Psychiatrist Dr. Carl Jung once worked with a young woman whose therapy had stalled. Whenever a session came close to something emotionally difficult, she met it with flawless reasoning. Jung felt that her logic had become a wall, keeping any unsettling feeling safely outside.
One day, she told him about a dream in which someone gave her a valuable piece of jewellery: a golden scarab. As she spoke, Jung heard a soft tapping at the window. He turned and saw an insect repeatedly striking the glass. He opened the window and caught it in his hand. It was a beetle with green-gold colouring, the closest thing to a golden scarab found in that part of Europe.
Jung placed it in his patient’s hands and said, “Here is your scarab.”
In Jung’s later account of the story, that moment opened a crack in the wall. Faced with something that logic couldn’t explain, her defenses softened and the therapy began to move forward.
A scarab may never have flown through your window, but you’ve probably experienced something similar: a message from someone just as you were thinking of them, or a sentence overheard in passing that answered a question on your mind. After the surprise, a doubt often remains: What do I do with this?
I became interested in how people make sense of such moments. What matters to me is understanding why a particular coincidence reaches us at a particular time, without treating it as a command.
Synchronicity: How it differs from chance
Jung used the word synchronicity for meaningful coincidences: events that have no clear cause-and-effect relationship, yet are connected through the meaning they hold for the person experiencing them. In 1952, he developed the idea more fully in a book published with physicist Wolfgang Pauli, one of the pioneers of quantum physics.
The scarab story contains three elements that appear in any synchronicity.
Something happening inside you
A thought, feeling, dream or question is occupying you. In this case, it was the dream of the golden scarab.
A corresponding external event
Something happens in the world that echoes your inner experience, even though one didn’t cause the other. In Jung’s office, it was the beetle tapping at the window.
The meaning that connects the two
You experience the coincidence as personally significant. For Jung’s patient, it interrupted a way of thinking that had become rigid and closed.
This third element makes the difference. Meeting your neighbour at the supermarket is chance. If you’re struggling with a decision and that neighbour (while knowing nothing about it) says the words you needed to help you make a choice, the encounter may feel synchronistic. A coincidence becomes a synchronicity when it touches something that matters to you. Its meaning is personal, so nobody else can interpret it for you.
Interpreting doesn’t mean predicting
When something feels synchronistic, we may dismiss it as coincidence or turn it into a prophecy: an order from the universe telling us what to do.
Interpretation is different. The scarab didn’t tell Jung’s patient what her future would be or which decision to make. It showed her something about the present when she was ready to see it.
Synchronicities don’t predict what will happen. Instead, they can illuminate something that’s already moving inside us. Interpreting one means asking what it has brought into view and deciding whether to act on that awareness.
5 steps to interpreting synchronicity
There is no exact formula for interpreting a synchronicity, but the following steps can help you explore the experience without forcing a conclusion.
Write down what happened
Record the coincidence on the same day: what happened, where it happened and what was going on at the time.
Memory quietly improves stories. Each retelling can make the timing more perfect and the sign clearer than it was. Writing it down gives you something more honest to return to.
Notice what you felt
The feeling that accompanied the coincidence is a useful clue. A synchronicity that leaves you peaceful is different from one that unsettles you. Feeling calm may accompany a sense of confirmation, while a feeling of unease may point towards something that needs attention. Note the feeling before trying to explain it.
Examine what was happening in your life
A synchronicity never appears in a vacuum. It arrives in the middle of a stage, a doubt, a relationship or a decision. Ask yourself what had been on your mind and what situation you were living through.
The beetle mattered because it appeared during a stalled therapy session, in front of a woman who needed an experience beyond her usual logic. Its meaning emerged from the meeting between the event and her life. The same beetle at another window might have gone unnoticed.
Find the question it may be answering
Once you have the event, the emotion and the context in front of you, ask: If this coincidence were an answer, what question would it be answering?
When people tell me about a synchronicity, they often connect it with the decision that worries them most, although another concern may lie underneath. Imagine that you’re unsure whether to accept a job in another city and its name appears three times in one day. It’s easy to read this as “Take the job.” But if leaving brings relief rather than excitement about the position, the deeper question may be what you want to leave behind.
These three questions can help:
- Does this confirm something I already knew, or show me something I’d been avoiding?
- Which part of my life does it connect with, even if that isn’t the issue I have been thinking about most?
- Which part of me reacted most strongly?
Decide whether it’s requesting action
Not every synchronicity requires action. Some seem to accompany us without asking for anything. For instance, imagine that a person is grieving, and on the hardest day of the week, the radio plays the song their father always sang. There may be nothing to decide. The feeling of companionship may be the whole message.
When a step does feel appropriate, remember that a synchronicity may suggest a direction without deciding its size. If it reminds you how much you once enjoyed writing, you don’t have to leave your job and finish a novel. You might begin with half an hour every Sunday. A small step in an honest direction is still a response.
Where symbols fit in
The internet is full of lists that explain what it means to see a butterfly, find a white feather or notice the same number. They may offer a starting point, but unfortunately, they assume that one symbol carries the same meaning for everyone.
Traditional meanings can be useful. In ancient Egypt, the scarab represented rebirth and the returning sun. It appeared just as Jung’s patient was beginning to change, but it became powerful because it met her dream and her particular moment.
The same is true when it comes to the power of any symbol. A butterfly may suggest transformation to someone who’s ending a chapter of their life, but it may feel like a greeting to someone whose grandmother loved butterflies. Tradition offers a clue, yet the interpretation remains personal.
3 common mistakes people make
The first mistake is to begin seeing messages everywhere. If every green light and every song in a supermarket becomes a sign, synchronicity loses its force. When everything is a message, nothing stands out.
The second is to ask life for a sign so you don’t have to decide something: “If I see a hummingbird tomorrow, I will call.” If it doesn’t appear, another condition replaces it. In these cases, the sign is no longer clarifying the decision—it’s postponing it.
The third is to remember only the coincidences that support what you already want. We often hold onto the signs that confirm us and quickly forget the ones that point elsewhere. Honest interpretation includes asking whether you’re choosing only the evidence that suits you.
When meaning takes time to emerge
Not every synchronicity becomes clear straightaway. Some make sense months later, when another experience gives them context. Others never fully resolve, but that doesn’t make them worthless.
If a coincidence stays with you but you can’t understand it, write it down and return to it later. A forced meaning is more misleading than an open question.
One detail in the scarab story is easy to miss: Jung could have explained the symbol to his patient. He could have spoken about rebirth, Egyptian symbolism or what the moment might mean for her therapy. In his account, he did none of that. He opened the window, caught the beetle and placed it in her hands. What she felt and understood from that point was her own.
Synchronicities work in much the same way. They arrive, disturb our usual view for a moment and remain in our hands. Interpreting them isn’t about discovering what the universe demands from us, but instead, it’s about listening to what the experience awakened in us when it occurred.
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