Hidden Synchronicities (of the Memetic Kind)

From the sketchbook of Franz Kafka,  Untitled - pen & ink - circa 1901.
(Note: The orientation of this drawing which seems slightly askew is the way it appears on the page of Kafka's sketchpad.) 

"The year 2019 brought a sensational discovery: hundreds of drawings by the writer Franz Kafka (1883–1924) were found in a private collection that for decades had been kept under lock and key. Until now, only a few of Kafka’s drawings were widely known. Although Kafka is renowned for his written work, his drawings are evidence of what his literary executor Max Brod termed his 'double talent'."

- From a page devoted to a recent Yale University publication: Franz Kafka, The Drawings. The precise vision evident in Kafka's drawings gives us a window to his remarkable mind. His shapes are so clean and uncluttered they are almost like graphic symbols snapping to our attention by his keen usage of unique symmetries, perspective, and playful angles. And, noting the humor in his linework may be a key to understanding Kafka's approach to his work overall.*

•

"By way of example, I shall mention an incident from my own observation. A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window pane from outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab that one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose-chafer (Cetonia aurata), which contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt an urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment."

- Carl Jung, from Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, 1960. Possibly one of the most famous synchronicities is Jung's own eureka experience regarding the beetle which tapped on his window just in time to go down in history. Inset right is a photo of the scarabaeid Jung logically saw, the European Rose-Chafer.

But, had he lived in Peru, he might have seen the truly golden scarab in the photo inset left, Chrysina Resplendens.

It is said that the ancient Egyptians from all social classes carried a scarab emblem throughout their lives and then were buried with one after death.

•

"Friday, December 17, 2004

Your soul is bound to the Solitary Rose: The Alone.

'When I wake up alone, the shades are still drawn on the cold window pane so they cast 

their lines on my bed and lines on my face.'

The Solitary Rose is associated with loneliness, melancholy, and patience. It is governed by the goddess Merope and its sign is The Sword, or Unrequited Love.

As a Solitary Rose, you may be summed up as a hopeless romantic. You desire love and have so much love to give, but things just never seem to work out the way you want them to. In life, you can be very optimistic, even when things are gray and nothing works out to your expectations."

(What Rose Is Your Soul Bound To?
brought to you by Quizilla)

___________________

I can't say I didn't see this one coming. On the subject of doomed romance, I finally got around to starting Kathi Diamant's Kafka's Last Love."

- From Posthuman Blues, Mac Tonnies reporting his most recent encounter with romantic irony via a weird little personality "oracle" he fell for at the end of 2004. I must confess that (for all reasons) I found this post a little strange when it mysteriously popped up on the screen.

But, considering that Quizilla specialized in quizzes of a similar nature, and, keeping in mind that Quizilla thrived for 12 years (2002-2014), Mac was not the only one attracted to psycho-magical babble when searching for insight into the mystery of his own nature. Today there are many (allegedly) mystical cyber-oracles out there offering similar insights into our mysterious realms. For more regarding the psychology of quizzes, try this article.

•

”Gregor's eyes turned next to the window, and the overcast sky—one could hear raindrops beating on the window gutter—made him quite melancholy. What about sleeping a little longer and forgetting all this nonsense, he thought, but it could not be done, for he was accustomed to sleep on his right side and in his present condition he could not turn himself over. However violently he forced himself toward his right side he always rolled onto his back again. He tried it at least a hundred times, shutting his eyes to keep from seeing his struggling legs, and only desisted when he began to feel in his side a faint dull ache he had never felt before.

Oh God, he thought, what an exhausting job I've picked out for myself!"

- Excerpt from Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka's darkly absurdist tale of a metamorphosis gone terribly wrong. Gregor, formerly a travelling salesman, wakes up one morning in the form of a large beetle at the home of his immediate family. From anonymous breadwinner, he has transformed overnight into a grotesque burden, who eventually expires from his family's hostility and neglect. Inset left, above: an atmospheric illustration found here. Inset right: a cover from one of numerous editions of Kafka's novella found here.

But, then again, Kafka entitled his story Metamorphosis as opposed to Transformation, and, as it happens, beetles do have a larval stage: the grub. Perhaps, Gregor was a grub as a working salesman, but has "elevated" himself into his adult beetle form. ;-)

***

Spring arrived on February 1st this year in New Mexico, and although we generally do enjoy a short false spring (which disappears after Valentine's Day), this year, the spring-like weather remained. Today feels like a muggy day in August. It's disorientating. Oddly enough, the unseasonable weather seems to have set the stage set for a number of enigmatic synchronicities.

That this post exists at all is due to my stumbling across an old post of Mac's I had not seen before: the Solitary Rose. I found it around Valentine's Day... or, more to the point, around the time of 2026's Valentine's Day of the Dead, when Friday the 13th became Valentine's Eve... and a "white rose ghosted over a darkened plane." Inevitably, in light of this recent wave of synchronicities I'm cross-posting with my other blog where the third and final post of this series will be found.

(Continued below the jump.)

