Message #33849

[Bianca]

 Jung insisted on understanding that the principle of synchronicity explains nothing, but only permits awareness of the manifestation of meaningful coincidences. He also rejected the possibility of applying synchronicity to astrological reality: "Despite the fact that we know nothing exact about what the validity of a natal horoscope rests upon, it is still no less conceivable that a relationship of causal character might exist between planetary aspects and psycho-physiological dispositions.

Consequently, one would do well to consider the results which issue from astrological theory as phonemona relevant not to synchronicity, but perhaps to causality. Wherever one can reasonably suppose a cause, synchronicity becomes unlikely in the extreme." [35]

The idea of an acausal connection between diverse events has its source in the experiments of Joseph Rhine on telepathy and extrasensory perception. The results of Jung's statistical research on married couples should, according to Jung himself, be interpreted while taking into account randomness and the unconscious intentions of the experimenter. [36]

The statistical result, "desired" by the emotionally involved experimenter, would be in part an imaginative projection of his own unconscious. That circumstance disqualifies from the outset the application of statistics to astrology: "The verification by statistical means of astrological 'truths' is open to question, and even improbable. ... Their superstitious use (be it in the prediction of the future or in the establishment of certain facts in terms of psychological possibilities) is fallacious." [37]

    Synchronicity is not a model for understanding astrology; it is only an interpretation of the occurrence of two events which appear to consciousness simultaneously, without the reason for their appearance being evident. I shaved this morning at the exact moment when the cat scratched at the window." There is nothing significant in such a construct. Synchronicity concerns two synchronous events which I interrelate and interpret as being linked by significance.

Let us take another example: I fell in love with Helen when Venus rising was transiting my natal Sun. The position of Venus rising and its projection onto the orbit traced by the transit of my Natal Sun is not an event, an experiential fact, but rather a calculation, an astrological observation, and also represents the result of an astrological theory. The proposition according to which I have fallen in love with Helen, in the present moment, is no longer an external event: it becomes a state or condition, an internal event.

There is no synchronicity involved because there is no external, experiential event, because I do not know the position of Venus until I calculate it, and because my proposition of causality does not correspond to an empirical observation, but rather to a calculation and a theory.