Numerology Prediction 2026

 Numerologists note that a change in numbers does not automatically switch from one energy to the next. Generally the transition can be around three months either side of the change. The yer 2026, for example is a 1 year following the 9 year of 2025. So if 9 is a sum consolidation at the end of a cycle, the beginning of the next one will inherit the winding up of the previous cycle.

In 2014 my wife and I bought a new house because the right opportunity arose; the number 7 year was indeed a result of other factors that suddenly created the right circumstances. I won’t elaborate on this as the focus for this post is the year 2026. The new cycle began in 2017 and having lived in a new area for a short time, the focus up to now had been to acclimatise from city to rural life. I started a new job role only the year before, which became permanent in the 1 year. I also become involved in a campaign to reduce the speed of traffic going through the village, which became the springboard to becoming known and my launch in 2019 into local politics. So the idea (1) the collaboration (2) and the expression made manifest (3) fell into place with the system of organisation yet to be learned (4) occurred around the time of the Covid pandemic.

By 2023 (7 year) I was approached with a proposition to stand for election as a District Councillor, just at the point I had decided to retire from work. Once again the opportunity had arisen that suggested I should go with the flow and accept what was offered. I won the election and the term will come to an end in 2028.

But before I get ahead of myself, something else was ‘going with the flow’ in 2023 that there was no way I could know was even there. It had most likely started with a small pin prick that steadily got larger until by the February of 2025, a 9 year, the accumulation of footfall up and down our hallway generated a gushing water feed pipe the flooded almost the entire house.

The water had bubbled up through some very expensive LVT flooring. No way could we afford to replace it all ourselves, so we had to make a claim on our house insurance. The direction of flow (8) and the cost to repair (also 8) was going to be considerable.

The energy of the number 9 gradually established itself by the March of 2025 with the introduction of dehumidifiers that hummed 24 hours a day for the next 4 months. It turned out that this procedure was a complete waste of time because the contractors were not authorised to remove the flooring, so they only dried the surface. Underneath the suspended floor was an entire swath of soggy concrete, which the restoration contractors dried in less than two weeks.

The incompetence of the whole thing, trying to save money I have no doubt, ended up costing more time and money. Subsequently the restoration dragged on over the Christmas and New Year period with a projected completion date of March 2026. At the time of writing this we are a week shy of Christmas Day.

  No doubt the water escape and repairs belong to the 9 year but the planning to replace the damaged rooms with new flooring and decor is the domain of the 1 year. These plans started in the September of 2025 but will not become manifest until 2026.

No numerological year suddenly discards the old number in favour of the new. It is much more of a transition that runs almost seamlessly over time. So for my wife and I, the New Year will see us displaced from our home with a promise of more to come over the next two months at least.

The energy of the year 2026 may not become clear until the energies of 2025 terminate. This is perhaps more significant when an old cycle ends and a new one begins.

Number 2 symbolises partnerships, diplomacy, deception and interaction in developing ideas that manifested in the number 1 energy. There are two number 2s in 2026, which to me depicts division and divisiveness. Politically we can see this playing out between the ideological left and right and the continuing war between Russia and Ukraine. The zero (0) in 2026 is the potential energy of everything and nothing. It is worth bearing in mind that this zero occurs in every year until 2110. Much attention should be given to what is possible if there is the will to achieve it.

Lastly we have the number 6 that will remain just for the year; all other lasting a decade or longer. Number 6 symbolises balance and the attempt to work towards harmony. Balance is by far the key and not easy to achieve. In personal numerology the individual may overbalance by interfering too much of underbalance by becoming a doormat. Both energies involve ‘doing’ for others and the lesson is in learning how to share the responsibility of that doing. Much of this is being played out on the world stage with Europe increasing its defence budget (as it should have done decades ago), Russia demanding land from Ukraine (2026 suggesting that Ukraine is not going to simply roll over and give in) and the growing clamour for there to be a tax on wealth instead of wages - otherwise the wages ‘pie’ will get smaller and smaller, leading to poverty among the masses. Some people may argue that profit is not a dirty word but to my mind, profit without responsibility to community and environment is an abomination. Let’s be clear, if half the country’s wealth is squirrelled into private accounts, the half that is left is not enough to pay sufficient tax to run that country. Governments can tinker all they like but until they make the taxable pie bigger than it is now, there will never be enough money to run the country and keep people above the poverty line.

