The Death of Coincidence: Creating Your Own Personal Symbolism
Symbolism is a language. It is a language that speaks directly to us as human beings. Signs and symbols come to us every day, but they are often shrugged off as coincidence but I believe the word that is more appropriate here is synchronicity. Carl Jung described synchronicity as “meaningful coincidence” but the problem with the idea of coincidence or maybe more specifically, our society’s idea of coincidence is that it points to a rather casual connection but nothing deep and meaningful.
Robert Moss in his wonderful book Sidewalk Oracles: Playing with Signs, Symbols, and Synchronicity in Everyday Life talks about the use of Kairomancy, a practise that involves taking notice of signs and symbols that pop up in your life. Moss invented the word “kairomancy” to describe the practice of navigating by synchronicity. The Greeks have what they call a Kairos moment which means a special moment. These special moments come to us in the form of signs and symbols, and we must capture them. A problem we can run into is our mind’s ability to rationalise everything to the detriment of our inner world. We may have seen a symbol many times and thought how bizarre it was, but the idea was rationalised or even dampened down by others as “just a coincidence”. Nothing is “just a coincidence” in this world, everything has meaning, everything is speaking to you. There is a thread, and it is up to us to give it a little pull.
In this digital age, we are bombarded by many people discussing signs and symbols. Some of these can be a great help but what must be remembered in all this noise is we will inevitably attempt to relate it to ourselves, or we may feel we should interpret things in the way a certain writer or scholar does because they say so. For example- if we keep seeing the image of the lion everywhere, we see courage or so people would tell us, but the message could mean something completely different – what resonates with you is the important point here. What is your personal message? There must be a balance between collective and personal symbolism. We can learn what a symbol means to others but what does it mean to us?
To build our own language (or should we say relationship with symbolism) we must firstly note down all the magical signs we encounter, and we must allow our poetic selves to flourish. You must be open to the world around you when you are both awake and asleep. Try recording your dreams and see what really jumps out, did you see the number 7 for fifth time this week? Jot that down. Do you keep finding the same playing cards on the streets? Collect them and write it down. Look at themes, sounds, colours, animals, associations…the list is endless but do not look for it – let it come to you, they must be encounters. Need help on something? Then why not just ask for a sign or a symbol? Just like a tarot reader will consult her cards asking for guidance on a certain situation - looking for signs and symbols in your waking life is just the same.
The Book of Symbols is a wonderful addition to your book collection, it will help you understand the hidden meanings of visual symbols from all over the world. Use this as your primary research and then do your own poetic work – what does that mean to me personally? Make sure you always ask yourself this question as it will help to clarify your vision and not get clouded up by other people’s versions.
Finding your own symbolism is very rewarding. When synchronicity is in play, life becomes more meaningful - paving the way to a more magical life.