The first eruptions of the volcanic cultural "island" of the 1960-70s found me beginning as a folk musician and recording studio designer, but by halfway through I’d already become an astrologer (thanks to the resident starcaster in my recording studio), my chosen bite of the generally ineffable which had become so much the fascination of the times. Everybody was doing psychic readings, past life reviews, and more, all of which seemed pretty suspect and hard to pin down, while astrology looked like it had a real structure and system, easier to figure out. It seemed to work more consistently than other approaches to the paranormal, but even its best practitioners hadn’t a clue of how it really worked, any set of basic physical principles. They just learned it like I learned folk music – memorized what was passed down over generations and then did personal variations. OK for folk music, but not exactly science. With a personal life already marked by repeating, critical "coincidences", I wanted something more tangible.


Then Arthur Koestler’s 1971 Roots of Coincidence revealed that someone, once, had actually tried to organize coincidences, strange connections, elusive patterns into a detailed set of classifications and then had set an overarching theory behind it all. The book was the 1919 Das Gesetz der Serie, and his name was Paul Kammerer. Suddenly, it was clear to me that those of us exploring astrology and other fringe-science efforts were never going to get past first base until having a good look at this.

The trouble was, it was only in German, long out of print, and nowhere to be found, no convenient Internet to reach out and grab a Google Books copy. Fifteen years of sporadic searching later,  friend philosophy and mathematics researcher Ellen Black was able to locate a copy of the book through an interlibrary loan. Eureka! And by fortunate coincidence, her husband Robert Schmidt, then researching the development of early algebra, knew German and after a look found the book fascinating. Together we worked to make sense of Kammerer’s theory of “seriality”, the research that led to it, and his extensive references to other scientists’ work  that support his suppositions. The result was our book Cause and Coincidence, a mix of translation and explanation of the work, including its fit into current science and how it presaged much-later developments such as chaos, fractal, and complexity theories. That effort is now the basis for developing a documentary/series on Kammerer, seriality, and the many mysteries his work may potentially unlock.

So what, exactly, does it say? First, a bit more on the man himself and the dramatic times he literally starred in...


He was not the stereotypical  professor or scholar, tucked away in a technical lab or an ivory tower. Far from it. The “Vivarium” where he worked, officially the Biologische Versuchanstalt, was a former reptile zoo transformed into the first experimental biology lab of its kind, and was colloquially known as "the Sorcerors' Institute" because of the mysterious nature of its goings-on, scientists tinkering with the borders of life itself. And when he wasn’t doing cutting-edge science, he was already a well-known cosmopolitan musician, his songs released by the foremost Vienna publishing house, memorably artful and tuneful pieces that still have appeal today. He moved among the musical and social elite of Vienna, a close friend of leading composer Gustav Mahler and his notorious wife Alma (with whom he became involved after Mahler’s death).

And in modern terms, he was truly a chick magnet -- his own daughter recalling having to repeatedly turn away society women knocking at their door uninvited, just wanting to meet and be noticed by the man. His personal involvements would have filled an entertainment gossip page, featuring affairs with some of the most famous singers, dancers, and artists of the day…if he had a failing in that respect, it was not chasing every easy target that came his way, but repeatedly falling madly in love with the most difficult and hard to engage, the impossible dreams of the most beautiful and charismatic women of the day.

He was no less unique in his scientific efforts, as his early experiences in the wild had given him an unrivaled ability to nurture and maintain species that others simply couldn’t keep alive and well in captivity over the multiple generations needed to experimentally trace their genetics. That talent actually worked against him later, as it made repeating and verifying his experiments difficult if not impossible for others that tried but were unable to complete them.


The sophisticated scientist and musician was also a writer and essayist, with regularly published pieces in major magazines and newspapers about science, history, education, philosophy, social matters, and the arts, making him a high-profile Renaissance man not always well-received by jealous and less-interesting colleagues in the areas he touched. He was just, well, so interesting -- and interested -- concerning practically every subject, and this was what led him to his special 1919 work and the concept of seriality. For years, he made careful notation of all sorts of oddities, coincidences, strange associations, anomalies, from the obvious to the very subtle. Often while sitting on a park bench, he would note who passed by and when, what they were wearing, how they interacted, unusual associations and pairings most might overlook but that a Sherlock Holmes would note.

Over the years, he put them together into classifications, families, and sub-groups, much as Linnaeus had done with biological classification, and then theorized what set of rules might be creating the structure he saw. He noted what seemed like distinct natural laws closely akin to those that were still being researched in physics: variations on shape and structural attraction, imitation of form and movement, persistent periodicities and informational inertia. All these he pulled into a book that he hoped would explain a host of mysteries to the general public at large – and yet, in the book itself, he feared that for another hundred years no one would understand it.


He was right, no one did, although Jung loosely borrowed "synchronicity" from the concept. Even after our translation/explanation of his work  in the early 1990s, still no one did. But it’s been a hunded years now, and almost another magical sixty years past the last cultural volcano, so perhaps its time has come. Never since the 1960s has interest and research into edge science been so active, but still without a central theory to unite it. Seriality remains the logical first step, to be explored, tested, and refined. So next stop, a documentary"Crossroads of Coincidence", because there are still some modern touches to add to fill out the possibilities, especially multidimensional time, one of our own favorites. For Kammerer not only was ahead of his time to the point of chaos, fractal, and complexity theories, he also had a much simpler way of wrapping up the lately-favored cosmological development, the multiverse.


And what’s more, there’s still the riddle of  his death: was it a real suicide, or was he was actually murdered, lured to his death, perhaps with the help of another unattainable lover in the service of growing dark forces. Suspects abound, including multiply-notorious Alma Mahler, whom he had  earlier set to work at the Vivarium on praying mantis experiments (appropriately), a fervent anti-Semite who later confided that she hated him. Strange to say, the conclusive evidence is still very much around, and it’s staring everybody in the face. But for that you’ll have to wait for the film version…

Finally, for a wrap on the secrets of Paul Kammerer’s seriality itself, a distillation of Cause and Coincidence, as published in Fortean Studies click here:


This is an article from the magazine Fortean Studies, Vol 1 (from 1994) encapsulating the concepts of seriality as Kammerer proposed it in his book. For a quick read and overview.