So what does this all mean for 2026? We live in a world where we must decide for ourselves if something is indeed fake news or a hoax. We must look carefully at social and newspaper media for signs of bias, disingenuousness and propaganda. To take a ‘balanced’ view we must ditch our partisan confirmation bias and consider both sides of an argument. We have one group pitted against another group with nothing to join them (202 of 2026) There are those who may be able to see both side but many other entrenched in their one-sided solution. The two main culprits fomenting this division is undoubtedly Donald Trump and Nigel Farage. The seeds of fascism exist  and we need to wake up to it. Time and events will tell if the world can succeed in bringing us back from the abyss.

Of all the numbers in play, it is the zero (0) that holds the greatest potential. To date we have many problems without solutions that both sides agree on: Russia Ukraine, Israel Palestine, Republican Democrat, Conservative (?) Labour. Of the latter there are opinion polls that indicate the next general election will be fought between two new parties - Reform and The Green Party. People in the UK are rejecting the old parties, having lost trust in their stewardship and the dearth of meaningful ideas. It is also true to say that the advance of social media is favouring the charismatic leadership of party and not just the policies they espouse.

2026 is the start of a turbulent cycle that will ramp up in 2030; most likely a hostile year that blows away the old entrenched ideas of the 2020s. Will history repeat itself from 100 years ago?

2026 is the year leading up to the revelations of 2027 - an 11/2 year that sweeps away the disillusionment from the eyes of the glamoured and hopefully halts populist parties in their tracks. To this point I predict that the next election in both the US and the UK will not be won by a populist agenda.

Within this year, Ukraine may have to cede Crimea but not the Donbas or Donetsk regions. Neither party will be happy but it is a balanced outcome. Israel is a tougher nut to crack while Netenyahu keeps the ultra right of the party in coalition. The only two outcomes for Palestine would be a two state solution or complete annihilation. If Netenyahu cannot deliver this he should dissolve parliament and face the corruption charges he has tried so long to avoid.

The UK continues to grasp the thorny issue of illegal migrants crossing in small boats from France. More importantly, the UK Government continues to avoid the link between electoral unrest and the years of under development in infrastructure. If people could get a doctor’s appointment, find a dentist, send their children to a local school that is not already overstretched, buy a house that is affordable or rent a house that is affordable ( the solution to this is to build more houses and bring down the cost of purchase and rent), raise wages to enable people to afford all of the above etc…. In fact all the things that Reform are blaming on the tiny minority of illegal migrants (who would not be illegal if there were reasonable routes in the first place), the growing gravitation towards a party that promises to stop the boats ( but keeps quiet about all the more unpopular things it would take from everyone) is set to increase. The only silver lining in this darkest of clouds is that 2027 is bound to shed light on the lies, deceit, disinformation and blatant omissions of policy consequences if there was ever a single focus (a glamour if you like) on a quest to stop illegal immigration.

By March 2026 I hope we will be able to return to our house and start to rebuild our routines, as is in keeping with the number 1 energy. Obviously there will be much that is new in structural terms but will our lives have been altered significantly due to the upheaval? Well, there has been an opportunity for reflection and we have even reviewed relationships with others during this difficult time for us. I am, of course, grateful for the learning experience - placing it on the other side of ‘you don’t know what it is like’ column.

For everyone who wishes to also learn by experience, I suggest looking at how your lives are balanced. The essence of the number 6 is equilibrium based on equity. You can be doing too much or too little and reap the consequence of it. If you don’t owe anyone a free lunch, you can expect not to get a free lunch when you need it. If you expect to give to people and for them not to help themselves, you can expect to run out of funds before you run out of people. Somewhere in the middle is a reasonable balance that has eluded ideological trains of thought for decades. The pendulum swings too far one way and then too far the other. A dynamic balance is needed and a will to give ground on both sides to make it happen. It won’t happen in 2026; hope springs eternal for 2036.

