Tarot, Synchronicity and the University of Western Australia

To Teach or to Study?

This post provides some context for one of the more alarming synchronicities I’ve been involved with.

To listen to part of the synchronicity actually happening during an episode recording, check out Altered Mates Bonus Episode 10 — Tarot & Synchronicity.

This year (2025) I decided to take an undergraduate unit in English and Literary Studies at the University of Western Australia, where I completed my bachelors degree many years ago.

The unit was English 2220: In Other Worlds: Speculative Fiction, Fantasy, and Sci Fi.

I wrote my first essay for the unit on a key scene from Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and my second essay on Ursula Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest. If you read that second essay you can see how my readings for uni had begun to bleed into Altered Mates territory around the time that Tobias and I were preparing to record on hemispheric lateralisation (Episode 30 — Where are my minds? On the Left Brain / Right Brain Divide).

Towards the end of the unit my lecturer asked if I was considering an honours project. I told him I hadn’t considered it because I hadn’t completed the required units. He advised that I put in an application anyway.

Honours might lead to a PhD which in turn might lead to a career in higher education—here was my exit strategy from high school teaching. A potential pathway was opening up.

A significant hurdle, though, was how to marry up the timetables of School and University. With the honours coursework units being face-to-face, this would pose significant difficulty trying to fit a high-school teaching load into the week along side a university timetable.

I applied for honours and figured I’d work out the timetable issue when I came to it, besides, I didn’t have a contract to work at my school the next year anyway.

In order to create time to write and to work on the Altered Mates podcast I have, for the past five or so years, requested part-time contracts with the schools I have worked at. I found in the past that with a full teaching load of English classes I’ve been unable to achieve a balance between teaching work and creative work—with too much of my time and energy taken up by developing resources and marking essays and such. I’m also weary of the emotional toll that a full-time teaching load has on me, having burnt out early in my career, which lead to three years away from the profession. Anyway, these days I’ve set my boundaries at a part-time teaching load and have adopted the attitude that if I can’t get a part-time load then so be it.

And it’s worked.

Until now.

On Friday 24th November this year, the deputy at my current school informed me that there wasn’t a part-time load going for the following year.

Essentially, I was out of a job for 2026.

Well, this seemed to clear up my dilemma.

Instead of trying to balance working at high school and studying at uni I would double down on uni.

A Tarot reading

The following day, Saturday 25th November, Tobias and I sat down to record our next flagship episode (Episode 31—on Robert Anton Wilson, Consciousness Change and the Eight Circuit Model of Consciousness)

Before we started recording, I suggested that we draw a Tarot card to warm up.

I drew the Ten of Pentacles.

On the card is depicted a number of figures conversing under an archway.

Considering the relevance of university in my life, I interpreted the figures as students at a university, the old man as a wise old lecturer.

Tobias drew a card as well and we recorded the process of analyzing our cards and have released it as a bonus episode (Altered Mates Bonus Episode 10 — Tarot & Synchronicity).

Almost in passing, just as we were wrapping up our Tarot reading and about to start recording our episode on Robert Anton Wilson, I said to Tobias that the image on the card kind of reminded me of Winthrop Hall at UWA (it was of-course, unsurprising that UWA would be front of mind for me).

Here is an image of Winthrop Hall: you can see the similarities but really, it’s just a tower right?

It wasn’t until after we had recorded the episode on Robert Anton Wilson, that I searched online for images of Winthrop Hall to confirm my hunch. Does the tower really look like Winthrop Hall? I thought, or was I just imagining it or recalling a memory generously?

On the first page of Google images was the following photo of Winthrop Hall:

I called Tobias back into our podcast lab to show him the likeness between the two images. It was uncanny.

A synchronicity almost too startling to behold.

Another twist in the tale…

The Tarot reading was on Saturday.

The following Friday, 31st October, (a rather auspicious date…) I received an email from the admissions team at the University of Western Australia stating that I did not meet the requirements for the honours course. My application had been rejected. After such a strong signal! What was going on? Was I being taken for a ride? It was a jarring experience—to have such a clear resonance between my inner experience (desire to study), the outer world (Winthrop Hall) and the Tarot card (10 of Pentacles) and then for this resonance to be immediately thwarted. But I guess this is the risk with synchronicity—sometimes they guide the way; and sometimes they fuck with you. I sent in an appeal, backed by my lecturer, to the admissions team and contemplated my situation, having—in a matter of days—fallen from the dilemma of too much work and too much study, to having absolutely nothing to hold on to for the following year.

Happy ending!

But, on the 18th of November I received an email from University admissions confirming that my appeal had been approved. I was offered a place on the honours course.

Alls well that ends well, I guess. So just what was all that funny business about?