It seems like you keep seeing 11:11 on the clock every day—way more so than any other number.
You’ve just had one of the worst days at work in your life. Your boss yelled at you, you got into an argument with a co-worker, and spilled coffee on your new blouse. When you leave the building at the end of the day, you’re thinking about quitting. As you get into your car and turn it on, you find one of your favourite songs, “Be Still” by the Killers, is playing on the radio, with Brandon Flowers telling you to “Rise up like the sun/Labour until the work is done.” The song fills your heart, and you decide not to quit—you just had a bad day, and already you feel like things are going to be okay.
Your grandfather, who loved foxes, just passed away. Soon after you happen to be looking out your window when you see a red fox streak through the backyard. You’ve never seen any foxes around here before. You take it as a sign that your grandfather is watching out for you.
You have a dream about an old friend you haven’t seen or spoken to in a while. The next day, she messages you to let you know she’s in town, and suggests you go for lunch to catch up.
You’re driving to your lawyer’s office on a blustery February afternoon, thinking about your recent decision to get a divorce from your narcissistic husband. You’re wondering if you’ve made the right choice—for yourself, for your kids. You wonder if maybe you’d be better off staying with him. Suddenly, you feel something heavy slam into the back of your car. You’re jolted forward, your seatbelt catching you hard against the chest. You realize another car has rear-ended you. When you get out, you see that although the car that hit you has a pretty beat-up bumper, there isn’t so much as a scratch on yours. You take the fact that both you and the car are perfectly okay as a sign that you are on the right path, and determine to go forward with the divorce.
If you haven’t already guessed, all of these stories are examples of various types of synchronicity.
The term “synchronicity” was developed by Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung to refer to “meaningful coincidences,” or “acausal parallelisms”—events connected not through causality, but through meaning. Synchronicities happen when two or more events seem to parallel one another, yet lack any plausible causal relationship. Jung writes that synchronicity is “the simultaneous occurrence of a certain psychic state with one or more external events which appear as meaningful parallels to the momentary subjective state,” which is to say that typically synchronicities happen when external phenomena seem to correspond with our inner thoughts.
Sometimes synchronicities, like looking at the clock and seeing 11:11, can be fairly inconsequential. Other times, they come into our lives in powerful ways and can be spiritually or emotionally transformative.
For many people, synchronicities are taken to be “signs” from the universe or from divine beings and spirit guides. As a skeptic, I personally don’t believe in the idea of synchronicities as literal signs. However, this doesn’t mean that synchronicities have to lose all of their significance. Despite the fact that I think meaningful coincidences are just that—coincidences—they nonetheless still contribute to my spiritual development and add meaning to my everyday reality, and as such, I welcome them into my life.
But before I get into why synchronicities are important to me as a skeptic, let’s unpack some of what’s actually behind this fascinating phenomenon.
Apophenia
What’s actually going on when we notice these meaningful coincidences? Part of it has to do with our highly refined ability as human beings to detect patterns in our surroundings. We are naturally pattern-seeking animals, and sometimes this means that we find connections between things when there really are none.
“Apophenia” is a term coined by the German neurologist/psychiatrist Klaus Conrad to mean the “unmotivated seeing of connections,” or finding patterns in randomness. This pattern detection is not an error in cognition per say, but rather an important part of how the brain works. I wrote a little bit in my last post about how humans are quite good at detecting intentional agents in the environment (even when there are none), as evolutionarily speaking, this was quite important for our survival. The occurrence of apophenia is similar—it’s a whole lot better for us to be able to detect potentially threatening phenomena when there is none, rather than not being able to when there actually is. Apophenia can help us detect potential future dangers by making connections to past events.
Not everyone experiences apophenia in the same way—some people are more prone to it than others. Apophenia is highly linked to schizophrenia, but it has also been connected to especially creative people, as an element of the creative process is being able to new patterns, and new ways of doing things.
Additionally, people who believe in the supernatural are generally more prone to apophenia bias, and this pattern-seeking can be found in many witchy and divinatory practices. In this sense, we can also see a strong connection between seeing patterns in randomness and magical thinking.
