“Induced Coincidence”

 

 

An episode reported by Gareth Knight, former student of Dion Fortune and leading figure in the Society of the Inner Light. It involves an exchange between an inner guide identified as David Carstairs (first contacted by DF in 1922) and Soror A., a student of Gareth Knight, in 1996.

In a communication in March 1996, Carstairs explains the mechanism by which a 1920s postcard of Ypres fell into the hands of Soror A unexpectedly when she was working on psychic history related to the battle of the Somme in the Great War. The postcard subsequently provided a strong “talismanic link powerfully charged with a sense of [the Master’s] presence’. It was later used in ritual. Carstairs explained that synchronicities are useful for “concentrating the mind”. 

The postcard incident was not the effect of direct control of the physical from the Inner planes. Rather, it was a case of the merging of consciousness in mutual concentration setting up a “kind of energized imprint which straddles the planes”. This generates “a kind of cosmic magnet” drawing in relevant forces, some of which can precipitate synchronicities or “induced coincidences”.. 

The process is not guaranteed to work every time. Carstairs likened it sending a message in a bottle and hoping that it will somehow reach its destination. He suggested it was possible that the card had been wending its way to the student ever since it was first purchased. Through a series of mailings and hand-to-hand transactions, the destiny of both card and final recipient were influenced retrospectively by the Master. 

Time on the Inner planes is not to be linear, the time constraints we experience in the tick-tock world make such an incident look anomalous when in deeper reality it is not. We might see manipulation of the past but the past is not past in the greater perspective. .

 

-     Source: Gareth Knight in Don Fortune and Gareth Knight, An Introduction to Ritual Magic (Loughborough: Thoth, 1997), p. 116