Topics · 12 min
Meaningful coincidence: holding a sign lightly
What Carl Jung meant by synchronicity, two ways to hold a coincidence that feels meaningful, and how to read a card that arrives at just the right moment.
In this lesson you will
- Explain synchronicity as Jung described it: a coincidence joined by meaning rather than by cause.
- Hold a striking coincidence as an invitation to reflect rather than as proof or an order.
- Read a well-timed card with the same steps as any other: picture, position, question, one line.
You think of an old friend for the first time in months, and that evening she messages you. The next morning your daily card is the Wheel of Fortune. It all feels connected, as if something were arranging your week.
What Jung called synchronicity
The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung used the word synchronicity for coincidences that feel meaningful: two events with no cause linking them, joined only by the sense they make to the person living them. He wrote about it at length in 1952. His best-known example is a patient telling him a dream about a golden scarab just as a beetle very like one tapped at his window.
Synchronicity is a way of looking at experience, not a finding that science has confirmed. Many tarot readers use it to describe why a drawn card can speak to a question: the card did not have to come, yet it brought something to say. Whether you believe more is at work is yours to decide; this lesson shows how to read well either way.
This lesson is part of Plus
Plus opens every lesson of the Practitioner, Reader and Advanced tiers and the topic courses, with practice that explains every answer.
What the lesson covers
- Two ways to hold a coincidence
- Practice
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