Like magical thinking, apophenia is more likely to occur in times of anxiety and uncertainty, as in such moments we have a higher tendency to look for meaning beyond our objective reality, and our minds jump to supernatural explanations for natural occurrences.
Also like magical thinking, apophenia is linked to confirmation bias, as we’re more likely to focus on information that conforms to our beliefs or fits into the patterns we’re trying to see, rather than information that contradicts these things.
So, for instance, if you’re someone who tends to see meaningful numbers everywhere, like 11:11, you might think you’re seeing 11:11 more often than any other number when you look at the clock, but this isn’t necessarily the case. It’s more likely that you just think you’re seeing it more because of the meaning that you’ve assigned to it, and therefore you register it more than other numbers that have no such symbolic meaning for you.
Although all species are able to recognize patterns, humans are the only ones that assign symbolic meaning to them. Synchronicities, then, are a form of apophenia, as we find symbolic significance in what would otherwise be random events. Interestingly, whether we think these synchronicities are signs from God, the universe, spirit guides or whatever, studies have shown that it’s around the ages of 7-9 that we start to attribute unexpected/coincidental events to supernatural agents or forces, which goes to show that this is a natural human occurrence. Even complete atheists and total skeptics may have moments every now and then where the mind jumps to conclusions and identifies patterns within randomness that they may attribute to the spiritual or the magical.
The Search for Meaning
The concept of synchronicity has been around for almost 70 years now, and it remains an important idea for many, particularly within the realm of contemporary and alternative spirituality. In his article on the enduring importance of synchronicity, Dan Hocoy notes that the reason it’s stuck around for so long is because it gets at a fundamental aspect of our human nature: basically, our need to attribute meaning to our lives.
Hocoy writes:
This basic need fuels the eternal search for lasting significance to human existence, and the idea of synchronicity provides hope that what is experienced as subjectively meaningful has a corresponding objective reality. For the individual, a belief in synchronicity helps address the emotional need for permeant and absolute meaning in one’s experiences and life in general.”
(p. 469)
Years ago, people would have generally found this fundamental need for meaning satisfied by religious beliefs. But with the steady decline in organized religion within the Western world over the past few decades, many of us have been left with “the disturbing and unavoidable existential issue” that “human meaning and existence may not have any significance beyond their momentary experience” (469). And while this lack of predetermined meaning can certainly be liberating for some, it can be terrifying for others.
Synchronicity, then, may provide evidence that there is some order in the chaos—that we are part of some greater plan. Those synchronistic experiences can help pull us back from the edge of the abyss, as they reveal an objective significance in our lives that goes beyond the meaning that we assign to things on our own.
In other words, “synchronicity fulfills a deep existential void of uncertainty and potential meaninglessness, providing emotional comfort and assurance” (469).
Synchronicities can be consoling. They can help us escape the sense that everything is arbitrary and nothing matters. They can make things matter, and make us feel as though our lives matter.
The Unconscious Mind
But, instead of it being the universe that’s trying to tell you something, synchronicities may sometimes be your subconscious mind trying to get something through to you. In other words, the source of the synchronicity may be internal, rather than external.
Meaningful coincidences may be your subconscious fears and desires manifesting in the physical world, and you may be “seeing” these signs because a part of you is looking for them.
If it seems like every song you hear on the radio is about breaking up, or suddenly everything on TV seems to revolve around divorce, maybe you’re noticing these things because deep down, you know it’s time to cut things off with your partner.
If suddenly everything reminds you of your mother—you smell her perfume in the grocery store, the clasp on a necklace she gave you breaks—this may be because of some unresolved issues between the two of you that are being harboured within your unconsciousness. You may be noticing these things more because there’s something you’re not dealing with. In such cases, synchronicity can provide a great opportunity for inner exploration and self-reflection.
Interpretive Drift
Why is it that when we start getting into things like witchcraft or certain forms of spirituality that we may find synchronicity becoming more prominent in our lives? Why is it that the world starts to become more “magical,” so to speak?
In order to answer this question, anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann developed the term “interpretive drift,” which explains how ways of perceiving and understanding the world change over time.
