Curious as I am in discovering Brythonic/Brittonic words and/or phrases, this morning I set off looking for something comparable to what Carl Jung considered “synchronicity”.

If you’re unfamiliar… while Jung believed in coincidence, he coined the term synchronicity for what he considered “meaningful coincidences” that cannot be explained by cause and effect. He theorized that these events connect inner psychological states with outer, unrelated events and are not random, but rather a manifestation of a deeper order in the universe. 

I found translations… “Cydamseriad “, meaning “synchronization” or “simultaneity”… and Cyd-ddigwyddiad, which is the Welsh word for “coincidence”. Both are simply translations, but neither embraces the depth of Jung’s idea of synchronicity. Maybe I’ll look more.

Still, the search was not without fruit… it just wasn’t the fruit I was looking for. I came across two words that AI seemed to find worthy in my search for Jungian synchronicity… “hiraeth” and “cynefin”.

“Hiraeth” is Welsh word (equivalents in Cornish and Breton being “hireth” and “hiraezh”) that seems to make its rounds in memes… though, the word is interpreted slightly differently (nuanced?) from its actual meaning…

…a homesickness for a home to which one cannot return, a home which maybe never was…”

…as opposed to…

…homesickness tinged with grief and sadness, a mixture of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness.

While I love even a nuanced consideration of “hiraeth”, I was far more interested in the lesser known/lesser meme’d “cynefin”.

“Cynefin” is a Welsh word (in Middle Welsh, it was “kynevinaw” and in Old Welsh, “cenedi”), though given the Cornish word is “cynevin”, Brythonic origins appear clear. I just can’t find the Breton equivalent… yet. There is no equivalent word in English, or in any Germanic tongue. Indeed, I couldn’t even find a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) equivalent. So, I’m rather pleased that it seems rather exclusive among the tongues of Europe.

The meaning?

Historically… supposedly… it was used by farmers to describe habitual tracks left by animals on hillsides. If that is truly the case, the meaning seems to have gained deeper meaning over time. Consider this…

A place of existential belonging*; a synchronicity between people and their relationship to their habitat and cultural history.

I also found…

Beyond a physical or geographical place, historic, cultural & social dimensions.

Though there is no English equivalent (nor one rooted in Germanic or PIE), the Māori have something similar… “tūrangawaewae”… meaning, “place to stand, or ground and place which is your heritage and that you come from”.

Now, I think the concept of “cynefin” has flexibility. It can wrap itself around us, individually, to what we feel we fit within. Perhaps it’s a matter of where one grew up, along with the heritage of place and people. Perhaps it’s something more complex… that “existential belonging*”. Perhaps it can be both… and even more.

For me, personally, I see “cynefin” as a personal connector in two ways, and the profoundly deep one is having realized a sort of vibrating tribal energy that exists in a unique Brittonic word that taps into my genetics.

Maybe, in a way, I did find what I was looking for, after all.

*existential belonging – deep, innate sense of connection to the world and the fundamental nature of existence itself, beyond just social connections.

Image: the summit of Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales. Source: Wikipedia