Kairomancy and the Grammar of Epiphany

 

The word “synchronicity” was coined by Jung to flag patterns of meaningful coincidence. He defined “synchronicity” as “the coincidence in time of two or more causally unrelated events which have the same meaning”, the work of “an acausal connecting principle.”

Things come up at the same time, or in a certain sequence, that feel as if they are closely connected, but cannot be attributed to any linear sequence of cause and event. Dreams and waking events may interweave closely, and may have the same quality. Coincidence is at work, but it cannot be shrugged off as “mere” coincidence. Synchronicities mean something. Sometimes they nudge us towards the perception of a deeper meaning in our lives than our everyday habits and attitudes have made room for. They can feed that hunger for meaning that is a defining characteristic of any human who is truly alive. They move us beyond our tendency to put fences around possibility.

Benign synchronicities tend to come thick and fast at times of change, moments that stir the soul, when our passions are aroused – when we fall in love, or make a leap of faith, or are embarking on a new creative endeavor, or are close to birth or death. Benign synchronicity may provide powerful confirmation of a path we are testing – or open a path of which we were previously unaware. Synchronicities can strengthen us in the determination to follow our deepest intuitions even when they run counter to conventional wisdom and logic and cannot be subjected to rational explanation. Like the exchange of secret handshakes between members of a secret fraternity, these signals alert us to the fact that we are not alone, that we have invisible sources of support, and that we are on the right course even when the whole world seems to be going the other way.

Negative synchronicities and counter-currents tend to multiply when we are resisting change, or insisting on following an ego-driven agenda.

Synchronicities carry us beyond stolid distinctions between inner and outer, mind and matter. They may arouse the suspicion that, when we are most deeply alive, we somehow call up from the depths of soul the events and situations that are played out around us.

Synchronicity helps us awaken to the fact that beyond the surface of things, everything is alive, animate, conscious. By making it our game to enter actively into the play of synchronicity, we move towards conscious engagement with the powers of the deeper world.

Synchronicity is the grammar of epiphany. An epiphany is literally a “showing forth”. The epiphanies of life, those numinous “show times” when we glimpse the deeper reality behind the manifest world, and derive insight into the larger meaning of our personal existence, come with the intersection of a hidden order of events with our seemingly linear progression through space/time.

The play of synchronicity helps us to move into a creative flow state, and invites us to step outside linear time and history into kairos time, the “jump time” of creative opportunity.

As English physicist F. David Peat writes lyrically in Synchronicity: The Bridge between Matter and Mind. , through synchronicity, as well as peak experiences, “creativity breaks through the barriers of the self and allows awareness to flood through the whole domain of consciousness. It is the human mind operating, for a moment, in its true order and extending throughout society and nature, moving through orders of increasing subtlety, reaching past the source of mind and matter into creativity itself.”

     A conscious engagement with synchronicity, like a conscious relationship with the dreamworlds, enables us to connect with a multidimensional perspective and become co-creators of what is manifested from a deeper reality in our physical worlds.

Dreaming and synchronicity are the warp and woof of our experience of a deeper reality. In dreaming, we go there. Through synchronicity, the forces of that deeper world leave their mark on our surface world and give us a spur to live juicier, more magical lives. 

Wolfgang Pauli, the pioneer of quantum physics who helped Jung develop his theory of synchronicity, did not like the term, which literally speaks only about things happening at the same time. Pauli suggested “isomorphy”, a term that in mathematics refers to identity or near-identity of form, and this is a useful word since connection by resemblance is arguably a more significant element in meaningful coincidence than convergence at a single moment in time. Indeed, we may experience a series of coincidence over a considerable period of time, a situation I have called reincidence. However, “synchronicity” has entered the household vocabulary and sounds scientific and so we are stuck with it.