In her book, Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England, Luhrmann undertakes an ethnographic study of witches and magical practitioners in Britain to understand why it is that intelligent, rational people come to believe in something as seemingly irrational as magic. In so doing, she discovers that in the process of learning about the craft and reading messages or signs from the universe, a form of interpretive drift occurs, where one’s methods for making sense of the world undergo a slow transformation.
Here, experience and interpretation co-evolve. So, as people become more immersed in the language and symbols of witchcraft, they start to interpret phenomena in their lives through this lens of symbolic meaning.
As people learn more about synchronicities (or become immersed in a community where they are a prominent topic), they’ll start to have more synchronistic experiences, and their cognitive means for perceiving and interpreting reality change. So, what may have been brushed off as mere coincidence by someone before they started practicing witchcraft may be seen as a crucial sign once they are immersed in a magical world.
As the newcomer gets more involved, they progressively become more skilled in detected patterns in what may seem completely random to others. Luhrmann writes:
I would argue that the rift between magician and non-practitioner is carved out by the very process of becoming a specialist in a particular kind of activity. Becoming a specialist often makes an activity seem sensible. The specialist learns a new way of paying attention to, making sense of and commenting upon her world.”
(p. 115-116)
For Luhrmann, interpretive drift explains not only synchronicities, but also why people come to believe in magic in the first place, as again, experience and interpretation are inextricably linked. The more you learn about magic the more magical experiences you will have, and the more magical experiences you have the more you come to believe in magic.
Even as someone who has never fully believed in things like magic or spiritual signs, I definitely noticed that as I got deeper into the world of witchcraft, I started having a lot more synchronistic experiences. One in particular that stands out is what happened on the evening that I was preparing to conduct my first ritual. During those beginning days of my craft, I worked a lot with the four elements of earth, fire, water and air, and these things were on my mind as I was getting ready for that evening’s working.
First, I took a ritual shower. When I got out, the shower would not turn off. We had an electric shower at the time that you had to press a button to turn on and off, and for the life of me I could not get it to stop. This was something that had never happened before (and never happened since), so I was frantically trying to figure out what to do as water spilled out everywhere. By the time I finally got it to stop, the bathroom floor was absolutely soaked.
Later, after I’d cleaned up the bathroom, I started setting up my ritual space. The window in the room was open, and a sudden gust of wind blew in, snuffing out the candle I’d just lit and knocking a potted plant off the ledge, spilling dirt everywhere.
On a normal day, before I’d been interested in witchcraft, I would have just taken these things as a mild nuisance. But, because I was becoming more involved with the witchy world, and particularly because I was about to do a ritual largely based around the elements, these random events became highly symbolic for me. It felt to me as though the elements were reaching out to me somehow, making themselves a more prominent feature of my world.
Even though it was mildly annoying to clean up, it seemed as though the elements were speaking to me. In the moment, it felt incredibly significant, and I think the experience helped to make my first ritual all the more powerful.
Synchronicity as Transformative Experience
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that you don’t need to genuinely believe in supernatural signs to benefit from synchronicities. Just because these experiences may be objectively random phenomena doesn’t mean that there isn’t value in attributing meaning to them. Even though I knew on a rational level that the elements weren’t really “speaking” to me, by allowing myself to entertain the possibility, I had a profound experience that affirmed my power as a witch and helped me believe that I was on the right path. Regardless of my rational knowledge, the synchronistic experience was nonetheless meaningful and transformative.
Synchronicities can range from minor occurances to truly life-changing events. They can facilitate encounters with the numinous, with the great mystery, with “God”—whatever that may mean for you.
As Hocoy writes:
These experiences of illumination include such deep, direct knowing that there is no doubt in the person experiencing them that there is an intimate and sacred correspondence between our innermost life and the functioning of the universe. These synchronicities seem to provide an insight into an order of existence that integrates the personal and mundane with the universal and eternal. These revelatory moments are transcendent, transformative, and indelible. In such instances, not only do external circumstances mirror private thoughts, needs, and desires, but they also seem to actually enable significant internal restructurings and facilitate personal growth.”
(p. 471)
Powerful synchronicities can reveal the relationships that exist between us and the rest of the world. And this I think is the fascinating paradox of synchronicity—it is at once a highly ego-centric experience, as we may think things in the universe are aligning specifically for us, yet at the same time it can also be a very holistic experience, as we understand our own lives to be interconnected with everything else. It is about the connections that extend beyond us, out into the material (and spiritual) world.
