I’ve always loved this particular synchronicity.
Synchronicities often involve archetypes or archetypal situations that we all share – being picked on by the schoolyard bully in elementary school, loss of childhood innocence, the birth of a child, a wedding or divorce, the death of a parent. These types of synchronicities can startle us so deeply that we are forced to recognize them as something more than random coincidences.
Mythologist Joseph Campbell experienced a startling synchronicity that was reminiscent of Jung’s scarab while he was reading about the praying mantis, a hero symbol in the Bushman mythology. He was at home on the fourteenth floor of a building in New York City, and had an urge to open a window, which he rarely did.
Off to the right, a praying mantis stood on the rim of his window. Campbell, whose career focused on Jung’s collective unconscious and mythology, said the mantis was huge and looked right at him. “… its face looked like the face of a Bushman’s face. It gave me the creeps!”
