Table Of ContentSteve Richards
LUCK, CHANCE
& COINCIDENCE
The Mysterious Power of Luck-and
How to Make Yours Better
THE PARANORMAL
LUCK, CHANCE
& COINCIDENCE
Luck — is it something that comes to others, but never to you?
Have you ever wondered why some people are luckier than others?
If so, this book is designed to help you find some of the answers.
Drawing on a wide variety of sources, Steve Richards discusses
the whole spectrum of luck phenomena, from the hidden principles
behind coincidences to simple oracle systems that you can use
to improve your luck NOW.
Liberally spiced with anecdotes — some amusing, some chilling —
illustrating the amazing scope of luck and coincidence, the contents
include:
Coincidences — are they really?
★
Luck in stock market investments
★
A simple method for using astrology to improve your luck —
without casting a single horoscope
★
The luck that just happens and the luck you make
★
A Hindu oracle system that you can use anywhere, anytime
★
How to use bibliomancy to get the advice you need — instantly
★
How we create our luck — and how to make yours better
LUCK,CHANCE & COINCIDENCE
A fascinating, entertaining and thought-provoking look at
the effects of luck and coincidence, including ways in which
this fickle phenomenon may be predicted, changed or
improved.
By the same author
INVISIBILITY
LEVITATION
THE TRAVELLER’S GUIDE TO THE ASTRAL PLANE
LUCK, CHANCE
a COINCIDENCE
The Mysterious Power of Luck-and
How to Make Yours Better
by
Steve Richards
THE AQUARIAN PRESS
Wellingborough, Northamptonshire
First published 1985
© STEVE RICHARDS 1985
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of
trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated
without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover
other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Richards, Steve
Luck, chance and coincidence.
1. Coincidence in psychical research—
Case studies
I. Title
133.8 BF1175
ISBN 0-85030-401-6
The Aquarian Press is part of the
Thorsons Publishing Group
Printed and bound in Great Britain
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to the Association for Research and
Enlightenment at P.O. Box 595, Virginia Beach, Virginia 23451 (USA)
for permission to quote from their August 1983 Membership
Research Project, 'Synchronicity and Consciousness', and to The
New York Times for the story 'Sanitarium's Errors Kill a
Frenchman', Copyrighted 1928 by The New York Times Company
reprinted by permission.
Contents
Page
Chapter
1. The Seventh Son of the Seventh Son 9
2. Having Fun with Probability 17
3. Does Luck Run? 35
4. But What About the Stock Market? 43
5. An Esoteric Look at Time 53
6. Some Yogic Methods 71
7. Some Tattwic Refinements 83
8. Jerome Cardan's System 101
9. I See by the Book 109
10. Life's Unluckiest Hour 121
11. The Psychology of Luck 135
References 147
Index 158
1
The Seventh Son of the Seventh Son
Trivial events can have the most astonishing consequences. Pascal
is said to have remarked once that if Cleopatra's nose had been
shorter, that alone would have changed the history of the world.1
That may seem an exaggeration, but trivial events do shape
history — a fact that has fascinated historians as far back as Livy.
Golda Meir’s father was a Russian Jew who lived in the Tsarist
empire before the Revolution, and who was moved by the
intolerable anti-Semitism that existed there to emigrate to
America. Ultimately, he settled in Minnesota and sent for his
family to join him. Now this man was important to himself and
to his family but he was one of those simple folk whose doings
tend not to be of great importance to the world at large. Yet, had
he not decided to change addresses, the most monumental
consequences would have ensued. His daughter received private
tutoring in Russia, but it was not customary then for Russian girls
to receive a formal education. Had she not received an advanced
education it is conceivable that she might never have become
a power in the Zionist movement, and had that not happened,
she might never have become Prime Minister of the State of Israel.
One could argue that the private decisions of a Russian carpenter
literally changed the fate of the Arab world.
Perhaps even more significant is the story of the fellow who
tried to kill Hitler. Early in Hitler's career, one of his associates
became disenchanted with his movement for one reason or
another and decided to kill him, which certainly would have
10 LUCK. CHANCE AND COINCIDENCE
been a laudable act. He planted a bomb close to where Hitler
was supposed to stand and speak, but at a critical moment had
to make a quick stop at that device which is known as a water
closet or restroom, depending on where you happen to live. As
he prepared to leave he discovered that someone had locked him
in, and he was not able to escape until after Hitler had finished
speaking. So it could be said that this seemingly trivial incident
made possible the Holocaust and World War II. Moral — if you
are ever entering one of these places and see someone in a hurry
to get out, for God's sake, do not stand in his way!2
In 1967 a man in New York found luck doing just the opposite
— dawdling! He had been scheduled to take an air taxi to New
York from New Jersey but, for one reason or another, he did not
arrive with his usual promptitude. It was lucky for him that he
did not. His plane took off without him, then crashed.3
Or what about this, from Alton, Illinois? Mrs Mildred West
reported obituaries for the Alton Evening Telegraph, and even
in Alton there were an average of ten deaths per week to report.
Mrs West takes holidays, however, just as everyone else does and,
when she went on a one-week holiday in 1946, the people of
Alton obligingly stopped dying until she returned to her desk.4
Or this? A lady who gave birth to a son in a home for unmanied
mothers in Australia met him again by accident ten years laters.
He had been adopted by her fiancé!5
This is the kind of stuff that luck is made of — strange, baffling
coincidences which we all know are of course just coincidences,
but which are so extraordinary that it is difficult to feel sure.
There is a minor coincidence in the fact that Germany
capitulated to the Western Allies on 11 November 1918 at 11 a.m.
which is to say, the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the
eleventh month of the year. It is also interesting to note the
significance of the phrase 'eleventh hour' in this regard. Germany,
at that moment, had reached the 'eleventh hour' in more ways
than one.
Colonel Olcott, who is known to many as one of the Founders
of the Theosophical Society, mentions a whole cluster of
coincidences of this sort. In his Old Diary Leaves he points out
that Madame Blavatsky 'arrived at New York on the 7th of July,
1873 — that is to say on the seventh day of the seventh month
of her forty-second year [which is six times seven], and that our
meeting was postponed until I should have attained my forty-
