1. RARE TYPES OF SYNCHRONICITIES (part 1)
1.1.The Vulgate Angel-of-Libraries S-y. 1.2. The telepathic Crosnes S-y. 1.3. The clairvoyant Handbrake S-y, itself nested into a larger Example-S-y.
Let’s assess some telling examples of synchronicities (S-ies), knowing that only the type-1 Jung cites are now labelled such, while the other types are precisely called for what they are, that is, psi phenomena. The perfect example of such Type-1 synchronicity (S-y) showing a “coincidence with a simultaneous, objective, event” would be Jung’s own striking Golden Scarab S-y experience.
Jung’s patient in analysis was recounting him a dream about a golden scarab, when suddenly a scarab with golden hues flies into the clinical room by the open window. The scarab being an Egyptian solar symbol signifying renewal, this S-y definitely has an archetypal character.
However, the main feature of S-ies according to Jung is their potency and numinosity. In this specific clinical case, Jung’s patient had been hopelessly stuck in her treatment while blocking all attempts at initiating a constructive therapeutic process. The astounding synchronicity led to an in-depth exchange, centered on this event. By collapsing the communication barriers, it triggered the onset of the transference process and thus the therapeutic process (hence the numinosity of the scarab ‘renewal’ symbol).
Let me now analyze some of my most challenging S-ies, as I’m prone to experience them on a regular basis.
1.1. The Vulgate Angel-of-Libraries S-y.
The Angel-of-Libraries is a type of S-y that makes us discover exactly THE reference or text we need in order to pursue a given study or reasoning; it is a very common type of S-y befalling sensitive researchers and writers, and it abounds in my life. Generally, this type of Aol S-y is an incitement and guidance on the path/study we have chosen, and sometimes a problem solver. In the Vulgate case, I fell on this name by chance three times in half a day.
(1) The first time, as I was working during the night on an article, I came to study specific extracts in Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy, when I saw an unexplained mention of “the Vulgate” and wondered what was this text, although I recognized a Latin root meaning “lay, common”) and just kept reading.
(2) The next day, for my morning reading, I started a book by Jean Markale on Merlin (1995), when I was startled to find another unreferenced mention of “the Vulgate” in the passage on the Huth-Merlin ancient text, so obscure it only aggravated my frustration.
(3) Later that day, on sipping some coffee after lunch in my armchair, I indulged in a game that consists in picking up one book intuitively; then I would just close my eyes and open it at random while thrusting one finger by chance on the double page – for an inspiring read or else for a divinatory say. (These last years, I have had an array of Jung’s books, all of which thoroughly read and annotated, and enormously thick, displayed on the table near my reading armchair, and they are generally the ones I choose.) The book I picked was again the densest, 700+ pages, Psychology and Alchemy; my finger pointed to a senseless name (“Melchior”) in a title, and so, in a breach of protocol, I thrusted my finger a second time on the same double page and fell right under “of the Vulgate” – this time within a sentence referring to Catholic priests, that clarified that it was the erudite name of the “common” missal text, translated from Latin.
(4) As a crown to this Vulgate S-y, another feat of the Angel-of-Libraries occurred while I was working, some months back, on a first version of this article on S-ies, one which incited me to include it in my examples. I had written at the time: “It so happened that I fell by chance, just yesterday, on the book page on which I had recounted this S-y and where the third instance occurred, and thus I have all precise timings and books references written down!”
This Vulgate Aol S-y is far from transcendent, but it is a modest example of how the Angel – who is none other than one’s own Self, works. In this case, boosted by my desire to know what was the Vulgate, my Self/unconscious provides me with text that includes it, until the third one gives me the answer. Then, two and a half years later, as I intend to again tackle the S-y phenomenon in depth, it reminds me of this instance.
1.2. The telepathic Crosnes S-y.
A telepathic interaction during sleep (but not a dream per se) provides me with the exact answer to a friend’s tip-of-the-tongue problem, on the morning before meeting with her.
I wake up one morning repeating a word in my mind that doesn’t mean anything to me – “crone”; it’s not a dream dealing with ‘crone’, it’s just one word filling my mind, repeating itself. I’m baffled and try to think of any association or memory, to no avail. But bizarrely, I can’t get rid of this word, it obsessively fills my mind. In the afternoon, I’ve a couple of friends, Sylvie and Hughes, who are coming to visit me. I’m so perplex about the strange occurrence that, as soon as we have settled to talk, I recount it to them. “Not only I have no idea what this name means, but it won’t leave me alone!” When I utter the name “crone” Sylvie jumps in her seat and turns to her husband, exclaiming “Des crosnes! That’s the name I couldn’t remember yesterday, Hughes!” Then, to me: “I had it on the tip of the tongue, and kept searching and searching for it – it drove me mad.” She corrects my spelling, yet the two words have the exact same pronunciation; then she explains they were the sturdy and cheap vegetables people in France used to eat during WW2, the Chinese artichokes, when they had nothing else; it was such a disgruntling vegetable that it had totally disappeared afterwards.
