“And where were you last night young lady?” Enquired my owlish father, peering over his poached eggs. I was not fooled by the calmness of the question, his eyes betrayed a simmering anger. “Last night?” I feigned surprise. “Yes Sophie, last night. The one in which you did not come home at all!” Outburst. “Well?” the calmness returned “I, I met someone” Apoplexy threatened “You did what? A man?!” “Yes, no, sort of, I didn’t mean to.” The awful implications of my disappearance only now seemed to dawn upon me. “What man? Where is he? Did he touch you?” “No no, not at all, at least I don’t think so…” as these words came out I could see I had to be less vague “You don’t think so?!” “No, no father he didn’t!” “Then what were you, a 14 year old girl, doing with this man all night?” The horror of accounting for this dawned on me deeper and deeper, I began to tremble. “Nothing, he, said he knew a short cut home, across the downs back to here.” “Oh he did did he, and I suppose you stopped to pick flowers off the path too!” I looked at the breakfast table. “Sophie, have you any idea how dangerous that could have been?” I started to cry “Did he hurt you?” I sobbed onto the table cloth, “Did that bastard hurt you? Because if he did…” “He, he did’t h hurt me.” “Then what, you stopped to play tiddly winks? Sophie you were gone all night!” “No, we w walked ac cross the d downs, I didn’t know where we were.” “Then why did you go? What were you thinking?” “I d don’t know, I wasn’t scared, father it was… strange.” My father paused, something arrested the anger in him, some interest was piqued. I looked up from the table cloth. “I don’t know where I was.” I said through tears “And I don’t know how I appeared in bed this morning. He looked shocked. “Sophie, you haven’t been to bed! Between your mother and nanny and I someone has been waiting up for you all night!” “Father I don’t understand” Waves of distress overcame me, accounting for my actions had seemed like a problem, but now realising that I couldn’t account for them. This was an anguish my mind could take. “Sophie…” calm but firm “Sophie, who was he?” “He, he said he was my uncle. He was like a frog.” the absurdity just came out “Your Uncle? But you know both your uncles. One lives in Newport and the other in London.” “He wasn’t either of those uncles father, he was a different uncle.” “What do you mean? What was his name?” “He said his name was Ambrose.” The word dropped like a stone into the room as if it were a pool. The ripples were visible. My father’s whole expression wavered, and trembled the recomposed slightly “Ambrose, you say?” “Yes…” I mirrored his waver “uncle Ambrose.” “Uncle Ambrose?” “Yes.” My father lost his composure and the colour drained out of him. Silence filled the room. “Father?” “Mm?” The replay came as if he returned from somewhere distant. “Do, do you know him?” “Who?” “Uncle Ambrose?” “Him, oh, yes, maybe. Sophie…” “Yes father.” “Sophie, maybe since you just came down from upstairs, maybe you you weren’t out all night, maybe you were there all along and we didn’t see you.” “But I remember him father, I remember being out in the hills in the dark, I remember the glowing stones in the twilight.” The fake composure tried to reassert itself “Sophie, Sophie, listen to yourself, glowing stones, dark hills, these are dreams not reality. No, you must have come back when we didn’t notice and you must have slept in a flat and inconspicuous way and we, we your worried guardians have been fools.” I was almost carried along with this narrative, if only because the ill formed images of the twilit path seemed more disturbing than this notion that I had been at home and dreamt it. The concealment however was too great for the vivid feeling that I had not dreamt it. “Who is uncle Ambrose?” He twitched slightly “I, I’m sure I should ask you the same, since it was your dream and not mine.” He tried to make this sound jovial, but his anxiety showed through “You said you something like you might know him father, what did you mean?” “That oh, I don’t know, I must have been thinking of someone else.” “Who?” “No one, nothing, nothing to do with this.” “Father your lying!” “Don’t! Don’t say that! Ambrose is a phantom, a fiend, a nothing!” The words erupted suddenly, his anxiety dissipated a fearful intensity gripped him and he stared at me with pointed eyes “A devil!” “But where do you…” “Sophie, I do not know if you dreamed him or saw him, it matters not a jot of difference. If you see him Sophie you must hide and run or both.” “But why? What do you mean? I am quite unharmed.” He calmed again as if accessed a place in which to talk of this was allowed “Things like Ambrose give clues, Sophie, the clue here is the name.” “I looked quizzically on.” “Think Sophie, think, his name is ‘uncle Ambrose’. U A are the initials. These stand for no less than ‘Utter’ ‘Abomination’. Do you see? This is what he is!” There was something persuasive in my fathers tone that rendered his decoding as quite sensible, even powerful. I began to feel frightened at this unmasking of his nature.
