Lucky Numbers for the Week of June 30, 2023

Lottery ads tell us you only need a dollar and a dream. But it is also helpful to have a list of lucky numbers to help spur the good fortune ... or fortunes. So with that in mind, here are some lucky numbers that can be used in any helpful way. I gazed into a pool of water, Nostradamus-like, and contemplated the cosmos. Then I mixed the tarot cards and allowed the spirits to guide me to the cards that represent the lucky numbers for this week. Nothing is guaranteed but who knows ....?

I choose eight numbers because 8 is the number of of wealth.

Here are the lucky numbers for the week of June 30-July 6, 2023:

8, 11, 13, 23, 38, 41, 45, 61

There are many ways to delve into your own consciousness to find luck and intuition. Try reading Dream Power/Improve Your Luck (Super Strength Series) and see if your dreams give you any clues and premonitions. Here's a guide to the best books available this month

How They Celebrate Solstice At Stonehenge

Solstice at Stonehenge is a magical experience. The Guardian has photos of this year's celebration.

Horoscope for the Week of June 26, 2023 - Sun in Cancer

The Sun enters Cancer and makes us generally more emotional and nurturing. See where you can spread the love and make any situation warmer and closer.

Here is my favorite book on astrology and a "must" for anyone interested in learning more: Secrets from a Stargazer's Notebook: Making Astrology Work for You and here's a guide to the best books available this month. This column is (c) 2023 MADAM LICHTENSTEIN, LLC., All Rights Reserved. For Entertainment Purposes Only. Madam Lichtenstein is the author of the best selling astrology book “HerScopes ” now in its 12th printing and available as an eBook.

ARIES   (MARCH 21 - APRIL 20)

Family figures prominently in your life now, Aries. There will be times where the emotional level runs high but in a happy way. This also goes for your overall home environment where the warmer the décor, the happier you are. Draw others close and find more ways to make them feel even better. You will feel even better too.

TAURUS (APRIL 21-MAY 21)

You know how to make others feel happier and more secure, Taurus. Find more time to reach out to those who need a hug or an encouraging word. You become the sought after sympathetic figure who can cure all sadness with just your presence. Spread the warmth and see how your own personality heats up the scene.

GEMINI   (MAY 22 - JUNE 21)

Your money can be used to give you greater comfort and security. You might also consider using some your money to give greater comfort and security to others. There are those who need your help and, if you can afford it, try to help them along. This pays you dividends in the future. So, if you can, pay it forward, Gemini.

CANCER   (JUNE 22 - JULY 23)

You are in your glory, Cancer. Not only are you the center of attention in the most exclusive circles, you make great inroads in any personal project you want. The crucial thing now is to decide what you want to achieve, who are the best people to help you and how to get it all launched and going. You will figure all that out.

LEO   (JULY 24 - AUGUST 23)

Hidden things might have tripped you up in the past but now you seem to have developed an intuitive sense of what to do and when to do it. Go for it, Leo. Show the world how adept you are at navigating into the unknown. By doing so, you attain greater self-knowledge that you use to make your world a better place.

VIRGO   (AUGUST 24 - SEPTEMBER 23)

Friendships mean even more to you now, Virgo. Find more and more ways to reach out to others and expand your social circle. You become the center of the activity as your warmth and consideration for others attracts a crowd. What will you do with all of this opportunity? Use it to build a community and maybe a nation.

LIBRA   (SEPTEMBER 24 - OCTOBER 23)

Your career path never looked as bright and optimistic as it does now, Libra. The opportunities are endless. Use your innate capabilities to better navigate all of the corporate politics to help you succeed and attain.  Schmooze with the bosses and also connect with coworkers. Plan your path while your charisma is sharp.

SCORPIO   (OCTOBER 24 - NOVEMBER 22)

If you decide to travel now, Scorpio, be sure to choose destinations that offer you greater comfort and emotional connection. You may feel the need to visit old friends or family or enjoy a luxurious and restful spa retreat. Whatever recharges you and makes you feel loved and rested will be the cure for whatever ails you.