Despite the temptation, this is not a time to ‘pick a side’. No side owns the truth - or any truth for that matter. One side of an argument cannot feel safe while the other remains insecure. BOTH sides have to feel secure for there to be harmony, accord and prosperity. To do that means meeting in the middle ground to accept responsibilities and to ensure others do the same in equal measure.

Number 6 of 2026 is a ‘doing’ number. Look out for those that ‘do’ because it will tell you if what they do are in it for the people or just themself.

A final thought is that the 1 year is the beginning of a 9-year cycle, so what is made manifest in 2026 will have an impact on the world until 2035. So it is a good idea to look this year at who you side with  and who you do not side with in equal measure and be as objective as you can be when doing so. If used properly, the number 6 has the chance to heal the rift between the 2-0-2 if enough people are willing to let go of combative allegiances.

Shane Ward is the author of Numerology: Making it Work For You

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Numerology-Marking-Work-Shane-Ward-ebook/dp/B0BJRN4RZ5/ref=sr_1_2?_encoding=UTF8&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.7otrzV49pYsW5vuhgwPHcPrOrfFFzRPeOHjg3_QybxGkQC3XKJpt9vr15YyXN9vZ0KT8ZIlDQQU8p1rlRQomXw.YswGa4_NX0-pzOQzNbPl8477XO8R7nkWQmWzDLm8Xng&dib_tag=se&keywords=B071HW9WSJ&qid=1766167499&s=digital-text&shoppingPortalEnabled=true&sr=1-2

Less for More. Before UK 2025 Budget.

 It is November 2025 and one day to go before the much vaunted and speculated about budget. According to many it is not going to be a good one. I’d be very surprised if they were wrong.

Now I am old enough to have lived through many budgets and for the most part the difference to the pockets of the average person changes very little. One year the budget afforded me the increase of half a pint of beer a week. The super yacht was still a pipe dream. However, where we live in a cost of living crisis, the same old solutions to solve the problem of balancing the books are becoming noticeably ineffective.

I remember back in the 1980s when chocolate bars started to increase in size and then decrease in the 2010s when the UK spiralled down into austerity. Roll on a couple of decades and some inflation we ended up with chocolate bars smaller but costing as much as when they were bigger; a symptom known as ‘shrinkflation’. The reason was obviously things like manufacturing costs and the rising cost of ingredients along with trying to increase profits. Within this context the analogy starts to resonate with the 2025 budget issue.

You see, it doesn’t matter what the outcome of the budget is for the average working person. The simple fact, espoused currently by the charismatic figures of Gary Stevenson and Zak Polansky, is that we are trying to make a giant size chocolate bar out of half the ingredients.

Half the hypothetical chocolate bar ingredients are owned by the super rich who make more money while they sleep than most people can earn in a year. It wasn’t always this bad but when you notice you’re getting less but paying more and more over time, you start to wonder where all the money is going?

And no, it is not going to illegal immigrants. This is a typical ploy invented by some ideologues to distract you from their stash. I recall an animal programme where the predator defecates on their kill to hide it from others. The Reform party is doing this rather well, stirring up hatred and fear among the misinformed. In fact the cost of potential asylum seekers is minuscule compared to the tax avoidance among corporations and super rich individuals with clever accountants. The reason why so-called illegal immigration got out of control? Bad policy after Brexit and not enough money to do anything about it. 

The real crisis that we feel today goes back to decisions made by successive governments over decades from the end of WWII and upward; with perhaps the exception of the National Health Service (that the Reform Party would dismantle and set up an American style health insurance system). The real crisis comes down to short term politics and no appetite to commit to long term investments.

Let us look at today’s needs:
We need more housing. Labour let council houses run down in the 70s and Conservative subsequently sold them off to housing associations. From then on, no plan for more council houses were considered and no realistic plan for growing the country’s housing needs. So we have a shortage of housing, which pushes the value of houses up to buy or rent. The 2020 generation are very unlikely to own a house in their lifetime unless the system changes and more houses are built. There also has to be a greater number of ‘affordable houses’ that corresponds to wages.

We need higher wages. The minimum wage, much vaunted by the conservatives as the ‘living wage’ is not enough to even rent a flat. The gap between rich and poor has never been greater because wages have remained stagnant over the austerity years of 2010 and 2020. Junior doctors got a record wage rise in 2024 after a series of strikes and the Labour Party willing to address the real cut in wages. However, doctors are planning to strike again because they would still need another 20% rise to get them back to wage parity of 2010.