I didn’t say the year did I? Do you think it matters? I told you the year in which I was born and left the detail of the moment hanging, like the drooping willow branches in that lake. Truthfully I don’t know. If I was born in 1892, then that day, the day I’m trying to tell you about must have been in the next century. You see I’m getting ahead of myself. I did know about the causeway to the rear of the guesthouse, but I didn’t know yet. Not whilst I tossed the flowers and waited for fish -it sounds much less poetic when phrased that way. I was sat on a stony outcrop staring emptily into the lake surface and its flotilla of inflorescences when a voice pipes up out of nowhere. “Young lady! Young lady! What do think you are doing?” I was startled out of my state and looked about. Coming towards me, up along the path by which I had come, was a man. He had what you might call a foppish attire, or would you call him a dandy? He looked smart anyway, slightly too smart, as if the smartness were an affectation. His jacket was scarlet and his breeches black, he wore a patterned shirt and a blue cravat at an unusual angle. His hair bounced slightly over his face and he waved his stick towards me. “Young lady, young lady.” he lost his urgency as he drew nearer, he was youngish, in his twenties and not unattractive. My quizzical expression yielded no words for him. “Young lady, you are doing it all wrong!” He finally managed when he reached me. I looked confused, “What am I doing wrong?” so taken aback I did not even think to enquire who he was. “You seek to charm the fish do you not? You beseech them with a gift of flowers.” I looked on dumbfounded. “You are doing it incorrectly on two accounts. One, the flowers you chose are not suitable, and two you are not addressing them correctly.” I still did not know what to say, so unusual was the encounter. In honesty the gentleman gave a me something of a sense of dread, yet my silence beckoned him to fill it. “If one would charm the fish one must not use such herbs.” he pointed with disdain at the still bobbing plant heads “Yet fear not, for nearby is in fact a much more appropriate plant, and no, one will not need to get wet to retrieve it.” He glanced around near the vegetation of the bank before the outcrop “Aha, here we are.” he reached down and picked some small blue white flowers. “These will suffice for now” and with an extraordinary bound he suddenly made appeared on the outcrop next to me. “Stand girl! Stand!” he ordered and with an arm he practically lifted me upright. The arm did not let go and I began to become frightened. He was right behind gripping the upper arm that he had lifted me with, now his other arm circled me with the blooms and forced them into my grip. Calmly but forcefully he said “Now repeat after me ‘piscus piscus liw xole, if you please’ then scatter the speedwells below. I wanted to scream, but the strange ambiguity of threat and calm instruction settled on the latter side and I found myself looking out to the water, his grip fading away and the words drifting from my mouth “Piscus piscus liw, xole”.
The small blue flowers fell from the rocky edge into the shaded water below. They were lighter than the heavy heads that I had clumsily thrown in before and would not travel far from the edge. The lake water lapped at the stone and quickly pushed some of them under. I continued to stare, quite bewitched, at the water below.