As a pantheist, this notion of interconnectivity is especially sacred to me, and it is through this that synchronicities, even minor ones, may become deep, spiritually enriching experiences.
Synchronicities and Healing
In addition to being spiritually transformative, synchronistic experiences can also be emotionally and psychologically healing. They can provide comfort and solace for us when we’re in low places, and may act as messages that everything is going to be alright. Even if you don’t believe in literal “signs,” synchronicities can still help you out of dark places and low moods.
In her ethnographic study of spiritual practitioners in Cambridge, Courtney Bender describes the synchronistic experience of one of her interlocutors, Cathy. Cathy was having a terrible day, with one misfortune after another. She was feeling awful, but when she got in her car and turned the radio on, the song playing was her favourite “spiritual” song. Cathy “immediately felt at peace.” When recounting the experience, she asked Bender:
Was it meaningful, or was it random? It was really probably random, but it was also really great. So perhaps it was the universe telling me I was going to be OK. That’s how I took it that day.”
(p. 87)
Even if you know rationally that these things are really just random, you can still choose to accept them as meaningful in the moment. Doing so may just help make you feel a lot better.
I’ve also had a similar moment to Cathy. It was the dead of winter so my SAD was in full swing, and I was feeling the lowest I’d been in a while. I was out on a walk, listening to music (on shuffle), and I randomly thought: I’d like to hear “Give Me Love” by Ed Sheeran right now. I think that would help me feel a bit better. But before I could get out my phone to play the song, it started playing on its own. In that moment, I broke down into tears—joyful tears—because of how incredibly good that coincidence made me feel. It made me feel as though everything was going to be okay, like everything was going to work out.
I know that it was just a coincidence, sure. But that doesn’t take away from how I felt in the moment, and how it genuinely helped ease some of the emotional pain I’d been experiencing.
Synchronicities are often taken as signs that we’re on the right path, that we’re doing good. They can be signs that we’re living in harmony with the rhythms and patterns of the universe. And yeah, sure this is a form of confirmation bias—we’re interpreting random events as telling us what we want to hear.
But sometimes we genuinely need that kind of confirmation in our lives. Sometimes we need a sign that things are going to be okay, or a sign to nudge us in the right direction. Sometimes we need a little help when it comes to taking the plunge and doing the thing we’ve been afraid to do, or something to help calm our anxieties over whether we’re making the right choice or not. In these instances, I don’t think it matters so much that it really is just random coincidence—what matters is how these things make us feel, and what we do in response to them.
In these moments, it doesn’t matter that synchronicities exist “in our minds” rather than as objective truths. As with a lot of things related to witchcraft and spirituality, it’s not really that objective reality that matters—it’s the experiential truth.
Synchronicity as (Re)Enchantment
Finally, one of my main reasons for embracing synchronicities as a skeptic is that they add layers of meaning to life, infusing it with magic and wonder.
For me, witchcraft and spirituality are not always entirely serious matters. Rather, they open up spaces for imagination, creativity and playfulness—and synchronicity can be a part of this.
I welcome serendipitous moments into my life because they open up worlds of magical possibility. They add dimensions of enchantment to the world that are inaccessible from a purely rational position. They allow me to escape the “prison of reason” imposed on us by modern society so I may believe in a world full of magic and creative potential, if only for a moment.
Now, I’m certainly not saying that I interpret every single coincidence or unexpected event as a “sign.” I’m sure most of us have at some point encountered one of those people who are hell-bent on seeing absolutely everything as meaningful… Those people who post things on social media like “a bird shit on my car this morning—WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!?”
Yeah, those people are pretty annoying.
But I don’t necessarily blame them for being overly excited about signs—there is a prominent discourse in many spiritual communities, particularly New Age ones, but some witchcraft groups as well, that there’s simply no such thing as coincidences, and everything happens for a reason. Which is a little silly if you ask me… once you start interpreting everything as meaningful, doesn’t it then follow that nothing is meaningful?
