. I was visiting my seventy year old mother, when on an ‘afternoon outing’ we stumbled upon the kind of bookstore that barely exists anymore. Wooden beams framed the small cluttered interior of the room overflowing with books and a woodstove warmed the chilled air. I felt excited; maybe there would be something here for me.

I would have checked out the astrology section first, but instead bumped into a table, over which hovered a curious sign: “People Forgotten in History,” and there she was—a woman staring from the cover of a book directly into my eyes. It was a slim book with the simple title of Annie Besant followed by the subtitle: Passionate campaigner for social and political rights, seeker after spiritual truth, and a woman of extraordinary personal courage. I looked at her face—young, earnest, intense, with dark eyes set between high cheekbones and framed with short curly brown hair. But it was her direct stare that defied any attempt to return her to the slush pile of books on the table.

So “Annie” came home with me that day, and after dinner, I returned to my childhood bedroom and began to read. It wasn’t until dawn that I finally put the book down; finished and mesmerized. Her story captured me, not just her struggles and defeats, but something about who she was—was so like me—although her life was so large and mine so small. Could this be just co-incidence and serendipity? It felt as if there was a sweet synchronicity resonating between us.

That next morning my words were a torrent of jagged emotion as I tried to tell my mother about Annie: “When Annie was very young she was a minister’s wife in a poverty-stricken area of England—and she was so anguished over the poverty and suffering she saw—that she came to the idea that what women needed to know was about birth control: to not have a life of continuous child bearing! So she found and distributed a booklet on contraception—in 1875—which so enraged her husband that he brought her to trial where the courts declared her an unfit mother for corrupting the morals of the young. Can you believe it?”

My mother was busily spreading butter on her toast. “They took her children away from her!” My voice hovered between a scream and a plea for understanding. Mother got up to go to the kitchen to get more coffee. I took a deep breath and lowered my voice to a rational level. “And after that she led the match girls in a strike in London that changed everything for them—they were being poisoned by match chemicals, working 10 hours a day for a pittance!” No comment. I wrapped my hands, tightening my grip, around the chipped coffee mug I had long ago made for her. She poured me more coffee.

Mother sat down and raised her eyelids. “Life is cruel, but what can we do? Were you reading all night? That’s not good for you honey, and now you’ve got to go back and leave me here, again.” She sighed. I felt the usual twang of guilt, but this time it was layered with a hopeless anger that we would never connect. Mother always felt abandoned when I left her home in Connecticut for Rhode Island.

Returning home to Newport, I made straight away for the Redwood Library on Bellevue Avenue. Here in this private old library there must be some dusty volume on the life of Annie Besant. I inquired; there was indeed such a book; the librarian handed me a faded red tome called “The Passionate Pilgrim.”

Opening this hard-covered book I saw that it hadn’t been signed out of the library for over 15 years—but—there on the inside cover of the book was her full birth chart! I gasped. Annie was born on Oct. 1^st 1847 at 5:39 pm, and I was born Oct 1^st 1947, at 5:34 pm —the same day, exactly 100 years and 5 minutes apart. We were both Libras with Aries rising, and many aspects in our charts were similar. A shiver went through me.

Sweet Synchronicity: Finding Annie Besant, Discovering Krish

New Book will be out in beginnig of January!

Like the film, ‘Julie/Julia’ this book is based on the lives of two women who lived at different times and places but who had uniquely intertwined lives. Elizabeth Spring, astrologer and aspiring writer, finds Annie Besant because of unusual similarities in their astrology charts. Annie was a passionate social reformer who lost custody of her children because of distributing information on birth control in 1875. After trials and depression, Annie becomes a passionate spiritual seeker, being mentored by the Russian psychic Madame Blavatsky, head of the Theosophical Society. As Elizabeth struggles to write a screenplay of Annie’s life she discovers the heartfelt and obsessive story of Annie’s adopted son, the young mystic J. Krishnamurti, and the occultist, Charles Leadbeater. Elizabeth questions the role of fate and reincarnation in her own life by what she uncovers about her mysterious relationship with Annie who was born exactly 100 years earlier, in Victorian England in 1847.

Chapter Nine   The Screenplay Visualized.

London. 1889. Interior Victorian bedroom.

Heavy curtains are drawn letting in only a sliver of daylight. The room is typical of the upper class taste of the era although the dark wood and velvet green furniture has a distinctly worn and dusty look. A dimly lit oil lamp on the fireplace mantel illuminates a collection of old family photographs.

I’m in bed, unmoving, my face turned to the wall. An assortment of medicine bottles and untouched food is on a table beside me. Tacked up on the wall is the front page of the Pall Mall Gazette on which Annie Besant’s name appears in large letters next an article on “The Match Girl’s Strike.”  

Muffled voices are heard fighting outside her door, till the door is thrust open and there stands a large imposing looking woman with an exasperated housekeeper: “I told her you were not seeing anyone!”

The 200+ pound Madam Blavatsky, dressed in dark silks and brocades lumbers over to the bedside. She is carrying a huge hard-bound book under her arm, and her round head is covered by a thin black shawl. Her protruding eyes pierce me to the quick. She extends her hand and speaks in a low deep voice with Russian accent.

 “Helena Petrovna Blavatsky… my dear Mrs. Besant, for so long I have wished to meet you…”

I timidly turned over and extended my hand. Madame held it for too long. I pulled my hand back and turned my face to the wall. I could still see Madame surveying the room and noticing the untouched food. “You’re not eating.”

“Please…go away. I saw you there in the courtroom that day; you know it all; I know who you are.”

 Madame sniffed, her neck arching. “I saw a woman with great courage there; a woman ahead of her time. What do those men know?”

I turned my flushed face back to Madame. “What do you know?”

“I know whatever I need to know; I get my orders from the Masters.”

“I’m sorry, Madam Blavatsky, but I don’t believe in spiritualism…or you.” My neck stiffened.

Madame jabs her hand in the air: “No need to believe. You have to experience! Your life is of no use to anyone now! Look at you! Do you know you have a destiny to fulfill? So what’s all this?” Her hand waved across the room in disgust. “Flapdoodle! You are going to be a victim now? Rot away in this room? You think this is what you were meant for?”

I said nothing.

She leaned over my bed, too close to my face. “Sometimes…you have to fail in the eyes of the world first…”

“Oh I can seem to win, but inside…I feel as if I’ve failed.” I sat up.

“It’s because you don’t have any idea how it all fits together! One day you’re picketing the factories and writing letters to the big wigs to squeeze a shilling out of them for the girls--” She lumbered over to the newspaper headlines of the Match Girls I had hung on the wall to bring my spirits up, but she pulled it down, and stuck it under my nose. “And then you see these girls slapping their children around, drinking, having more children…eh? And you, you’re writing books for them about how not to have more babies---yes? Then you collapse in despair because nothing seems to change. Eh? Am I right?”

“You’re right.” I said. It was uncanny how she knew exactly what was bothering me—after the strike I had seen one of the match girls on the street hitting her child and yelling profanities. But that wasn’t the real issue; it was the trial. “They took my daughter away! They said I was an unfit mother.” And then there was Shaw, and I had stopped going to the Socialist meetings. I was truly alone.

“You don’t know your worth.” Madame stood up and started moving about the room again. Spotting a photograph she picked it up; it was an old daguerreotype of me and my mother. Madame took it off the mantel and handed it to me.

 “Open it,” she demanded.

“No!—what right have you—this is my mother!” I took it out of her hands.