Just short moments passed before they came. At first just a barely perceivable glass eyed face, then more. I did not know what kinds they were but clearly they were many. They emerged around the rock edge in a flurry, or a shoal rather, if one may use that term for many different fish together. Some pointy faced and swift, some dark in colour with wide heads, some tiny and some long. Close to the edge was just a mass of shaded silver and dead eye whereas where the shadow’s power faded, the water was a coruscating vision of piscine undulation from which I could not unfix. “You see!” he said suddenly with a tone of genuine joy “It is all a matter of know how!” Returning slightly, I noticed that his grip had gone and that in fact he was no longer in any kind of tactile proximity to me. “Thank them and tell them to go.” Continuing my gaze I managed to say “Thank you, you may go now.” upon which the fish retreated back into the recesses of the lake.
The Lemurian numogram is a powerful system of accretive mathematics for the way it derives philosophical, mythical, magickal and polytical insight from immanent mathematical structures. Landian neolemurianism is adamant on the exceptionality of base-10 due to its global hegemony, yet there is nothing either in nature or culture which privileges the decimal over all other systems. That there exist other numogram-like structures is a fact: Yves Cross reports on a base-16 “hexadecigram” in an article over at Vast Abrupt. Recent discoveries, however, suggests the panorama of still-unexplored numolabyrinths to be overwhelmingly big.
The surfacing of documents previously believed lost reveals that from 1958 to 1968, Mexican anthropologist Teodora C. Lombardo and her colleagues over at the Mexican Institute for Experimental Education (IMEX in spanish) worked on a system which described a large quantity of numograms, which were the occult basis for a “Xenodidactic” educational program intended to prepare revolutionary subjects. The system, called General Numogrammatics, consisted in its fullest form of 256 numograms with thorough mythical and scientific attributions and used a special numbering system with 256 characters which also served as ideograms. Sadly, the full version of the system, contained in the unique copy of an IMEX-printed book called The Numogrammaticon, was lost after a police raid shut down the clandestine college in 1968, but the surfaced documents (police reports, confiscated notebooks, and folders upon folders of IMEX research materials) allow us to reconstruct the system, albeit partially.
We at Tzitzimiyotl Central (Surface Web beacon here) have so far calculated the information necessary for constructing all numograms from base 2 to 36. These have been organized to form a partial version of a structure first discovered by Lombardo’s team in 1964: the Digital Pyramids. The Greater Pyramid, or Pandemonic Pyramid, arranges all syzygies of all number bases in a single table; the two Lesser Pyramids, on the other hand, show only even or odd bases. According to Lombardo, these three structures reveal the mechanics of expanding, conquering civilizations in a process known as Pyramidal Expansion. Sadly, technical limitations have stalled the work at this point, and so Tzitzimiyotl Central has reached out to the CEO to tackle the problem together.
We Tzitzimimeh believe the Numogrammatics of Lombardo were only the beginning of a much more powerful system. A letter apparently written only hours before the raid suggests that Lombardo’s team was looking to expand numogrammatics beyond the realm of integer numerations, but their suppression by the Mexican government (then led by known CIA asset Gustavo Diaz Ordaz) cut short this possibility. We intend to finish their job.
To this end, we present the current status of research into General Numogrammatics.
Any numogrammatical (a.k.a. pandemonic) system base-n can be described as n zones named by the integers 0 through n-1, paired into syzygies which add to n-1. Each zone x has a cumulative gate equal to the tellurian plexing of the xth triangular number number. Each syzygy is in turn linked to a “tractor” zone determined by the difference of its members; i.e., the tractor for syzygy 8::1 is 7 because 8-1=7. By calculating gate and tractor functions, a graphical representation of the desired numogram can be constructed.
The graphic approach to numogrammatics, however, becomes unwieldy as radix increases; the sheer number of zones and syzygies results in complex structures with many possible geometrical arrangements. This problem was side-stepped in the 60s by two members of Lombardo’s team: mathematician Marina Constantino and computer scientist Adela Xirón, who devised a tabulated form to describe base-n numograms. A Constantino-Xirón tabulation, as it is known today, consists of three tables: the Zones table lists all zones and gates; the Tractor table lists the tractor currents for each syzygy; and a Circuit Map providing a color code for the tractor regions. All entries in the first two tables are colored according to the Circuit Map code.