Also around this time I felt motivated to dig up an old rose ring I had buried in my traveling bag (above). I saw it as talisman used to penetrate a darkness represented by the Ace of Spades, a symbol I had only recently been reminded of by a news article; a card tied with death and war, very often symbolically equated with the Tarot suit of Swords.

That being said, there is a very strange synchronicity hidden in Mac Tonnies' brief post. It lies in his last line, when he specifically references Kathi Diamant's Kafka's Last Love.

Franz Kafka, of course, was one of the writers Mac most strongly identified with. At the same time, the "oracle" makes a weird reference to the Greek "goddess" Merope,  who apart from not officially being a goddess in reality also, traditionally, has nothing symbolically to do with "The Sword" or an "Unrequited Lover."

In Greek mythology, Merope was  an immortal, astral nymph and one of the seven sisters who were eventually transformed  into the Pleiades star cluster. Merope is the variable star in that system which sometimes appears diminished. In the myth, Merope became an outcast because she married a mortal man... and that mortal man was a clever, deceitful king named Sisyphus. Yes, the very same Sisyphus whose punishment by Zeus was to (futilely) push a boulder up a hill continuously for an eternity.

However, as it happens, Sisyphus was a character with whom Franz Kafka identified with strongly throughout his life. From Wiki's entry for Sisyphus:

"Franz Kafka repeatedly referred to Sisyphus as a bachelor; Kafkaesque for him were those qualities that brought out the Sisyphus-like qualities in himself. According to Frederick Karl: 'The man who struggled to reach the heights only to be thrown down to the depths embodied all of Kafka's aspirations; and he remained himself, alone, solitary.'"

So, how weird is that? Perhaps Mac's "reading" was Kafkaesque** - more relevant to the solitary man he was reading and thinking about - than Mac himself. 

But this memetic synchronicity doesn't end there. Years after Kafka's death, the great absurdist himself, Albert Camus - the "French Kafka" wrote The Myth of Sisyphus about which we learn (here):

"Attached to the end of The Myth of Sisyphus is an appendix titled Hope and the Absurd in the works of Franz Kafka. In it, Camus details all the ways that Kafka is able to express the exquisite reality of the absurdist condition. However, he ends by arguing that Kafka's writings are not entirely Absurd because they still contain a glimmer of hope."

So, "hopelessly romantic" is an erroneous presumption on the part of the oracle and "Alone" does not immediately infer a loss of hope. Because if Kafka remained hopeful, then, at the very end, it payed off. Although he died young (at age 40) from a deadly disease, he died in the arms of his lover, Dora Diamant. There are worse ways to go.

Camus, on the other hand, was only 46 when he perished in a car accident - which he once regarded as the most absurd death of all. With him was his latest manuscript.

Mac was 34 when he died in his sleep... transitioning from one dream to another; his last finished manuscript lying not far away... The Cryptoterrestrials.

But, then, the book itself, Kafka's Last Love: The Mystery Of Dora Diamant (full title) was another unusual tale, and, for its author, Kathi Diamant - the current director of the Kafka Project - the result of a number of "coincidences." For instance, Kathi Diamant the author, and Dora Diamant, the deceased lover of Kafka, were not related. From this article - an interview with Kathi - we learn:

"The 19-year-old had a crush on her German teacher who had chosen a passage from Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis for the lesson.

In the middle of this class, the teacher asked Kathi if she was related to Dora Diamant, Kafka's last love in whose arms he had died in 1924. Kathi recalled: 'The teacher wrote her name on the blackboard. It was my surname...

What happened along the way about me knowing about Dora was that it ceased to matter whether or not we were related. We were clearly connected. In writing her biography it was better not to be related.

Through my three-decade journey, inexplicable coincidences made me believe that I was doing what I needed to do and that I was being given lovely gifts of coincidences along the way to keep me engaged on her trail.'"

So, the author of the book Mac had been reading admitted to having had a few synchronistic episodes herself. We don't know what sort of "coincidences" she was experiencing, but, I (for one), have no problem believing her.  During my own quests, the more I am "tuned in" to my subject, the greater are my chances of experiencing synchronicities. They seem to lead me on my way like breadcrumbs to my next unexpected discovery. These, generally, are what I refer to as informational or memetic synchronicities... and I'm assuming they are more prevalent now, in our Information Age, than at any other time in history.

The hidden synchronistic connection present present in Mac's post is a kind of Easter Egg which, sans access to pertinent information, would remain dormant. Meaningfully, time takes on a different nature in this variety of synchronicity especially when it's "carved in stone," that is, it appears in print. The "embedded" information can be fully scrutinized, while the time element comes into play relative to the dates or periods involved.

However, while Mac may not have found the memetic Easter Egg in his "Alone" post, he reported experiencing numerous synchronicities the following year, in 2005.***

Unfortunately, there is an even more insidious, hidden informational thread woven through many of the elements in this document you are presently reading. I didn't plan for this; it just worked out that way. Because, behind the scenes, another meme has been has been heavily influencing each and every person mentioned here: the theme of warfare, the meme of War. Has there been any time in human history when War has not been present somewhere in the world?

On the same day Mac was foreseeing his solitary future, war was, yet, raging in the Middle East. The US war with Iraq - an unpopular war - began in 2003 and would last until 2011.