I decided that we need a new term to describe the practice of navigating by synchronicity, and so I invented one: kairomancy. The first part incorporates the name of a Greek god of time very different from Chronos, the lord of tick-tock linear time. Kairos is the god of special moments, the god of jump time or opportunity time, when time operates quite differently. You may feel that time has stopped or that something from outside time is coming into play. Kairos is depicted as a fleet young man, hairless except for a lock of hair falling over his forelock. From this image we get the phrase, “Seize time by the forelock.” Kairos embodies the moment of opportunity you do not want to let slip.

Hence, kairomancy, literally, “divination by special moments”.  Develop this practice and you become a kairomancer, someone who is always poised to recognize and act in those special Kairos moments of opportunity.

Text partly adapted from Sidewalk Oracles: Playing with Signs, Symbols and Synchronicity in Everyday Life by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library

Way of the Kairomancer

 

Synchronicity is when the universe gets personal. Though the word “synchronicity” is a modern invention — Jung made it up because he noticed that people have a hard time talking about coincidence — the phenomenon has been recognized, and highly valued, from the most ancient times. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus maintained that the deepest order in our experienced universe is the effect of “a child playing with game pieces” in another reality. As the game pieces fall, we notice the reverberations, in the play of coincidence.

When we pay attention, we find that we are given signs by the world around us every day. Like a street sign, a synchronistic event may seem to say Stop or Go, Dead End or Fast Lane.  Beyond these signs, we find ourselves moving in a field of symbolic resonance which not only reflects back our inner themes and preoccupations, but provides confirmation or course correction. A symbol is more than a sign: it brings together what we know with what we do not yet know.

Through the weaving of synchronicity, we are brought awake and alive to a hidden order of events, to the understory of our world and our lives. You do not need to travel far to encounter powers of the deeper world or hear oracles speak. You are at the center of the multidimensional universe right now. The extraordinary lies in plain sight, in the midst of the ordinary, if only you pay attention. The doors to the Otherworld open from wherever you are, and the traffic moves both ways. 

I invented the word kairomancer to describe someone who is ready to recognize and act in special moments of synchronicity when time works differently and opportunity strikes. It incorporates the name of Kairos, a Greek god who personifies a kind of time that is altogether different from tedious tick-tock time: that special moment of jump time when more is possible than you imagined before.

To become a kairomancer, you need to check your attitude as you walk the roads of this world, because your attitude goes ahead of you, generating events around the next corner. You need to develop your personal science of shivers. You want to take dreams more literally and the events of waking life more symbolically. You need to take care of your poetic health, reading what rhymes in a day, or a season. You want to expect the unexpected, to make friends with surprises, and never miss that special moment when the universe gives you an invisible wink or handshake.

Shimmers of synchronicity

Powers of the deeper world move among us. Call them gods or daimons, ancestors or archetypes. Most of the time we are unaware of their presence. When they are in the field - noticed or invisible, invoked or uninvoked - their presence has a shimmer effect on the ordinary world.  The fabric of physical reality in their vicinity becomes fluid and unstable. We experience the shift as synchronicity or anomaly. If we become alert to the shimmer effect, and make the right moves in that moment, we can help manifest extraordinary things.
    Synchronicity is when the universe gets personal. Though the word “synchronicity” is a modern invention — Jung made it up because he noticed that people have a hard time talking about coincidence — the phenomenon has been recognized, and highly valued, from the most ancient times. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus maintained that the deepest order in our experienced universe is the effect of “a child playing with game pieces” in another reality. As the game pieces fall, we notice the reverberations, in the play of coincidence.
    When we pay attention, we find that we are given signs by the world around us every day. Like a street sign, a synchronistic event may seem to say Stop or Go, Dead End or Fast Lane.  Beyond these signs, we find ourselves moving in a field of symbolic resonance which not only reflects back our inner themes and preoccupations, but provides confirmation or course correction. A symbol is more than a sign: it brings together what we know with what we do not yet know.
    Through the weaving of synchronicity, we are brought awake and alive to a hidden order of events, to the understory of our world and our lives. You do not need to travel far to encounter powers of the deeper world or hear oracles speak. You are at the center of the multidimensional universe right now. The extraordinary lies in plain sight, in the midst of the ordinary, if only you pay attention. The doors to the Otherworld open from wherever you are, and the traffic moves both ways. 
    Grow your poetic health - learn to read what rhymes in a day, or a life - dream with your eyes wide open and all your senses aquiver, and you may become a kairomancer. I invented this word to describe someone who is forever poised to notice and act in those special moments of synchronicity when the universe gets personal and opportunity strikes. It incorporates the name of Kairos, a Greek god who personifies a kind of time that is altogether different from tedious tick-tock time: that special moment of jump time when more is possible than you imagined before. Kairos is the time you must seize by the forelock before it is gone.
     In my book Sidewalk Oracles, I offer the OATH of the Kairomancer. It is not a vow but a mnemonic. To be a kairomancer you must be