This S-y is of a paradigmatic import, because it shows a mind-to-mind connection and exchange happening (with astounding precision) between two unconscious. My friend S is unable to consciously recall a name, despite trying for a while, but she can describe the vegetable thoroughly, thus the name is stored in her unconscious; meanwhile, I get this unidentified name on waking up, thus it was emerging from my unconscious (the sleep state), whereas it was unknown to my conscious. My unconscious and that of S are thus in communion, exchanging some information at the very least; but I’ve ground (through other experiences) to postulate that it is a full exchange of semantic (meaning-creative) energy at large (feelings, images, ideas, etc.). And this happens before we are due to meet in the afternoon. My unconscious is thus able (1) to
acknowledge that S had a fit while unable to remember the name; (2) to learn this new name’s pronunciation; (3) to forward it to my conscious right on awakening, as a sure way for my conscious to get it. And this unconscious-to-unconscious exchange proves that the unconscious is capable of complex mental operations. Something that contravenes a basic foundation of the (still preeminent) cognitivist paradigm, which considers thought as produced only by the conscious mind, and this mind to be limited to the 4D brain (thus forbidding any distant exchange of information such as psi and specifically telepathy). Yet, Henri Poincaré, the most preeminent physicist and mathematician of the generation preceding Einstein, yet his contemporary – and the pioneer of chaos theory and the inventor of the concepts of 4D-spacetime, imaginary numbers, and retrocausality – had proposed the concept of an unconscious mind. Poincaré deemed the “subconscious ego” intelligent enough to be able to discover new mathematical functions and, after a period of “incubation”, to pass the information (i.e. the complete equations) to the conscious mind – the very way he had himself discovered a new class of functions. (See Science and Method, Chapter 3, published posthumously in 1913). Poincaré had several instances of such “illuminations” or “intuitions” surging in his daily life, and he made there an analysis of the process.
1.3. The clairvoyant Handbrake S-y, itself nested into a larger Example-S-y.
(The need to find an example of intuition triggers unconsciously the Example-S-y.)
In S-ies, it is usually an event happening to us that brings the message to our conscious mind. But here is a more complex process, where the unconscious clairvoyant knowledge of an immediate danger triggers a memory working as an alert. Furthermore, this whole experience happened to me about a dozen hours after reading the email of a referee asking for real-life examples to add to my submitted paper on intuition for the next Psi Meeting in Brazil in 2006. So that we have a second and encompassing S-y in the sense that the first handbrake S-y is itself response to the need to find an example of intuition. Among the five types of intuition I had
listed, one was “Sensitivity to the state of distant systems (clairvoyance)” – and the handbrake experience fitted it. Although it wasn’t a conscious intuitive sensing, it was definitely an unconscious knowledge of an immediate danger emerging into the conscious stream. Thus, example-S-y instantiates a coincidence between a psychic state (the perceived need of an example) and an event responding to the need (the handbrake S-y).
Driving back home on a Brazilian highway after a journey, the night had fallen and I felt cold. I had wanted since a while to take a sweater laying on the back seat, but had to wait for a large enough space on the side of the road to stop safely.. I pulled the car on the side, got into neutral gear, and secured the handbrake, then turned on the light inside the car. I was now bending as much as I could in between the two front seats, searching through the stuff that was on the back seats, not finding my sweater. So finally I managed to get my body halfway through the opening between the seats, and was moving stuff, when a sequence of a film I had seen on TV not so long ago, passed through my mind. A girl and her grandfather were trying to get a bear out of a zoo cage, into a cage tied to their pick-up.
The girl was at the driving wheel, her back to it in fact, when she was startled and her jolt unfastened the handbrake – and the car started to move forward down the slope. I saw that specific sequence, and then, with a close-up, (jumping forward in the film) her saying something like "I'm sorry", because not only the bear had run out but her grandfather was badly hurt. That close-up repeated itself. When suddenly, on the second "I'm sorry", with the girl meaning "the handbrake got unfastened"... I had the idea of looking toward my own handbrake... which was now pulled only halfway, and then I realized MY car was moving slowly forward – down the slight slope, heading toward the ridge and bushes.
In this example, we can see easily how the unconscious triggers associations until the images are strong enough for the message to emerge to the conscious mind. My Self (the global subject of both the unconscious and the conscious according to Jung) was aware of the car sliding, and searched my whole syg-field, my memory, for something that would bear a similar message. What's more, I'm not even sure if, in the film, it was the handbrake, or the gear, that the girl pushed with her back when she jerked. But in my daydream, she was sorry about the handbrake. And I needed to repeat that close-up two times in order to finally think about my own handbrake. On a lighter note: while providing me with a stunning example, my Self controlled quite well the danger level, given I would’ve been startled anyway when my car, and that was all the danger there was, bumped on the grassy outcrop!
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Look for the other 2 posts within label SYNCHRONICITIES “Rare types of synchronicities” (2025)
Read the full article on Academia-edu
https://independent.academia.edu/ChrisHHardy/Papers
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