The 23 Enigma, Carl Jung, Aldous Huxley, Synchronicity & Me

Over the years I have experienced a series of incredible coincidences involving the number 23, Carl Jung and Aldous Huxley. Jung was the first to coin the word "synchronicity" and Huxley, the author of Brave New World , was known to have believed in life-after-death.

It began one morning...I received a phone call from a friend who shared my interest in astrology. Nearby, on the kitchen table, was Sidney Omarr's book, My World of Astrology. In the den was another book I had just started reading that morning, Incredible Coincidence , by Alan Vaughan. We discussed astrology, as I had been reading her chart, and during the conversation I told her about Vaughan's book. I picked up Omarr's book to check a chart in the back. The book slipped from my fingers and I caught it in midair and it opened where a letter from Carl Jung to Sidney Omarr appeared, telling Omarr how astrology and synchronicity were connected. Laughing at the timely meaningful coincidence, I told my friend that was a confirmation from someone!

Our conversation, as usual, took many twists and turns that morning, and when it came around to life-after-death, I told her a story about "a man, I can't remember his name" who told his daughter he would leave her proof of his existence after his death. I just could not remember the man's name. We hung up, and I went into the den and picked up a People magazine. I opened it to an article about Marilyn Monroe, and in the first paragraph was the name of the man whose name I couldn't remember: Aldous Huxley.

Decades later I come across my notebook where I had written down this coincidence. Later that day I discovered it was Aldous Huxley's daughter's birthday.

As it turned out, my day of incredible coincidences had just begun. My friend called me back. "Guess what?" she said, "I was thinking about a friend and she called me!". "You're kidding!" I exclaimed. "I'm reading the chapter in Vaughan's book about when you think about someone and they call you..."

My journey into the realm of coincidence took a bizarre turn when, that evening, seated in front of the television, browsing a copy of the National Inquirer in which a photograph of a plane flying through a wall of fire appeared in the centerfold, I looked up from the photograph, and there on the screen was the video of the plane flying through the wall of fire!

Over the years the coincidences surrounding Jung and Huxley continued. The 60th Anniversary Issue of a magazine, I believe it was Time, had letters to the editor from famous people every year for the past 60 years. In 1950 was a letter from Carl Jung, and under that, in 1951, a letter from Aldus Huxley. Then there was the evening I told my coincidences to my brother and sister-in-law and just after I said "Carl Jung", the television show we were watching showed the credits and the name "Jung" was among the last names.

One of the most extraordinary coincidences occurred while browsing the astrology books in a bookstore. I had struck up a conversation with the woman beside me, who turned out to be a writer for Dell Horoscope magazine. We got to chatting about astrology, and then I told her about my coincidences surrounding Jung and Huxley. I randomly picked up a book and opened it to the index where the dates of Jung and Huxley's birth was listed. They were born on the same date July 26. During the Dog Days of summer, when Sirius rises.

The novel Illuminatus! The Trilogy, by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, triggered (pun intended) my coincidences involving the number 23. Just like Wilson, who tries to rationalize it in his book, Cosmic Trigger, I began to see 23's everywhere.

On page 43 of Cosmic Trigger, Wilson explains he was introduced to The 23 Enigma by William S. Burroughs while he was an Associate Editor at Playboy. Burroughs' own introduction to The 23 Enigma began after a Captain Clark, on whose ferry he was travelling to Tangiers, boasted he had been running the ferry 23 years without an accident. That day, the ferry sank, killing Clark and all aboard. That evening, Burroughs heard a news broadcast of an Eastern Airlines New York-Miami Flight 23 plane crash, piloted by a Captain Clark. Burroughs wrote a short story in 1967 called "23 Skidoo." The term "23 Skiddo", popularized in 20's, means "it's time to leave while the getting is good."

The Principia Discordia, states that "All things happen in fives, or are divisible by or are multiples of five, or are somehow directly or indirectly appropriate to 5"

During this examination of coincidences, my father boasted he had been driving for 30 years without an accident. That evening he hit a telephone pole.

Invariably, during a conversation surrounding the number 23, it would appear on the license plate on the car in front of us, on a clock, a sign, etc.

During my intense observation of The 23 Enigma, my twins were born on July 23rd. July 23 is the date the Dog Star, Sirius, rises and is the subject of a bizarre series of coincidences experienced by Robert Anton Wilson and about which he writes in Cosmic Trigger, Volume I.

I just happened to glance at the clock as I was finishing this and the time is 9:23 a.m.