| 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 1 | 46 | 93 | 139 | 185 |
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meaning to include every possible idea, and that one or more of these may always be taken to
represent any idea. We assume that any of these hieroglyphs will be understood by the intelligences
with whom we wish to communicate in the same sense as it is by ourselves. We have therefore a sort
of language. One may compare it to a lingua franca which is perhaps defective in expressing fine
shades of meaning, and so is unsuitable for literature, but which yet serves for the conduct of daily
affairs in places where many tongues are spoken ....
'We postulate that the intelligences whom we wish to consult are willing, or may be compelled to
answer us truthfully.'
Although the theory outlined above is particularly associated with Crowley it must be emphasised that
it did not originate with him but was derived from the teachings of the Hermetic Order of the Golden
Dawn.
The followers of C.G. Jung appear to be under the impression that the concept of synchronicity - the
theory that everything occurring at a certain moment of time has the qualities of that moment of time
(1) - originated with their hero. Certainly Jung evolved his theory independently of the occult
tradition, but synchronicity, or something so like it as to be almost indistinguishable from it, has been
a common-place of Western occultism for at least 150 years and probably a great deal longer.
At least one early 19th century astrologer boldly stated that he did not believe that the planets
influenced mankind directly but rather that they simply corresponded to the various conditions of men
in the same way that the hands of his clock corresponded to his appetite for food; 'Mars in the second
house of a geniture'. (2) he wrote 'indicates that the native will have no great estate in the same way
that the hands at ten of the clock indicate that I want bread and cheese.' Such an attitude is close to
that of Jung who outlined his synchronistic rationale for the I Ching and other divinatory systems in
the following words:
----
[1] This is merely a special case of, and arises out of the general theory of synchronicity which
considers causality as a statistical, and not an absolute truth and 'takes', to use Jung's own words, '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'.
[2] ie in the horoscope of an individual.
----
'... when one throws the three coins, or counts through the forty-nine yarrow stalks, these chance
details enter into the picture of the moment of observation and form a part of it .... With us it would be
a banal and almost meaningless statement (at least on the face of it) to say that whatever happens in a
given moment possesses inevitably the quality peculiar to that moment. This is not an abstract
argument but a very practical one. There are certain connoisseurs who can tell you merely from the
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