The minimum wage has hardly risen at all over this time and certainly not of the order demanded by doctors. As the cost of living goes up, the value of the minimum wage shrinks. Working people are going to food banks and the Government continues to pay tax credits to low income households.

We need more hospital and schools. The old buildings are crumbling and Governments appear to be happy to instead spend billions on a high speed rail link. Labour’s private finance initiative was developed as a way of saving money but without investment in upgrading those buildings, it will end up costing more. One wonders why, even then, the government did not address the elephant in the room and devise a longer term strategy for building our infrastructure.

We need more dentists and GPs. The British people are flocking to The Reform party over these simple needs. You can’t get a GP appointment. You can’t get an NHS dentist and most people certainly can’t afford a private dentist. And yet the immigration crisis, a product exacerbated by leaving the EU (and I voted to leave) has thrown the whole immigration system into turmoil. There was a shortage of GPs and Dentists due to government policy - not immigrants.

All of the above needs require investment but after the COVID pandemic drove the UK borrowing to 100% of GDP there was no more money to draw on… at least there was no more of the small chocolate bar left to spend on anything. And who are the first to pay the price for lack of ingredients  (even if they don’t possess them)? The disabled, the sick, mental health, welfare recipients, legal aid, pensioners (remember WASPI women?), in fact anyone who is deemed to be not a ‘contributing unit’ to the tax system; that is apart from the people who actually do have the other half of the ingredients.

The only solution is not to tax to death those who earn a wage by working for an employer, or the small and medium business that drives the economy but to tax those who have squirrelled away the money that has caused the shrinkflation.

Don’t tax the workers - tax the wealth.

The workers become the economy’s consumers, without whom there would be no economy. Those who rent or have mortgages need disposable income that does not include the necessity fo frequenting food banks. For the minimum wage to become a living wage, prices have to come down or wages have to go up, otherwise the minimum wage is just an arbitrary figure plucked out to the air.

You can almost guarantee that none of this will be addressed in the 2025 budget. The UK must look to different solutions and the old established parties have had decades to come up with the goods, which is why the Reform Party is storming ahead in the polls and The Green Party is starting to catch them up, overtaking the old parties. The choice politically is remarkably simple t the 2029 general election (or earlier); Vote to make the rich richer and impoverish the poor, privatise everything including the NHS and investing in the needs of profit or vote to narrow the inequality and bring essential utilities back into public ownership (doesn’t have to be nationalised), investing in the needs of the people.

Until then we still only have half the ingredients to share among the populace and it is not enough.

The Owl and the Pussycat: a Conspiracy Theory

 The Owl and the Pussycat: a Conspiracy Theory.

(Original publication 18 Nov 2007)

As with all stories, even the nonsensical ones, there is invariably an element of truth just visible beneath the veneer of lies, half truths and deliberate contradictions. The poem written by Edward Lear is such a case. It seems to be pure fantasy at first glance, however, one only has to peel back the obvious literal nonsense to discover a tale most sinister and fiendishly disguised as a mere children’s poem. Let us start this investigation with a closer look at the main characters of this tale, namely an owl and a cat.

‘The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,’

It is, of course, most unlikely that one would see such an alliance between a raptor and carnivorous feline, leading anyone to the conclusion that there is already an attempt to sell us a line from the very start; or is it the first tantalising clue to a completely different story? The closer I examined the poem the more I became convinced that this was so. My conclusions were astounding. Everyone believed that he spent many years loafing around Europe and making his way by selling the odd painting. I wonder if, in 1846, Queen Victoria would have consented for Lear to give her drawing lessons, had she known that in Lear’s secret life he became a very successful jewel thief.