So while I’m not trying to say that everything is meaningful, I do think that anything has the potential to be meaningful. There are likely some things that will really resonate with you—moments of serendipity that have a powerful emotional impact for you. Instead of just deciding that these things are coincidences, and leaving it at that, why not let yourself believe in their magic, if only for a time?
I think with most things in skeptical witchcraft, it’s all about finding balance between the rational and the magical. Leaning too far to either side can be somewhat detrimental. Taking the idea of synchronicity too far as can leave you constantly struggling to decipher the meaning in every little thing, but not paying attention to synchronicity at all can mean missing out on opportunities for transformation, healing or enchantment. Personally, I strive to find a happy medium between the two, as I realize that being a skeptic doesn’t mean that I can’t derive meaningful experiences from random phenomena.
Sources
“Apophenia: Meaning and Examples.” PsycholoGenie.
Bender, Courtney. 2010. The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hocoy, Dan. 2012. “Sixty Years Later: The Enduring Allure of Synchronicity.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 52, no. 4: 467-478.
Hoopes, John. 2011. “11-11-11, Apophenia, and the Meaning of Life.” Psychology Today.
Luhrmann, Tanya. 1989. Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Main, Roderick. 2007. Revelations of Chance: Synchronicity as Spiritual Experience. Albany: State University of New York Press.
I agree with most of what you have said here I have had allot of Synchronicity in my life time which is almost 60 years I use logic but some of those Synchronicities I cannot explain . I do know things like looking at the clock and seeing 11:11 or waking up at 3:33 things like that with clocks are just the brain telling you look at the clock at that time I always see that type of thing 10:10, 11:11 13:13 14:14 and so on its just programing . but there is one things that I cannot explain, I always question things and I have studied allot of different belief systems and take what works and there is allot that doesn’t work. but one night just before I was about to drive my 20+Kms home I said ok if there is something out there give me a sign tonight or tomorrow night. on my drive home an owl flew past my truck.. I thought ok cool coincidence. then half way home ( I get off around 00:00) I spotted possibly another owl fly past in front of my truck but it was a a bit of a distance away but I seen the white under belly but I wasn’t sure . then about 5 minutes further there was an owl sitting on the side of the highway ( no traffic at that hour) I slowed down to look and it just watched me drive past gain I was ok its watching me so that I dont run it over. when I got home I heard what sounded like Coyotes being excited at the side of my building I could hear rustles as well again I thought ok I sometimes hear them when I get home after working the distance but then as I was walking and Owl flew from the same area of the building right past my head landed on a branch jus above my head and watched made a sound exactly like yelping coyotes but then changed its tone to squawking sound it was loud which woke up a few people in my apartment building I stood there trying to rationalize all of this and I cannot explain it . the next night a coyote ( I work security and am parked in my truck at a main gate at work) trotted up just inside the gate and looked right at me for about 30 seconds then wandered off I haven’t seen A Coyote in that area . then about 20 minutes later a skunk walked right past my truck. on the way home another scraggly coyote was walking down the center of the back l street ( my shortcut to the hwy) in a major town I drive through was looking at my truck and kept trotting along right past me there are a few more coincidence or Synchronicity type stuff that happened for the next few months after wards. I cannot logically explain those
A wonderful post! Thank you for this read 🙂
A week ago I was stressing out because I had not bought yet a gift for a friend, who was into makeup (in an amateur way). I went into the drug store looking for lip stain, because I had good experience with those. I couldn’t find any, and switched my decision of a gift to concealer. Problem is, I didn’t even know my friend’s relative (to mine) skin colour, so I decided to wait until we met again to see her skin colour, and in the nick of time buy that concealer to gift. As I was leaving, I walked past a nearby different store and saw two concealer bottles lying on the ground, with noone around. I picked it up, got home super happy, checked about an hour for any signs of tampering or it being counterfeit, found it passed my thorough checks. I ended up gifting the lighter shade, and she adored the present. This is a point in my life where buying something $17 affects me.
I know it was kind of bad to gift something I found laying on the ground, but it’s still the most ridiculous coincidence I remember happening to me in my life. This was also the day after I spent a bit of time researching witchcraft and paganism. To be honest, there’s no way I could have not taken this as a sign somehow.
I admit the sketchy ethicality of this occurence.