Abstract
Discussions of synchronicity tend to focus either on the meaningful content of the experience, or on speculation about possible mechanisms underlying the phenomena. The present paper suggests that the symbolic or meaningful content of some synchronistic phenomena are themselves governed by identifiable dynamics associated with the emergence of symbol systems generally. Specifically, these dynamics are associated with complex dynamical systems theory and give rise to phenomena governed by power laws such as Zipf’s law. It is suggested that synchronicities, which display distinctly symbolic features, behave in ways that conform to power-law distributions in which highly coupled systems form rare outlier aggregations referred to as "dragon kings". This terminology is explained and related to the experience of synchronistic phenomena.
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