In his poem ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ (first published in 1867) Lear portrays himself, rather arrogantly I thought, as the owl. Owls are often portrayed as ‘wise’ and yet in the real world there is no shred of evidence that a bird of prey that stays up all night, has eyes as big as a junkie high on magic mushrooms and a genetic defect that means it lacks a rectal function in the appropriate physical place, possesses any modicum of wisdom greater than other birds. The collective noun for owls is ‘a Parliament’. Perhaps for many of us, does is it seem that the allusion towards the wisdom of owls is something our politicians would have us believe in order to write policies and manifestos about as sensible as Lear’s poetry? Did Lear see himself to be wise, nay clever, and thus portray himself as the brains behind a felonious operation? Then again, perhaps the inference to ‘Lear the owl’ may simply refer to his antisocial activities occurring at night, when most normal and law abiding citizens were tucked up safely in their beds. It is tempting to want Lear to be seen as boasting his cleverness, however, without substantive evidence we may never know the truth of it.

Clever Lear may well have been, if what I have uncovered is in anyway representative of the truth. So is it perhaps a slip on Lear’s part that by considering him to be a criminal with intent to mock us, as he does by declaring his illegal doings through a poem, he actually names his fellow accomplice as well as the nature of his crimes? Or is this just another mark of the man’s genius?

‘The Owl and the Pussycat’. Is this a cryptic declaration of Edward Lear the Owl and his fellow cat-burglar? Is it possible that the appellations were nothing but a metaphor for a master criminal and his somewhat spectral partner; for nothing in Lear’s history is there to be found a reference to a companion or partnership of this nature? In other words, was Lear working alone? Is the Pussycat real or is the cat just a shaggy dog story? I had to get to the truth of the matter or the real story would have eluded me. I had discovered evidence of Lear’s jovial attitude to wit. But to woo – I mean to who – did Lear proffer the appellation of pussy cat?

‘They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.’

A possible answer comes from the line in the poem that goes: ‘They took some honey and plenty of money…’ The most obvious observation is that neither Owls nor cats eat honey. So why would they take honey and nothing else on a journey? It is certainly true that neither cats nor birds eat honey; or is it?

The Tui of New Zealand is one of the 182 species of honeyeater birds in the world. It is the only bird, however, that early Europeans dubbed as the ‘Parsons bird’ because two white feathers at the Tui’s throat reminded them of a vicars collar. Perhaps it is no consequence then that the honey referred to in Lear’s poem was a small clue to his partner in crime. If Lear was a master criminal perhaps his accomplice, the pussycat was actually a cat burglar who during the day was a respectable man of the cloth. Even more tempting is to believe that his accomplice, in God’s calling or not, was literally a man by the name of ‘Parsons’! 

Now, it seems most unlikely that Lear and Parsons really did take honey on a ‘job’. Much research has been undertaken to see if honey could be used for reasons other than medicinal ones but thus far has met with little success. We do know that Lear was asthmatic and also suffered with bronchitis but would it seem preposterous to take medicinal provisions like honey unless, of course, the plan was not to return home for some time, which may well have been the case. Some connection was discovered between the clergy and the use of beeswax for candles. It might be possible that what was rigged to look like an innocent jar of honey turned out to be a lantern? It would certainly be a useful piece of equipment where the darkness of night protected valuables as much as a hidden wall safe or a locked door. Both possibilities were food for thought but no light was shed on which was the more accurate. 

A rather more tricky question related to why our would-be criminals needed to take a five-pound-note. This is a comparatively small amount in today’s money, but back in the mid 19^th century it might have been worth around 150 times as much. The comparative figure here may not be entirely accurate due to the impossible number of factors one might employ to arrive at such a conclusion of fiscal parity between timelines, however, it would seem clear that five pounds was a large sum of money back in the 1850s. Now if Lear had the means to put his hands on so much money there would be two things one could infer immediately: The first is that it was a compulsory requirement to their plans, most likely someone had demanded a bribe. We may consider the possibility of this as Lear and Parsons did not take ‘the value of’ five pounds. Lear states clearly that it was a note, hence there was only one person from whom they needed to buy silence. The second inference is that whatever they were about to steal was worth a lot more than the bribe.

Indeed it could be conjectured further that taking ‘plenty of money’ along with the aforementioned fiver, but alluding only to the other money’s presence rather than its worth was because it was merely a contingency fund should they find themselves in need of paid assistance and/or other minor bribes or paid passage / accommodation. On the other hand it might be that they were unsure exactly how much money they had ‘taken’. Is this line in the poem a blatant confession to Lear and Parson’s criminal activities even before ‘the big one’?