SAGITTARIUS   (NOVEMBER 23 - DECEMBER 22)

Even carefree Sagittarians love deeply and meaningfully now. Your capacity for emotion expands and makes you feel more at one with the world. Allow yourself some freedom to express this passion and reach out to those who can most benefit for this energy in you. Who knows what can develop with all this intensity?

CAPRICORN   (DECEMBER 23 - JANUARY 20)

Gather all of your more important relationships together and find more ways to make them even stronger, Capricorn. No matter whether for love, friendship or business, you are able to make others feel loved, nurtured and more confident. Creating a greater connection increases mutual loyalty and identification.

AQUARIUS   (JANUARY 21 - FEBRUARY 19)

Whatever you need to do or accomplish, Aquarius, you will not do it alone. Suddenly it seems everyone around you wants to get involved and help you out. Great! Prioritize all of your projects and find those who can help finish them off. You not only feel a greater sense of personal accomplishment, you also feel more energized.

PISCES   (FEBRUARY 20 - MARCH 20)

Whatever you want to do to relax and just have fun, do it, Pisces. Your ability to find the personal satisfaction coupled with a group effort will serve you and others very well. All of you are in need of mutual nurturing and care. So spread the joy. Spread the love. Spread the wild creatively beautiful experiences now.

(c) 2023 MADAM LICHTENSTEIN, LLC., All Rights Reserved. For Entertainment Purposes Only. @thestarryeye Find astrology readings on tinyurl.com/TheStarryEye and a great sun sign book at tinyurl.com/Herscopes

Lucky Numbers for the Week of June 23, 2023

Lottery ads tell us you only need a dollar and a dream. But it is also helpful to have a list of lucky numbers to help spur the good fortune ... or fortunes. So with that in mind, here are some lucky numbers that can be used in any helpful way. I gazed into a pool of water, Nostradamus-like, and contemplated the cosmos. Then I mixed the tarot cards and allowed the spirits to guide me to the cards that represent the lucky numbers for this week. Nothing is guaranteed but who knows ....?

I choose eight numbers because 8 is the number of of wealth.

Here are the lucky numbers for the week of June 23-29, 2023:

1, 9, 12, 32, 37, 45, 56, 78

There are many ways to delve into your own consciousness to find luck and intuition. Try reading Dream Power/Improve Your Luck (Super Strength Series) and see if your dreams give you any clues and premonitions. Here's a guide to the best books available this month

A Haunted Painting?

A Painting of a Crying Boy Was Blamed for a Series of Fires in the ’80s. The artwork, said UK tabloids at the time, was haunted.

by Natalie Zarrelli for Atlas Obscura

In the middle of the night in Thatcher-era England, a home in South Yorkshire succumbed to a fire. The lounge room was charred black, drapes and furniture reduced to ash. The owners of the home, Ron and May Hall, lost nearly everything to the blaze, except one item: a painting of a crying boy, his wide eyes looking out from the wreckage, not even blackened by smoke. This wasn’t the first time a picture of a crying boy had been found amid the ashes of a torched home.

On September 4, 1985, British tabloid The Sun published “Blazing Curse of the Crying Boy Picture!” a story about a very unlucky painting that caused fires, supported the comments of a local fire station officer. These paintings, the firefighter said, turned up mysteriously unscathed in fires across the U.K., all of which started spontaneously. It was well-known; he would never think of owning this cursed painting himself. “The couple had laughed off warnings” that their painting was cursed, wrote The Sun. Let all other heed the warning, and get rid of their own giant paintings of crying children immediately.

If the fact that paintings of crying kids were hung in the living rooms of multiple households makes you double-take, you’re not alone. The paintings, an odd relic of mass-printed art, were readily available in stores during the 1950s-1970s, and tended to appeal to young couples. While the paintings have not been reprinted for decades, their bizarre subject matter and backstory have kept the legend going, from copy-pasted internet legends to books of local lore.

