A Preying Mantis Synchro

There is something startling about a preying mantis as part of a synchronicity. This little creature is so strange looking, with an alien-like face, and its behaviors are just as weird. Not surprisingly, we don’t hear too many synchros involving this creature. In fact, the first one I ever read about happened to author and mythologist Joseph Campbell. It bore eerie parallels to the golden scarab synchro that launched Carl Jung’s study of synchronicity.

Campbell was at home on the fourteenth floor of the building where he lived in Manhattan. He’d been reading about Bushman mythology, specifically about the preying mantis, a hero symbol, and felt a sudden urge to open the window, which he rarely did. And there, on the rim of his window, stood a preying mantis. He said it was huge and peered right at him. “Its face looked like the face of a Bushman. It gave me the creeps!” Campbell wrote.

Now, really, what are the odds of a preying mantis on the rim of a window 14 stories up in Manhattan?  And what are the odds that Campbell would be reading about this creature and Bushman mythology moments before he opened the window and saw the mantis?

Recently, we heard another preying mantis story. We were on Daniel Ott’s live podcast, and he mentioned a preying mantis experience he’d had and asked if we thought it was a synchro. We replied it was definitely a synchro, one of those strange synchronicities that seem to reflect our immediate environment. I asked him to give us some details:

“It was the middle of summer and I was mowing through four foot high weeds on my garden tractor. So the weeds were about shoulder height. It was a beautiful clear day in the middle of summer.

“I had a distinct unction to turn off the tractor, stop where I was and pray. I don’t think the prayers were for anything specific, but a strong desire of thankfulness for being alive pulsed through my being. I felt a very close connection at that time to the Great Spirit, as if it was a time and a place where He was actually listening. Some might consider that on the order of a divine appointment.

“As my prayer concluded I opened up my eyes, looked to my right and there on a very tall weed, eye level, was a very large six inch preying (praying) mantis, his head turned, looking right at me.

“He wasn’t there when I began. Its presence there and the way it was looking at me confirmed for me that it was a signature of the presence of the Great Spirit.”

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Pretty cool.The synchro was a play on words and an accurate reflection of what was going on at the time.