Even if this were not the case, it is fairly evident that if one were to take the most expensive of coins at the time, the English guinea, one would be lucky to wrap more than ten guineas successfully into a five-pound-note. So at a guess, ‘lots of money’ at the most could have been ten guineas; which is eleven pounds in old money (£1650 in today’s money). It was a lot of money, for sure, but hardly enough for two people to live for ‘a year and a day’ and to survive comfortably without replenishing their funds.

The money they took with them could not have been for the ‘pea-green boat’ …or could it? As the boat features in the first line of the poem it seems to imply that the boat was already acquired and that the said money was for something else. On the other hand, the journey by boat is a statement completely separate to the second line of the poem. If read with a certain inflection it could be made to sound as if the taking of money was a part of how they were now able to afford a journey in a pea-green boat and the five pounds was either payment for the boat or payment for passage on it.

Assuming that the money and the boat were separate issues, the chances are that the recipient of such a large bribe as five pounds would be someone like a night watchman working on a ship, who would quite happily take a ‘tap’ on the head for turning a blind eye. This is certainly among the more reasonable of possibilities. It would be a more fanciful notion to think, for example, that Lear intended to bribe a Yeoman, steal the Crown Jewels and escape by way of an inconspicuous river boat. However, as Lear said that ‘The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea…’ right from the start it suggests that a ship would be a more likely target.

‘The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
"O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are, you are, you are,
What a beautiful Pussy you are."’

Part of their haul appeared to be a musical instrument. Consider the playful song that both Lear and Parsons sing whilst making their nautical getaway. No doubt, the guitar was a chance find and it seems unlikely that either of them really knew how to play it. The guitar, it is believed, originated in Spain around the 1600’s. This small piece of knowledge may seem irrelevant but the mere presence of a guitar suggests that the ship from which they stole was either Spanish, or it was a ship that had recently been involved in ‘liberating’ Spanish plunder from the Caribbean (a bit late in his time frame perhaps but who knows what treasure was yet to be discovered from that era).

‘Pussy said to the Owl "You elegant fowl, 
How charmingly sweet you sing.
O let us be married, too long we have tarried;
But what shall we do for a ring?"’

Anyway, the guitar. Lear and Parsons are singing silly songs to each other about love; ‘O lovely Pussy! [Parsons?] O Pussy my love, what a beautiful Pussy you are, you are…’ …and so on. This behaviour certainly seems typical of Lear, hence belief in a moment of levity with a friend that is behaviour reflected so often in his lyrical poems and a penchant for nonsense is not without merit. Consequently, and without wishing to add yet more animals to my analysis, this banter of mock love between Owl and Cat would seem to indicate Lear and Parsons just ‘horsing around’. An interesting find in the exchange, however, is the mention of the absence in their haul of a ring. Clearly the treasure they had ‘acquired’ consisted of gem stones but not necessarily of jewellery.

‘They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows,’

Where they sailed to remains a bit of a mystery but strong evidence within the poem points unerringly towards the New World. There is, of course, no such thing as a ‘bong tree’. However, an anagram of ‘Bong tree grows’ is ‘Brown egg store’. My investigations into anything to do with a brown egg store led me to New England were there is a tremendous industry devoted to brown eggs; hence it is known as the ‘brown egg state’. OK its not ‘store’ but it was the closest I could find and the more I pursued this path, however, tenuous, the more interesting it became.

‘And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose, his nose, his nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.’

Wherever they went, it is clear that their business was not a wedding but a union of sorts; a meeting one might conclude. Their arrangement with the ‘Piggy-wig’ is a dead giveaway. I mean look at the leap of faith Lear would have us take. One minute they are sailing across a great distance and with no explanation whatsoever they are suddenly in a forest with a pig. It makes no sense at all. The pig, one assumes, is domesticated and also has the capacity to speak Owl and Cat. Furthermore, the ring in its nose appears to be an attachment that the pig has the power to give away for the princely sum of one shilling; probably about a week’s wages in those days.

