Jung, Synchronicity and the Tarot: A Fair Reading

What synchronicity actually claims

Jung synchronicity tarot is the fair reading of the deck through the one psychological concept that was ever meant to explain it. The claim of the concept is not about the cards. It is about the structure of reality, and the cards sit inside that claim without the claim depending on them.

The claim is this: there is, in addition to causal connection, a principle of acausal connection. Two events that are not causally related can be meaningfully related. The meaning is not in the events. The meaning is in the relation.

The Princeton University Press, which publishes the monograph, describes the concept as the culmination of Jung's lifelong engagement with the paranormal. That is the framing the discipline gives it. Synchronicity is the edge of the map, not the map. It is what Jung could not reduce to causality and could not let go.

The definition that matters is the 1930 one. In the address he gave at the memorial service for Richard Wilhelm, Jung used the word synchronicity for the first time publicly. The definition was: things happening at the same moment as an expression of the same time content. Not causality. Not coincidence. The same time content.

That is the claim the tarot sits inside of.

Where the claim comes from

The claim came from the I Ching. Jung consulted the I Ching for years, and the consultation produced insights that he could not account for by chance. The I Ching is not a tarot. It is a hexagram system, and the hexagram is a configuration of six lines, each either broken or unbroken. The configuration is drawn by chance, and the configuration carries meaning.

This is structurally identical to a tarot reading. The card is drawn by chance, and the card carries meaning. The hexagram and the card are the same unit: a configuration drawn by chance, carrying a meaning that the reader recognizes.

The I Ching consultation has a specific form. The question is held in mind. The yarrow stalks are broken, or the three coins are thrown, six times, and each throw produces a line. The six lines, read from the bottom up, produce a hexagram. The hexagram has a name, an image, a judgment, and a commentary. The commentary is the meaning.

The tarot has the same form. The question is held in mind. The deck is shuffled, and the card is drawn. The card has a name, an image, and a meaning. The meaning is the commentary. The card is the hexagram. The deck is the I Ching, in the structural sense that matters for synchronicity.

Jung's own word for this, in the 1952 Eranos lecture that became the monograph, is the acausal connecting principle. The connection is not causal. The connection is meaningful. The meaning is not in the card. The meaning is in the coincidence.

The role of the archetypes in this is not decorative. Jung's synchronicity is not a claim about the coincidence alone. It is a claim about the coincidence as an expression of the archetypal. The archetype is the pattern, and the coincidence is the pattern appearing in the events. The card is the archetype made visible. The coincidence is the archetype appearing in the reading.

This is why the fair reading of the tarot through synchronicity does not require the reader to believe in the archetypes. It requires the reader to hold the archetype as a structural term, the term that names the pattern that the coincidence expresses.

The Pauli connection

The Pauli connection is the part of the claim that the discipline takes most seriously. Wolfgang Pauli, the Nobel laureate, was a physicist, and he was a student of Jung, and he spent twenty years trying to give the concept of synchronicity a physical form. The form he proposed was the acausal correlation, a correlation that is not causal and is not chance, and that has no known physical mechanism.

Pauli did not publish the form. The correspondence between the two, which is now published, is the closest thing to a scientific treatment of the claim that exists. It is not a scientific treatment in the modern sense. There is no experiment. There is a correspondence, and the correspondence is the claim.

The fair reading of the Pauli connection is this: the claim has been taken seriously by a physicist, and the physicist could not give it a form, and the absence of the form is part of the claim. The claim is not that the coincidence has a mechanism. The claim is that the coincidence has a meaning, and the meaning is not reducible to a mechanism.

The astrological experiment

The monograph contains an astrological experiment. Jung collected cases in which a significant psychological event coincided with an astronomical configuration. The coincidence was not causal. The sun does not cause the dream. The coincidence was meaningful. The dream and the configuration stood in a relation that was not causal.

The experiment is the closest Jung ever came to a testable claim. It is not a test in the modern sense. There is no control group. There is no pre-registered hypothesis. There is a set of cases and a pattern in the cases. The pattern is the claim.

This is the fair reading of the experiment. It is not a proof. It is a set of observations that Jung could not explain by any other means. The observations stand. The interpretation is open.

Where the tarot fits honestly

The tarot fits the claim of synchronicity in a structural sense, and it does not fit it in a causal sense. The structural fit is real. The card is drawn by chance, and the card carries a meaning that the reader recognizes. The coincidence of the card and the question is the unit of the reading. This is exactly the unit of synchronicity: a coincidence that is meaningful.

The causal fit is not there. The card does not cause the meaning. The meaning does not cause the card. The meaning is in the coincidence. The coincidence is not a causal event. It is an acausal event, in Jung's sense.

This is the honest boundary. The tarot is a machine for producing coincidences, and the coincidence is the unit of meaning in the reading. This is what synchronicity gives the tarot. This is what the tarot gives synchronicity: a case.

What the jung synchronicity tarot reading requires

The fair reading of synchronicity in the tarot requires three things. It requires that the coincidence be recognized as a coincidence, not as a cause. It requires that the meaning be located in the coincidence, not in the card. It requires that the claim be held as a claim, not as a fact.

The claim is that there is, in addition to causal connection, a principle of acausal connection. The tarot is a machine for producing coincidences. The coincidence is the unit of meaning in the reading. This is the fair reading.

It is not the reading that says the cards know. It is the reading that says the coincidence is meaningful, and the meaning is not in the card, and the meaning is not in the reader, and the meaning is in the relation.

The sources for this are the same as the sources for the claim itself. C. G. Jung, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle (1973), Princeton University Press. The Wikipedia entry on synchronicity (en.wikipedia.org). The monograph contains the astrological experiment, and the experiment is the closest thing to a test that the claim has.

For the deck as a correspondence system, see the companion article on the Golden Dawn correspondences. Golden Dawn Tarot Correspondences Explained For the Fool and the zero position, see the tzimtzum article. Tzimtzum and the Fool: A Card for the Withdrawal of Light

The fair reading is this: the tarot is a machine for producing coincidences, and the coincidence is meaningful, and the meaning is not in the card, and the claim is a claim. Read the tarot as a coincidence, and the reading works.