The legend of the crying-boy painting seems to have begun with The Sun, fueled by the obscurity of the crying-boy painting’s artist. The artworks bear the prominent signature of one Giovanni Bragolin, but for quite some time no one could find information about the man. Rumors abounded; he painted hundreds of crying children, many of them street urchins, it was said, in either Italy or Spain. Finally, a 2000 book of creepy stories called Haunted Liverpool claimed that, in 1995, a “well respected” school teacher called George Mallory discovered that the painter was actually a mysterious figure named Franchot Seville.

The following backstory, from 2000, seems to be a mash-up of reportage from The Sun and Mallory: one of the urchins he painted was a boy named Don Bonillo, who accidentally started a fire in which his parents died in Spain. From then on, wherever the boy went, a fire followed, prompting his nickname, Diablo. Some believe the boy was adopted against the will of a priest, and was abused by the painter; in the 1970s the boy was consumed by fire as well, in an explosion caused by a car accident.

Comedian and writer Steven Punt explored the legend on his radio show Punt PI. He attempted to track down the homes involved, and found Jane McCutchin, who had hung the print in her living room in the 1980s. McCutchin, a mother of two, was cleaning her kitchen when she found that her hand-made drapes, blinds and curtains were suddenly ablaze. Her family escaped alive, but her home had been destroyed—except for a single painting hung in her living room, of the crying boy. “You could still see the little boy’s face on the painting,” she told Punt. Later, she heard a firefighter who saw the painting say: “Oh no, not another.” After what was described as a “series of coincidences” and bad luck, McCutchin speculated that the painting was the cause, prompting her to get rid of it.

Most of the fires had normal causes, like cigarettes, or unwieldy deep-frying pans. Since most of the myth surrounds the nearly unbelievable fire resistance of the painting, Punt bought a crying-boy picture of his own; after being inexplicably delayed on his destination several times, Punt began to feel a bit nervous about the possible curse. When he tested its fire retardancy by setting it alight with construction researcher Martin Shipp, they found that beyond the string it hung from, it didn’t really burn. While the lapel of the boy’s jacket was singed, and the painting suffered a hole, the damage stopped pretty quickly. This may have been due to a fire-retardant varnish, he and Shipp surmised, which would easily account for why the painting would remain little-touched in burned homes across the U.K. During his own investigation, Clark also discovered that the painting was printed on compressed board, making it difficult to burn.

Such explanations would not have sufficed in 1985. In the middle of the story’s initial heyday, The Sun decided to take the legend further, requesting that the public send their crying boy paintings to them to be destroyed. According to The Sun’s editor, the office “got swamped in crying boy pictures,” but the editor refused to display the paintings in the office himself. “Picture is a fire jinx”, the paper reported. A week after its first article on the curse, The Sun published “Crying Boy Curse Strikes Again”—though the painting under the headline was a completely different painting of a crying boy. The story was much the same; an ordinary fire turned creepy when an unscathed crying-boy painting was found hanging in the house.

The legend of the crying boy survived into the internet age, and even sparked fan clubs. If you search for this online today, you’ll sadly find that the fan club since dissolved—but evidence of its existence in 2002 is preserved on artist and coder Mario Klingemann’s former blog, where there were discussions of crying-boy painting sales and a Holland-based club. Klingemann first got into the legend through the art of Laura Kikauka, who replaced the crying boy’s eyes with red LEDs, and for him, the painting’s weirdness is the allure. “The legend is a nice add-on … I think as a child when we did holidays in Italy back in the 1970s, I had also seen those pictures sold at some street booths and I guess I found them quite peculiar back then,” says Klingemann, who also created a crying-boy tear generator. Klingemann has collected several of the paintings, occasionally fielding requests to sell or buy from enthusiasts. Despite his fascination with the story, Klingemann maintains that he does not believe in the curse.

The Sun capped most of its hype of the legend in a 1985 article on Halloween, with the headline “Crying Flame!” gracing the front page. The paper claimed to dissolve the curse once and for all with a bonfire, burning “sackfuls” of paintings, which were sent to them by the public in response to their call. The bonfire blazed near the River Thames, dissolving the curse into smoke. The Sun, ever-looking for reliable sources, quoted a chaperone to the event; a fire officer who said, with relief: “I think there will be many people who can breathe a little easier now.”