‘"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling your ring?"
 Said the Piggy, "I will"’

Naturally it would be foolish to believe that pigs have good commercial skills. By and large they are generally unfussy animals liable to eat anything and everything you throw at them. Furthermore, as clean as they might be, they tend to live in squalor. For a smart animal the pig appears to lack even half decent standards. No, Mr Piggy-wig was not a real pig. A greedy person perhaps, who wanted to sell a token for more money than his important, but rather small, part was worth but not a real species of the porcine persuasion. Mr Piggy-wig could be none other than a contact for a meeting with the only other main character in Lear’s poem, the Turkey.

‘So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.’

…Turkish to be more precise. Lear and Parsons arranged to see the Turk on the following day, and the ring was proof of who they were. Clearly they must have known about this arrangement before setting foot on foreign soil, as is alluded to in their celebratory songs.

The available evidence that Lear and Parsons found themselves in New England is quite astounding. It was amazingly easy to find the Turk, and with that small piece of information the rest of our incredible tale simply fell into place. A certain Jacob Whitman lived in a house around 1750. with the carving of a Turk on the porch. Even in the year 2007 the ‘Turks Head Building’ now sits on that very site; at the intersection of Westminster and Weybosset Streets. Even now there are rumours about the history of Turks Head and of secret societies featuring among its more fanciful tales. Could it be that a relative of Mr Whitman, still resident in the same house, was the fence who profited greatly from his transaction with Lear and Parsons?

‘They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon.’

It is true that the link between the country of Turkey and the fruit ‘Quince’ is an intriguing one but it can be proved that anyone fishing for evidence along this line will find it to be a red herring. The poem states that Lear and Parsons (and most likely ‘The Turk’) dined on mince and quince. Although quince, an apple of sorts and native in part to the northern region of Turkey, does suggest that our investigations should perhaps deviate from the New England discoveries and seek alternative hypothesise a little in the Mediterranean, the fruit does grow in other countries. Was I right to stay in New England or was it still possible that Lear and Parsons only sailed to Turkey? The conclusion I arrived at was that Turkey was an unlikely destination simply because the country was in decline at the time, whereas the United States was a growing concern and offered more by way of opportunity. No. Turkey was not their intended destination. So was quince available in New England? 

Indeed it was. In fact quince was introduced to New England as early as 1629, although nowadays the growing of quince as a fruit has long been upstaged by the apple. In truth it seems from internet searches in the 21^st century that Rhode Island is known as ‘apple country’.

And if the Turks Head and the quince were not enough, yet another intriguing clue connects our jewellery thieves to Rhode Island. It is claimed that the founder of the American jewellery industry was started, I am led to believe, by Nehemiah and Seril Dodge in around 1824. And where did they start this industry? That’s right, in the very same Rhode Island district of ‘Providence’ where the Turks Head Building also resides. Gemstones would certainly have been welcome at a time when gold was being discovered in great quantities.

So there it is, right in front of us all this time. Edward Lear was a master jewel thief. He and an accomplice, a cat-burglar named Parsons, bribed a ship’s night watchman to look the other way whilst they made off with a fortune in jewels. They sought passage to the New World, arriving in New England where they made arrangements to see, most likely, a relative of Jacob Whitman to act as a go between to flog a fortune in uncut gemstones for a rather large quantity of gold.

No doubt there will be many people who will disbelieve the evidence placed here before them. And yet one might step back a moment and wonder why it seems easier to accept Lear’s poem for all the nonsense that it is at face value. Maybe it was simply the case that Lear experimented with hallucinogenic drugs and with wide eyed amazement found a strange momentary attachment to next door’s pussycat while he considered flying off the roof of his house. Then again it would seem a more than plausible story, that if two men successfully negotiated ill gotten gains for an absolute fortune in gold, one can appreciate the description at the end of his poem where… 

‘And hand in hand on the edge of the sand,

They danced by the light of the moon, the moon, the moon.

They danced by the light of the moon.’

End

Numerology 2024

 The year of 2024, for those who follow this calendar, is a Universal 8 Year (2+0+2=4 = 8). I have always maintained that how the number 8 is made up is important, as it specifies what components are use to arrive at number 8.

