Understanding Aurora As A Synchromystic Fortean ~ Strange Days in LA: From Magnolia to Inherent Vice

Are you still finding the Colorado Aurora (red dawn) event an enigma? It has several baffling layers that are being peeled away, yet presents a beguiling variety of clues to something deeper. It is, at once, tantalizing those who attempt to decipher it, and, at the next moment, tormenting them for their efforts.

It was just two weeks ago. That feels like yesterday and, yet, at the same time, like it was a few years ago. For the victims, the survivors, the friends, the people only a few degrees of separation from the shootings, it might seem unreal that so many people sense the Aurora event touched them. But that is the reality of incidents like this. It was a seismic societal situation that may signal a shift yet to be understood.

The comparisons are many and varied - Columbine and VA Tech, of course. But also the Oklahoma City bombing and Waco, 9/11 and Pearl Harbor Day. People experience trauma personally. No one can take the impact away from each individual. For many now, Aurora will be a name, a moment, a feeling remembered and recalled as the red dawn awakening that changed how most of us approach and enjoy our theater screenings, from July 20, 2012, into the future.

The story has several angles to it, of course, and even photographs of the crime scene serve as a metaphor for viewing what occurred from a distance, and closeup.

The images from in back of the Century 16 theater almost look as if you could easily follow the blood trail to where all truths might be revealed. But things are not always as they seem, as we have grown to realize.

ATF agents and other law enforcement investigators examine The Dark Knight Rises shooter suspect's car. Blood stains that look like footprints cover the sidewalk next to the car that was found at the rear of the theatre. What do they tell us? What do they mean? Photos: Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post

A gas mask and a combat style helmet were two of many pieces of evidence in the parking lot behind the Century 16 movie theatre where a gunmen shot and killed 12 persons Friday morning, July 20, 2012. Witnesses claimed the shooter was wearing a helmet, a gas mask and a bullet proof vest. It reminded many of Bane in the movie. But what did the assassin have on underneath the mask? Was he a Joker or not? Photos: Karl Gehring/The Denver Post

Agents from the FBI and ATF investigate the scene behind the Century 16 theater in Aurora where 12 people were killed and dozens of others were injured during a premier of The Dark Knight Rises on Friday, July 20, 2012 in Aurora. Why? Who? Where will it happen next? So many questions left unanswered. Photos: AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post

Sometimes I am a collector of data, and only a collector, and am likely to be gross and miserly, piling up notes, pleased with merely numerically adding to my stores. Other times I have joys, when unexpectedly coming upon an outrageous story that may not be altogether a lie, or upon a macabre little thing that may make some reviewer of my more or less good works mad. But always there is present a feeling of unexplained relations of events that I note, and it is this far-away, haunting, or often taunting, awareness, or suspicion, that keeps me piling on. ~ Charles Fort, Wild Talents (1932).

Recently, in comments at Twilight Language, a person using the name Daurade, sent this along:

Mr. Coleman, I have read enough of your posts to believe the Copycat Effect is totally plausible, very difficult to refute. But I'm not sure why you go into coincidences so much. Name symbolism, ladies in red showing up at the Olympics etc.
I do this kind of thing as a poetic exercise. [A few writers] believe these are indications that a "cryptocracy" is staging events for their own nefarious agenda. I suppose I could agree that these synchronicities are in the air and thus play into the copycat effect.
To be honest, I'm not sure what your getting at when you talk about the meaning of names and show things such as "Aurora" on a building in a trailer. Are you suggesting a conspiracy or what exactly? Not being facetious or snarky, just a bit befuddled.

I'm befuddled too. I am also mystified and unable to deliver any clear answers to most universal questions. That's fine. I'm comfortable with the excluded muddled middle, and with side treks into what appears to be experiments in conclusions. I'm a Fortean. To be open to Fortean thinking means to allow myself a more holistic and interconnected view of the world. Charles Fort once wrote of a world sense I share, "My liveliest interest is not so much in things, as in relations of things. I have spent much time thinking about the alleged pseudo-relations that are called coincidences. What if some of them should not be coincidence?"

"The fate of all explanation is to close one door
only to have another fly wide open." ~ Charles Fort

I have enough room in my cosmos to allow research, thoughts, and written material on sychromysticism, coincidences, no coincidences, name games, Fortean interventions, and the human factor of the copycat effect. Such an approach may be confusing to some. But since the 1970s, in Fortean Times and then in Mysterious America (1983), when I considered such things as "Devil Names and Fortean Places," my approach has been consistent. When I wrote The Copycat Effect (2004), I felt an obvious fact - human behavior contagion is a factor in mass violence events - was being ignored. The symbols and signs within these situations, the patterns and plots of these incidents, are mysteries that continue to be worth my time, whether taking place in Aurora, Colorado or on Mt. Diablo, California.

Additionally, I do not get bogged down by others' theories, which I often find are obstacles, not avenues, to insights.

If I'm investigating a shooting, the movie playing at the time, the location, copycats, and various names' meanings, why should I exclude "coincidences" that make no sense, at the time. For example, I found that the Roman god Aurora/Greek Eos has a sibling, a sister named Roman/Luna - Greek/Selina, which is a common female given name, of Greek origin, meaning "moon." Why not note that name shows up as Selina Kyle, whose alter ego is Catwoman in DC Comics? And in The Dark Knight Rises too? There is no way I sense this was planned on a human level to foreshadow the significance of Aurora in a future event. Such tidbits seem to go beyond coincidence, over and over again, in terms of some of these discoveries.

Charles Fort by Andy Finkle

"The outrageous is the reasonable,
if introduced politely." ~ Charles Fort.

Humans don't know all the answers. I certainly don't. But like Fort, I see my role, as my name informs, as a "Coal man" ("Coleman"), one of those who lit the fires on the hills along the ley lines, as a "perceiver." It may be for others to find in the data what they will. I certainly don't claim any conspiracies, connections, or covert operations in Aurora. I shall give you the facts, no matter how grounded or beguiling, and you can come to your own conclusions.

Furthermore, I am not adverse to using a sense of humor in trying to find the keys along the way. But I realize, too, that there was nothing at all funny about what happened in Aurora two weeks ago.