Carl Gustav Jung, student of Sigmund Freud, described the concept of 'synchronicity' in his book of the same name, 'Synchronicity'. He relays a story of an 'impressive dream' a patient had the night before, in which someone had given her a golden scarab.

Jung further stipulated that explaining the reason as to why this was of such significance seemed to be deeply personal. From this simple story, we can conclude two things Jung presented about synchronicity:

1) It is comprised of an event that appears to be of extreme significance.
2) This experience may be highly personal.

Deja Vu could be considered a commonly experienced form of synchronicity. We may pass by a street, or have a conversation that would seem to reflect an experience we have had before. Sometimes we feel it may have been from a dream, a distant memory, and sometimes we ourselves can't even put our finger on it.

Such, then, could be some 'guiding principles' of synchronicity.

But what causes synchronicity? Is it a result of random chance? How can we differentiate between synchronicity and coincidence? Can we scientifically observe this phenomena by result of the scientific method?

Jung creates a distinction between 'coincidence' and 'sychronicity' with the concept of meaning:

Let us also note that Jung described synchronicity as 'acasual' - e.g. if you were thinking of someone you hadn't heard from in a long time, and they suddenly call you - there is no cause-and-effect relationship between the individual events of the synchronicity. Thinking of that individual at that moment did not cause them to call you.

This is contrary, to, say, the 'observer effect' of quantum physics, which does state observing a result can change it, or the idea of magic, which could be considered to be that of the 'impossible' caused by Will.

Ceremonial Magician, and author of Modern Magick, as well as a number of other brilliant works on the topic, Donald Michael Kraig states:

You will note words like 'somewhat', 'suggested', 'postulated', et cetera, keep being used here. This is because this series, and especially this introduction, is not a textbook. The ideas presented here are to provide a starting point to the much more complex ideas that follow, and the scientific process is used to assuage fears of these pieces straying too far into the realm of pseudoscience. The Libri are not meant to be an attempt to guide, nor convince people of the effectiveness of Ceremonial Magick, and certainly not its existence, as its well-documented history will be presented in Liber L.II. Chaos Magic, a modern magical practice first developed in England in the 1970's, has a set of mathematical equations who cite 'probability' as one of the main factors in determining of something can actually fall within the mathematical lines of 'magic'. Many of these equations, and a solid fundamental understanding of the principles of Chaos Magic, can be found in Peter J Carroll's 'Liber Kaos'.

Chaos Magic's equations are potentially dense at first, and if mathematics is not your forte, it may require re-reading the passages several times to understand. However - there are some brilliant concepts within - Carroll states that any event of chance falls on a graph between impossible to likely, and that we are unlikely to accept something as an act of magic if it is not both an intentional act, and impossible, or mathematically, astronomically improbable.

Contrary to Chaos Magic, there was a sort of 'magical renaissance' around the turn of the 20th century, with works by Eliphas Levi, Helena Blavatsky, William Wynn Westcott, Samuel MacGregor Mathers, Aleister Crowley, Jack Parsons, and a series of 'Magical Orders' - the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the Ordo Templi Orientis, the Builders of the Adytum, and the A∴ A∴, just to name a few.

And so, there is a history of Western Ceremonial Magic, and its study, of over a century, and, before any further delving into the concept itself, a brief overview of this history will be presented in Liber L.II.

In Light,
- Soror C∴G∴ / Soror Nikki Grace ∴