Synchromysticism

Recently I came across a new discipline, calling itself 'synchromysticism'. It's a divinatory method for the 21st century, scrying into the prodigious output of every kind of media and hunting for symbolic clues to the future. Taking its cue from synchronicity, the idea that events may take place in an acausal fashion influenced by other events in the future (or in parallel timelines) as well as in the past, synchromysticism takes the position that if that is the case, we'd expect to find things whose explanation is not mere coincidence. At times resembling a wild magpie hunt for correspondances, the main difficulty would seem to be confirmation bias (though I sometimes wonder if confirmation bias is not simply a flaw within human perception, but an indication of an underlying way of the cosmos, that reality becomes what we believe it to be in a very real, physical sense.) Combing the endless torrent of media and for the clues requires creativity in itself, but also a deep knowledge of symbolism, and the discipline to see not just what one wants to, but what is actually there.

I've linked to some synchromystics in the sidebar, The Cleaver and The Blob: the former merely talks about it, while the latter really does it.

It's still an open question to me whether or not synchromysticism is a useful art or merely a novel form of postmodern masturbation. The latter would be an easy position to take, for as of yet I'm unaware of any useful information to have come out of it. Whether or not such information can be found even assuming it's there is debatable. As a case in point, there are three instances I know of in which 9/11 appears in some way before the fateful day: an episode of the Simpsons, in which the family goes to New York and Bart unaccountably holds up a 9 next to the World Trade Center and laughs; an episode of the short-lived X-Files spinoff Lone Gunman, in which the entire plot more or less resembles what actually happened that day; and The Matrix, in which Neo's passport expires on 09 11 2001. It's hard to credit that the Lone Gunman episode resulted from anything other than a leak from the national security state to the script writers, so close is the correspondance, and the case can certainly be made that the other two instances resulted from similar sources. Whether the origin was transdimensional or merely clandestine, from neither the Simpsons nor the Matrix would it have been possible to forsee the kickoff of the fascism superbowl on that day, at least not without a lot of other data to draw on.

Now, I'm not saying that renders synchromysticism useless, merely very difficult to use accurately. As with any kind of scrying, be it Tarot, crystal balls, the I Ching, or cabala, pulling out straight answers from the source material is difficult at best, and without a pretty sound intuition along with a solid familiarity with the divinatory material, it can be impossible. Learning everything there is to know about the Book of Changes is one thing; studying every movie, TV show, comic book, video game, etc., out there is flat-out impossible. If you watch a lot of trailers you might be able to get a high level symbolic overview of what the TV programs are programming into the mass mind, but if it's clues you're after, you actually have to dive in and watch things. So in addition to the qualities of creativity, knowledge, and discipline already listed, discernment must be added, because if you choose the wrong thing to look at, you may not find what you're looking for.

Or is that the whole point? Not looking for something, but simply looking and trying to really see, without prejudice as to what should be there? Alert for whatever hyperdimensional easter eggs have been hidden inside the media, might you be able to view without being sucked in: remaining detached, conscious and critical even while the flow of flickering imagery attempts to lull you into a suggestible hypnotic state?

Now, strictly speaking, synchromysticism isn't just this discipline I've been outlining. Or if it is, it's a poor name for it, if only because synchronicity would be expected to be pervasive throughout one's life and not simply a feature of the media. Synchronicities are found even in the events of one's day to day life, for instance, as well as throughout all the works of man. One that I just noticed myself, while in conversation, is this: octopus and cactus readily come to mind as two nouns whose plurals, octopi and cacti, end in i. What's another one? Well, I'm sure you all know the plural: illuminati, whose singular is illuminatus. There are other nouns, of course, that have follow this pattern, though precious few of them. And aren't the similarities beyond grammar striking? The illuminati are like an octopus in society, their tentacles stretching everywhere; while at the same time (and I'm using some poetic license here, I admit) they protect their power with their lies just as a cacti protects its water with its thorns. (I also admit to being somewhat flummoxed as to how the platypi fits into this.)

Now, is that a synchronicity? Or merely a coincidence? Certainly no useful information resides in it ... but the mere fact that I noticed it might indicate that a hyperdimensional influence directed the words to form as they did, specifically to plant that correspondance there. Whether they did or not, I don't know.