Open to the play of signs and symbols around you
Available to the special moment and willing to say
Thank you to the powers in play and take action to
Honor the magic moment 

Photos: "The Houses Have Eyes in Sibiu" by Robert Moss

Birth of the Kairomancer

 

While working on my book Sidewalk Oracles,  I tried to come up with a new word to describe the phenomenon of meaningful coincidence. Jung coined the word "synchronicity" because he was frustrated by the difficulty we have in talking coherently about coincidence. "Synchronicity" is actually a very unsatisfactory term, since in its literal derivation, it refers only to phenomena occurring at the same time, while synchronistic events - as Jung was well aware -may play out over extended periods of time.
     Wolfgang Pauli,the quantum physicist who helped Jung develop his theory of synchronicity, insisted that the key element in this phenomenon is isomorphy, which means the identity or strong similarity of forms. Things resemble one another. What is inside us is around us, and a symbol recurs in both worlds. auli dreamed that "we must build cathedrals to isomorphy" and encouraged Jung to adopt the term. But Jung cleaved to "synchronicity" and since it sounds respectable and scientific, many of us use it to allay the skepticism and confusion that arise at the mention of "coincidence".
     I had the sense, however, that we can do better. I considered older terms for meaningful coincidence and what generates it, from correspondence and confluence to sympathy and signatures, from wryd to weirder. I played with some neologisms of my own,but found them awkward. 
    I dreamed the word "reincidence", for a riff of coincidence. I thought that was cool,but not the suitcase term I was seeking. I reviewed the central elements in the experience of synchronicity:

-          You know it when you feel it.
     There is a meetup between what is on your mind and what is in the world around you.

-          You know that this is a special moment, a moment of revelation.            

           You may feel that ordinary time has been suspended.           

           You may feel epiphany, a lifting of the veil of the regular world.-          

           You feel the universe just got personal.
     You sense that a hidden hand is giving you a secret handshake or pushing you pack.
     You feel it in your shivers.

It is easier to describe the experience than to account for it. The trick is to apply the phenomenon, to use for navigational guidance, to make it part of a personal, practice method of divination: a mantic art.

      I ask myself, what word would Jung use for synchronicity now that he is living outside time? Wouldn’t he want to remove the Chronos who lives on in the word, as the younger gods overthrew old Chronos and jailed him in a cave? 
|    I ponder this under the shower. I recollect that in Greek, there are two kinds of time. Chronos time is what we observe when we look at a clock and measure out our days. The name of the old god lives on in words like chronology and chronometer, and of course in that slightly problematic word synchronicity.
     Then there is Kairos time, the time of a younger and less predictable god. Kairos time is the "appointed time", when powers and movements of a deeper world irrupt into our regular lives, when the Greater Trumps are in play. 

    Kairos time is risky time, offering both opportunity and danger, the excitement of living on the edge. Lynn Haupt says beautifully in Crow Planet, "It is a time brimming with meaning, a time more potent than 'normal' time."

