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| 1 | 46 | 93 | 139 | 185 |
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appearance, taste and behaviour of a wine the site of its vineyard and the year of its origin. There are
antiquarians who with almost uncanny accuracy will name the time and place of origin and the maker
of any objet d'art or piece of furniture on merely looking at it. And there are even astrologers who can
tell you, without any previous knowledge of your nativity, what the position of the sun and moon was
and what zodiacal sign rose above the horizon in your moment of birth. In the face of such fact' (sic!),
'it must be admitted that moments can leave long-lasting traces.
'In other words, whoever invented the I Ching was convinced that the hexagram worked out in a
certain moment coincided with the latter in quality no less than in time. To him the hexagram was the
exponent of the moment in which it was cast - even more so than the hours of the clock or the
divisions of the calendar could be inasmuch as the hexagram was understood to be an indicator of the
essential situation prevailing in the moment of its origin.'
This is probably as clear an outline of the synchronistic theory of divination as it would be possible to
write (which isn't saying a great deal) but it is highly unsatisfactory in almost every respect.
Jung's last paragraph seems to imply that Chinese devotees of divination were possessed of a
theoretical outlook identical with that of Jung himself and this is simply not true. For while, as we
have said before, one traditional Chinese theory does bear some resemblance to Jungian synchronicity
it is clear that many Chinese students of the I Ching and other similar divinatory systems had an
outlook very similar to that associated with Aleister Crowley, believing that the implements used in
divination were themselves possessed of a peculiar magical virtue, were 'spirit like' and given to man
as a divine gift 'Heaven produced the spirit-like things' says one commentator on the I Ching.
As for the general theory of synchronicity it must be said that natural laws are not merely statistical -
although, of course, they are often formulated on the basis of statistical analysis that a formula such as
e=mc<2> is true yesterday, today and forever, and that if the theory was not true there could be no
chemistry, no physics and no mathematics. The fact that such a distinguished physicist as Wolfgang
Pauli could take the theory seriously proves nothing except that physicists are sometimes
philosophically (as they are sometimes politically) illiterate!
But in the last analysis it is relatively unimportant why divination works; the important thing is that it
does work - for the occultist there can be no better method of developing the magical intuition.
Divination in this context is no longer an operation of low magic, of fortune-telling. Although the
beginner is compelled to use the 'traditional' meanings of the cards (if it be Tarot divination),
geomantic figures (if it is geomancy) or hexagrams (if the I Ching is used) it is merely a 'stand in' till
the instrument of divination 'comes alive' in the hands of the diviner. When this happens, and the
diviner feels completely at home with the method of divination being practised, then is the time for
the intuition to come into play: the traditional meaning then becomes subservient to the inner
promptings of the diviner. As Dr Regardie put it in his admirable preface to his collection of the
Golden Dawn papers: (3)
'Again, while divination as an artificial process may be wholly unnecessary and a hindrance to the
refined perceptions of a fully developed Adept, who requires no such convention to ascertain whence
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