In magic and spirituality, there’s a lot of talk about synchronicity, but what’s the big deal? First off, what is synchronicity? It’s a term coined by Carl Jung, and to condense a few of his super-smart, verbose definitions into my own, it means a joining of events that are not apparently linked by cause and effect but rather by meaning.
So, you dream about a bluejay and then you see one later that day. Did your dream cause you to see a bluejay? There’s no apparent evidence to suggest that. However, the meaning with which you imbue these two seemingly unrelated events gives the coincidence meaning, thus creating a synchronicity.
Why should you care? Well, synchronicities can hold important insights, and it is my belief (based on repeated personal experience) that experiencing synchronicity on a regular basis is a sign that you are living in the flow, the universal current that keeps you in alignment with your life purpose.
If your life is devoid of synchronicity, either it’s there and you’re not seeing it (and that’s okay! At any point you can choose to open up to this stream) or this is an indication that you’ve wandered away from your soul path (and the universe is always happy to lead you back).
Let me give you an example from my own life so you can see synchronicity in action. Here are a string of seemingly unrelated events that, over time, began to converge, alerting me to shifts that I needed and was ready to make.
Follow the Trail of Breadcrumbs
For roughly the past year, I have heard bluejays consistently throughout the day, both when I’m at home and when I’m out and about. Seriously, it has become more rare for me to not hear bluejays than it is to hear them, and they’re regularly hopping around on our balcony, often as many as four or five of them at a time.
This summer a friend and I discovered a house for sale out in the country. I felt transformed by this house, like I had been there before, like I had been connected to it for a long time. Bluejays were cawing every time I visited this house, and the house and the bluejays began appearing in my meditations.
I was talking to a friend on the phone, describing this house and expressing my desire to hang out there with her. It seemed unlikely, since the house was up for sale, I had no plans to buy it, and she lived halfway across the country in California.
A couple months later, she was in town visiting unexpectedly, and we were heading out for a hike when I had the sudden urge to take a detour. Then, the house appeared in my mind along with the cawing of the bluejays. I had no idea if it was still on the market, but we drove out there and I got my wish. My friend and I hung out on the rooftop deck of this magical house together with the sound of bluejays all around us. It felt like a powerful lesson in not being afraid to ask for what I want, loud and clear.
That same day, I did a tarot reading with my friend in the woods and the Star card appeared. It showed a woman sitting against a tree next to the water. And then I looked up and realized, with chills, that I was sitting directly across from a spot where I’d sat over the summer, doing a reading for a client in which the Star card also appeared. I had this image of myself in the past sitting next to the water, and I was only able to sit where I now was, in the creek bed looking at my former self, because it was fall and the water had dried up. It was such a visceral experience of the passage of time and the different perspective I was now being gifted with during this season of dormancy and death.
The next day, on Samhain, I performed this tarot reading and the Star card appeared again, this time from a different deck.
I went down and got the mail, and the latest issue of Missouri Conservationist was waiting for me with this on the cover:
That night, I attended a Samhain ritual, and at one point we were each asked to reach into a bowl and pick out an object. What did I get? A glass star.
My friend sends me a card with three bluejay feathers enclosed:
Fast forward to a couple weeks later. I was in meditation and Bluejay appeared. She gave me three cedar berries and said I would know when to use them. She also gave me the message, “It does not matter whether others judge your voice a screeching racket or a beautiful melody. The song of your soul wants to be sung. Sing it loud, and sing it proud.”
I told my husband about this, and he suddenly remembered reading, years ago, a book about eccentrics, and he told me about Florence Foster Jenkins who was reputed to have a pretty terrible voice, but she loved to sing, so she did. Shortly before her death, she even filled Carnegie Hall. In one of her most famous photos, she is wearing wings, which has deep, personal significance to me. Jenkins said, “People may say I can’t sing, but no one can ever say I didn’t sing.”
A couple bluejay-filled days later, I was in meditation and I traveled to the house again. A woman skeleton dressed in a black cloak was there to meet me and she held out her hand. In it was my glass star. We sat by a fire with a pot of boiling liquid, and she dropped the star into the pot.
Suddenly, I knew what I was supposed to do. The three cedar berries given to me by Bluejay were for this precise moment. I added them to the pot and it immediately released a beam of blue-white light that blasted through the ceiling, through the roof, far into the night sky above. It was incredibly beautiful, appearing as both a beam of light and the ghostly outline of the largest cedar tree I have ever seen.
The woman explained, “We have awakened your star voice, the song of your star, your Star Song.”
The next day, I randomly decided to watch a documentary called Do I Sound Gay? and it was entirely on point to the messages I had been receiving about owning my voice, speaking my truth, and not allowing other’s reactions to dampen my authenticity.
Finding Meaning
Together, these events have woven a thread, a thread that has drawn me into greater purpose and clarity. It would be impossible to list all of the ways in which this string of snychronicity has affected me, but the most prominent is in owning my voice, speaking my truth with love, and trusting that what I have to share is of value, even if others sometimes deem it a “screeching racket.” 😉