    Kairos is the god of special moments, when time works differently or seems suspended. He is the lord of jump time, opportunity time, of what Jung once called - in dialogue with Mircea Eliade - a "rupture in time" (that is to say, Chronos time).
     In the iconography Kairos was depicted as a handsome youth. He is fast and slippery.When he appears, bringing perhaps amazing opportunity, you have to grab him while he is on front of you. His hair curls over his forehead but the back of his head is bald.Once he's sped by you, there is nothing to grab. This is the origin of our phrase "seize time by the forelock". 
     The celebrated Greek sculptor Lysippos carved his image, showing a winged figure with a razor and hair hanging down over his face. As explained by Poseidippos, the razor is "a sign to men that I am sharper than any sharp edge." His hair hangs over his face because "he who meets me must take me by the forelock." The back of his head is bald because "once I have sped by none can seize me from behind." 

     It comes to me, standing naked as Kairos on the bathroom tiles with a towel in my hand, that I have a word for the practice of navigating by synchronicity.
      Kairomancy. Divination by special moments of Kairos time. Develop this practice and you become a kairomancer, someone who is always poised to recognize and act in those special Kairos moments of opportunity.
     In my book Sidewalk Oracles, I lay out the basic rules of kairomancy. I summarize the key qualities and qualifications for a kairomancer as:

OATH OF THE KAIROMANCER

Don’t worry. It’s not a solemn pledge but a mnemonic. To navigate by synchronicity and catch Kairos moments, we need to be 

Open to new experience
Available, willing to set aside plans and step out of boxes
Thankful, grateful for secret handshakes and surprises, and ready to
Honor our special moments by taking appropriate action.

Part of this text is adapted from Sidewalk Oracles: Playing with Signs, Symbols and Synchronicity in Everyday Life by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library.

Image: a copy of Lysippos' carving of Kairos

Of Kairos and sea shells

Paradise Island, Bahamas

Kairos is jump time, opportunity time, the special moment that you seize or miss. In Kairos moments you may feel you have been released from linear time, or that powers from outside time have irrupted into your world. The Greeks personified Kairos as a young, fleet-footed god, completely bald except for a curling lock falling over his forehead. Hence the phrase, "seize time by the forelock." If you meet this fellow on the road and fail to seize the moment, you'll find him very hard to catch. Kairos is slippery.
    Brutus talks about Kairos time, the time of opportunity, in a famous passage in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar:

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat,

And we must take the current when it serves

Or lose our ventures.

    Kairos, in Greek, has related meanings in two interesting contexts: in archery and in weaving. In archery, kairos means an opening in the specific sense of a long aperture through which the archer must make his arrow pass, as Odysseus, at the start of the battle with the suitors, must fire an arrow through the holes in a dozen ax heads to prove himself. Meeting the test of this kind of Kairos requires fine precision and the force to drive the arrow all the way. In the art of weaving, kairos is the moment when the weaver must draw the yarn through the gap that opens - just for that moment - in the warp of the fabric that is being woven.

    On the last day of my visit to the Bahamas, where I was teaching at the Sivananda Ashram over the past week, I had an experience of Kairos that touched my heart. I had packed my bags. I was due at the dock on the other side of the ashram in a couple of minutes, to catch the boat to Nassau en route to the airport. My hand was moving to shut down my laptop and tuck it away in my carry-on bag.
   In this instant, I received a message from a dear friend and student. Could I possibly offer a sea shell to the ocean for her deceased mother, who loved the ashram and stayed here many years ago?
   There was no tick-tock time to do this, but Kairos - and the heart - take precedence over Chronos. I ran down the steps to the white sand beach in front of the ashram and hunted up and down until I found a small white shell. I padded into the shallows and released the shell, gently, into the streaming hair of the sea goddess, with a prayer for my friend's mother.
   May her paths be open.    I caught my boat. When Kairos is in play, ordinary time is either suspended, or elastic.
   May we always be available to the Kairos moments when immediate action is required.