But let’s start with the number 8 itself, revered by the Chinese as a lucky number because it pertains to material wealth and luck. However, within the Tarot is pertains to hard work and structure, and in astrology it is Saturn, the planet attributed by many as one of limitations and restrictions. All of the above are true in some way. Anyone who works hard and structures their life will no doubt attain goals and benefit from their effort. And so it is that the number 8 predicts that the harder one works the luckier they become. It is the number of the material, which directly opposes the spiritual, principled, intangible year of 2023.

To understand what the material 8 will manifest, we have to consider the numbers 2 (x2) 0 and 4. In my experience, when you get two of the same number in a year, there is division based on that number. We are experiencing the change from the one thousands (ending 1999) to the two thousands, seeing the patriarchal dominance of the number 1 becoming challenged by the matriarchal number 2. The emphasis on relationships applies not only from one person to another but also to trade, business the expression of values and the way in which we relate to others and even ourselves. As a single number 2, the presentation can be the most positive first step towards a truly equitable society, where one appreciates the values of the other and understands the benefits of working together.

The presence of the second number 2 suggests the workings of diverse value systems. There are already great divides between political ideals, not only in the US and the UK but around the world. This has become particularly more prominent as we hit the 2020s, the most obvious being the US Presidential election that remains a raw and open wound even up to the 2024 Presidential election. The UK Conservative Government has gone through three Conservative Prime Ministers as ideals and values are challenged. The party has become factionalised and with Labour no better.

The divisions are repeated in national conflicts with war in Russia / Ukraine, Israel / Palestine, civil war in Sudan and proxy wars all over the Middle East. Which set of values will win out? You can be certain that until people start learning to work together, relationships will continue to fracture even as far ahead as 2029.

The zero must also be taken into account. It is either a potential for anything to happen or a potential for nothing to happen at all. Both routes can have positive or negative consequences. With the combination of 20, for example (and especially as we have to understand how to use the energies of this combination for the next 76 years) it can either mean ‘you must accept my values / ideals’ or ‘we must find a set of values / ideals we can both agree on’. The former option is often the default in most conflicts in today’s world.

In 2023 we saw the rise in recognition of transgender people, where individuals feel that they are wrongly divided; a man in a woman’s body and vice versa. This has encouraged division particularly for biologically born women who feel that their gender identity is somehow being undermined by the insertion of transgender rights and by transgender women who consider themselves to be no less female. The divisive nature of two lots of number 2 in a Universal year is clear in this one emerging change to our societal norms.

Finally we come to the number 4; the annual counter for the years. Where number 3 was the year for expression in 2023, number 4 this year is for systems and organisation. Israel Palestine needs a two-state solution. Political elections have become distrusting and the system has to change: in the UK it would be to press for proportional representation and in both UK and US the system needs to take the money, corporations and lobby groups out of politics. The political system was set up for representatives of the people; not banks, weapons, junk food and corporate destruction. Climate change demands a move away from fossil fuel but no real systems are in place to make it happen quick enough. Wherever there is war or discord, the solution starts with the number 2 properties of diplomacy, discussion and dialogue. Only then can a proper and long lasting foundation (4) be built through the pains taking labour of hard work, perseverance and structure (8)

The astrological chart for the Winter Solstice (Sun at 0º Capricorn), the seeds of what will be grown through 2024, has Pluto at the anoretic degree of 29 Capricorn. Saturn already awaits Pluto’s arrival into Aquarius (promising yet more structural decay) while sitting midpoint to the Sun Moon trine. Moon conjuncts Jupiter promising the potential for peace but Venus also opposes Uranus, which indicates opposing ideals leading to uncertain progress. Mars squares Neptune, expressing concerns over wasted effort. Some issues appear unresolvable within the current zeitgeist, so the best that might be hoped for is smaller steps and smaller goals towards a rapprochement. And any progress is better than none, particularly as the foundations of a lasting peace is only as strong as the willingness of apposing sides to agree on common values and principles.

2024 may also be the year of the con. Beware the get rich quick schemes and ‘new systems’, especially where your investment commits you to risk a lot of your hard earned money. The number 4 promises that there are no short cuts, so don’t be fooled by the glamour of a charismatic promiser of easy money.

Have a safe and progressive 2024.

Shane Ward is the author of Numerology: Making It Work For You