No sign is what it
Symbolizes; yet meaning
Is in what it's not!
The shamans of old sought signs in the present to prefigure
events in the undetermined future, or to elucidate events of the past.
They expected synchronicities between experiences both present and
remote in time and space. Their process was not unlike the experiences
of remote viewers in modern times.
I see methodological similarities among all systems of what has been
traditionally considered "divination." This is found in the
ascertaining of what the "divine" (whatever that might signify to the
participants) presents to us at another space-time by observing
(random) events in the Present (where the participants are
‘present’). Similarly, remote viewers observe an internal
state and that observation is in a relationship to an external (in
either, or both, space and time).
This is too vague so far. Let's be more specific.
According to published information and private discussions with
participants such as my friend and mentor the late Maj. Gen Bert
Stubblebine, US Army, it can be said that the remote viewers of the US
military program of the 1980s were given a random set of numbers which
represented an unknown target and which might represent location
coordinates. Several teams were involved for each viewing. Each team
had a viewer and a minder who also took notes. As part of the protocol
the viewer "wrote" a line or squiggle that "contained" the meaning of
the viewing. Later the results from each team were compared by another
team member and "actionable intelligence" deduced.
Note that each system of divination uses randomness to determine the
local part of the experience. This is so whether in the random fall of
the shaman's knuckle-bones, random sorting of Tarot cards, the random
tossing of the I Ching's coins, or similar randomly generated figures
of all such systems. The same random synchronicity is postulated in the
system of Trimancy, or Divination by Threes, regarding the random
generation of Trimantic Sentences. “Trimancy’ is a system
of divination that is based on Three-Valued Logic [Yes, No, Maybe],
rather than the two value systems inherent in such systems as the I
Ching, or Tarot, with their Yes/No encoding. More about that at
www.ShamansSong.com
In this way we have similarity to the remote viewing protocol which
started from a random code or sign that triggered a subjective mental
experience referenced as “remote viewing”.
But the relationship between sign and divine has deeper layers than
even the synchronicity between the "this" and the "that" of the
particular process. The signs themselves contain information -- like
the remote viewer's squiggle.
The broken and unbroken lines of the I Ching hexagrams, the
energy-mapping lines of the Runes, the sand-scribbles of Roman
Geomancy, all similarly encode data -- information for the subconscious
mind as well as the conscious mind.
C. G. Jung, the master of synchronicity, saw great psychological power
in divinatory systems and viewed the Runes as especially potent:
"I dug up old runes and magical sayings
for words never reach men. Words have become shadows. Therefore I took
old magical apparatuses and prepared hot potions and mixed in secrets
and ancient powers, things that even the cleverest would not guess at.
I stewed the roots of all human thoughts and deeds." ~ Carl Jung, The
Red Book, Paragraphs 130/132.
The Runes were traditionally said to have been "grasped" by Odin during
a nine-day self-sacrifice. Hanging from the World Tree he screamed as
he extracted the Runes from the root substance of Reality.
I see in the runic line-signs a synchronistic mirroring of the structure and flow of psychic, psionic or spiritual energy.
A few examples might suffice. The first Rune, Fehu (Fee), symbolizes
the horns of bovine wealth. A single upright and two branches reaching
upward, like the natural yield of wealth, generating more wealth. Or
consider Isa (Ice), a single upright, frozen in its position. Some of
the Runes combine other Runes within, taking their energies together.
Othala, the Homeland, for example. It is made of two signs, the top is
a square at a 45 degree angle, the same symbol as the Rune Ingwaz (male
potency, fire rune) sitting on top of a Kenaz (Kenning, fire) rotated
90 degrees. All the signs map energy states while carring both
traditional meanings and synchronistic linkings.
The commonalities among all these systems of approaching the Hidden
Past or the Unknowable Future (because not set in the reality of the
present) mix synchronicity, sign and experience to produce an
understanding of What May-Have-Been or May-Yet-Be. Divination and
Remote Viewing both aim at “seeing” potential bifurcations
of the mental experience of stated experiencers.
The power is not in the sign, but rather, in the perceiving mind. Yet
the ancient promise is that through the synchronistic linkage between
the present experience and the other experience a greater understanding
will arise. Synchronicity is always and only a relationship perceived
as significant by a mind.
Jung is quoted (in his Foreword to the Wilhelm/Baynes I Ching) as having said the following about his concept:
"...a certain curious principle that I
have termed synchronicity, a concept that formulates a point of view
diametrically opposed to that of causality. Since the later is a merely
statistical truth and not absolute, it is a sort of working hypothesis
of how events evolve one out of another, whereas synchronicity takes
the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more
than mere chance, namely, a peculiar interdependence of objective
events among themselves as well as with the subjective (psychic) states
of the observer or observers."
The interdependence between the random precursor and the synchronistic
observation provides us with a tool to achieve a more complete
understanding of what has been or will be experienced.
Divination is not fortune-telling, though it can do that. Rather, the
process involves allowing the creation of synchronicities. Divination
holds out the possibility of manifesting experience, not just
predicting it.
Jung explained that one could not will synchronicities, but, one could
allow the set and setting wherein synchronicities can occur. He called
that “constellating” the conditions or activating the
Architypes. [See: Ira Progoff, Jung, Synchronicity, and Human Destiny].
Similarly ritual plays a role in many such systems. Examples include
the throwing of the I Ching coins, casting the Runes or the ritualistic
preparations for Remove Viewing sessions.
Synchronicity is a tool to integrate the present state with past and
future states for the entity that acts as the diviner, and for the
present, past and future entity(ies) that act as the receiver of the
synchronicities.
It is a magical tool to achieve that spiritual wholeness needed for the
whole entity, in all its incarnations and bifurcations, to achieve
ascension, which means eternal wholeness -- ascending, as did the
shaman of old:
My shaman tree's roots
From lower planes grow; smoke-like,
I rise up, climbing... [23 Nov 1986]
In these times when many seers, prognosticators and prophets
tell us great changes are happening to human consciousness and culture
tools such as divination allow the wise to cope with enormous
uncertainty as humanity reaches from the birth world outward... And
when your many incarnations and bifurcations are spiritually unified
you will find that you are indeed the god/goddess that you always have
been.
Consider, therefore, Trimancy,
Divination by Threes: