Events

People often enter our lives in mysterious ways. We have all met ‘by accident’ a person who crossed our path and radically altered our trajectory and opened a new door that helped us to enter a new universe. What predisposes us to such meetings? Who are these Trickster’s messengers—not necessarily people, as they can also take the forms of books or movies—that lead us to cross a new threshold?

In this session we shall explore the implications of synchronicity for our experience of and relationship to the physical world.  The presumption of disenchanted science is that matter is in itself inherently inert and devoid of meaning.  Contrary to this, with the concept of synchronicity as well as his use of alchemical symbolism, Jung proposed that meaning and numinosity, as expressions of the psychoid archetype, could be inherent properties of not only the psyche but also matter. Such a view arguably fosters a more participative and respectful, rather than instrumental and exploitative, relationship to the physical world.  We shall examine some of the experiences and underpinning philosophical assumptions that have been invoked in support of this view.

Since time immemorial, before C.G. Jung named the phenomenon, synchronicity has been perceived by people of various cultures. In the modern Western world view, mind and matter are clearly separated. Synchronistic phenomena, which cross the boundary between and connect these two distinct categories of reality, are therefore intriguing. However, in places where older world views have been retained in some way, such as in Japan, people seem to be less curious than Westerners about why and how synchronistic events happen; they seem to think of them more as natural occurrences—“just so” and “it happens.” I will approach synchronicity from these perspectives, using the Japanese psyche as an example, to explore its nature.

The intention of this workshop is to give you an experiential taste of reading events in a synchronistic perspective. Opening up to the experience of synchronicity is the essence of all divinatory practices. The divinatory practice we will explore in this workshop is the consultation of the I Ching, the ancient Chinese Book of Changes.

We suggest to approach divination not as a way to predict the future, but as a way to allow unconscious knowledge to emerge in order to illuminate a problematic situation or a specific question.

After a brief elaboration on the history of the Tarot and its use as a divinatory tool, Mathew will relate a number of synchronistic experiences. Based on this he will describe how the Tarot can be used as a divinatory method allowing for an understanding and appreciation of the mytho-poetic language of the Anima Mundi, the Soul of the World. In this space, the possibility emerges of being initiated into a stitching together of the microcosm of our individual life myth within the macrocosm of the Anima Mundi.

The trickster is a shadow figure, a dynamic archetype, hidden in every human psyche. It arises uninvited as impulses that urge us to “play the devil” with our own rational side and behavior. But it can also manifest as a sense of playfulness, when one becomes a clown in an otherwise “serious” situation. The trickster is projected in myths and stories of virtually every traditional culture, from the Native American crow and coyote, to the closely related Mexican/Aztec dancing Huehuecóyotl (or Ueuecoyotl), and on to the African spider trickster, Anansi, and Renard the trickster fox, popular throughout Europe during the late Middle Ages; and includes great trickster gods such as the Chinese monkey king, the Norse Loki, and the Greek Hermes, said to be the “friendliest of the gods to men.”