Franz Kafka both wrote and published Metamorphosis in 1915 during WWI, and despite having died before WWII, all three of his sisters died in Nazi concentration camps, while letters and remnants of his work - some burnt at his request, others secreted away by Dora Diamant - were confiscated by the Gestapo in 1933 and have never been found.

Camus, on the other hand, wrote Hope and the Absurd in the works of Franz Kafka during the Fall of France in 1940 which possibly may have prompted his ideas of the absurd.

And as it happened, several days after I discovered Mac's 2004 post, and the day following the afternoon I published Valentine's Day of the Dead online, acting President DJ Trump (single handedly and with no warning) involved the USA in a war with Iran (February 28, 2026).

"Synchronistic thinking, the classic way of thinking in China, is thinking in fields, so to speak. In Chinese philosophy such thinking has been developed and differentiated much more than in any other civilization; there the question is not why has this come about, or what factor caused this effect, but what likes to happen together in a meaningful way in the same moment? The Chinese always ask: 'What tends to happen together in time?'

The Chinese simply assumed that this rhythm of all reality existed, that it was a number pattern, and that all relationships of things with each other in all areas of outer and inner life therefore mirror this same basic number pattern in a form conceived as a rhythm."

- An excerpt from a transcript of a series of amazing lectures given by a student of Jung and Jungian psychologist, Marie Louise Von Franz, in 1929. The lectures became the basis of what could be considered the pre-eminent study of its subject: On Divination and Synchronicity: The Psychology of Meaningful Chance, a book which strongly influenced me in the past and resurfaced during recent research.

Von Franz, a Capricorn who lived through both world wars, experienced a number of synchronicities throughout her life as well.

Note: I recently learned that physicist, Wolfgang Pauli, was not merely involved with Jung, but had corresponded with Marie Louise Von Franz as well. Sadly, her letters to Pauli no longer exist. ****

 Lastly, during the process of writing this post, I hoped to include a portion of an essay written by Mac about Franz Kafka which appeared on Mac Tonnies.com. In a prelude to the article he refers to Kafka as a novelist who "tapped into the 20th century’s psychological mainline perhaps more effectively than any other writer."

To my dismay, the Kafka article could no longer be accessed. The link had been corrupted! It presently and mysteriously leads to a site named the Kafka Project, but not the project related to Kathi Diamant.

Until further notice Mac's website is a dead link on the sidebar of this blog .

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* "Kafka had become a caricature of his fictional, unhappy protagonists. Although there were autobiographical elements, his stories were not who he was.

"Dora described Kafka as usually cheerful, always ready for a joke. That was who Kafka really was."

- Another quote from Kathi Diamant (from the interview previously cited). 

** "The term "Kafkaesque" is used to describe concepts and situations reminiscent of Kafka's work, particularly Der Prozess (The Trial) and Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis). Examples include instances in which bureaucracies overpower people, often in a surreal, nightmarish milieu that evokes feelings of senselessness, disorientation, and helplessness."

- Via Wiki's entry for Franz Kafka. The reality is that we are living in "Kafkaesque" times and, perhaps, we always have been. This is possibly why the meme of Kafka will have relevance forevermore. Regardless of how humankind might evolve, there will always be the reality of alienation and the "Alone." And that's the good news. (Introverts unite!)  ;-)

*** Below are three excerpts Mac posted on his blog in 2005 (from oldest to newest). I especially enjoy his last two thought-experiments!

"Tuesday, January 25, 2005l

Meaningful coincidences" seem to have played an increasing role in my life -- so much so that I spent some of my Arizona trip discussing the possible meaning of Jungian synchronicity, particularly the near-incessant recurrence of the number 23. So it wasn't exactly a surprise, when I got out of my ride's car at Phoenix's Sky Harbor airport for my flight back to Kansas City (on the 23rd), to find myself entering the terminal through Door 23."

"Wednesday, March 02, 2005

I experience synchronicity on a near-daily basis. I've come to view it as a sort of intelligence; I don't know if this is intrinsic to the phenomenon itself or an unrecognized aspect of myself. At the same time, it can seem quite mechanistic, like gravity or thermodynamics."

"Sunday, November 13, 2005

I think synchronicity might be a crack in our universe's computational substrate. Which begs the question: Are we meant to be aware of the crack, or have we discovered a flaw?"

I think the "flaw" Mac mentions here might be in relationship to the Matrix or universe-as-computer-simulation hypothesis which he previously mentioned in relation to synchronicity. But, the "flaw" might also be seen as point of inquiry into a general understanding of synchronicity.

BTW, I didn't consciously intend this, but note the day this article was posted.

**** "In Pauli’s letters to von Franz, he admits that they had a “crush” on one another, although von Franz denies this. Unfortunately his wife, who considered Pauli’s intense interest in dreams a frivolity, was so distressed over the possibility that his reputation as a physicist might be damaged by his interest in Jungian psychology, that she burned a box of letters from Marie-Louise von Franz after Pauli died."

- Found on Quozio. For an interview with Franz and her relationship with Pauli, see this article: Récréation – The wonderful story of Wolfgang Pauli, C.G. Jung and “the” woman.