Using an algorithm written for a clandestine Soviet implementation of ALGOL-60, the two scientists generated the CX tabulations for bases 2 to 256. During this process, a fundamental structural distinction between even and odd bases quickly became apparent. Even numograms have only complete syzygies, closed traction cycles, 3 current lines and one periodic structure appearing every 6 bases from 16 onwards known as the Cave System. Odd numograms, on the other hand, have one unpaired zone along with its syzygies, open traction regions, 2 current lines and one periodic structure, still unnamed, every 2x bases beginning in base-3. We will deal with current lines and periodic structures in the next post dealing with the Digital Pyramids; for now we will explain the particularities of odd numograms.
In all numograms base-n where n is an odd number, there is one self-cumulative non-paired zone equal to (n-1)/2; because there is no other zone to calculate tractor difference with, Zone (n-1)/2 can be considered to have Zone 0 as its tractor zone, and no syzygy ever has Zone (n-1)/2 as its tractor. Further, odd numograms have “open” traction regions, meaning a terminal, or central, loop (be it a 1-step plexing or an n-step cycle) is fed into by a linear sequence of syzygies with a beginning and an end; Aracne Fulgencio, who illustrated the Numogrammaticon, likened these open regions to comets, and biologist Eva Lombardo speculated about their connection to the times of the Late Heavy Bombardment. CX representations of odd numograms use colors differently from those of even bases: darker hues represent the “core” closed loop of the traction region, while ligther ones represent the “tails” which feed into one or more of the core’s syzygies. Although we know Constantino-Xirón used a special method for noting which tails coupled onto which part of the core loop, it hasn’t been found. Our provisional CX representations of odd bases look like this:
We Tzitzimimeh have so far generated the CX tabulations for bases 2 to 36, divided into two workbooks, one for even and one for odd bases. Work is currently underway for expanding this into higher bases, with base-62 as the current landmark.
Despite their differences, even and odd numograms seem to be connected by an undercurrent which is not yet understood. An anachronic multi-base expansion of Barker’s Spiral devised by Fulgencio, called The Gyre points to a possibility. The Gyre maps all bases n and under in a single spiral that continually opens forwards. Whilw Fulgencio’s original rendering is said to have consisted of a three-dimensional wire sculpture, it was destroyed along with the IMEX building. A two dimensional rendering up to base 10 is presented here:
Base 2 and 10, the lower and upper limits, have their connections in black. Bases 3 and up are color-coded by descending color frequency, indicating progressive opening up of The Gyre (increasing wavelength). As in Barker’s spiral, left hand connections indicate (n-1)-sum pairing, while those on the right hand indicate n-sum pairings. Interestingly, these connections correspond to the syzygies of even and odd numograms, respectively. Color circles around a number indicate it having the (n-1)/2 position in the corresponding base. The fact that the spiral pattern is born of the alternation of even- and odd-base numograms suggests a connection between these apparently different bases. A note in Xirón’s diaries records a hypothesis by another unnamed IMEX professor, who suggested numograms as “pneuminous atoms”, with different properties determined by the number of zones much like chemical properties are determined by the number of protons. According to this hypothesis, odd numograms act like “excited states” or “unstable isotopes” of the more stable even numograms. Sadly, not much more information on this has been found yet.
“As for P, well P was a different matter. P was in a position to acknowledge -better than myself probably- the strangeness of the event, yet he seemed oblivious to the potential moral content. Q’s disappearnce was for him, a source of fascination, yet so great was this fascination that it eclipsed all other sense in his head, even senses pertinent to his own occult inquiry, thus again, in this sense also Q. was utterly gone.”
The notion increasingly presses that the titular agnostic disjunction may be the disjunction that colours all manifestations (ontological decisions). This clearly needs seriously thinking through but it seems a promising corridor. The claim possibly sounds extreme because of the usage of the term magick. In fairness this could be extreme as pneuminous manifestations go all the way up to the strangest cryptid encounter (and down to the simple synchronicity).
The disjunction is disclosed on the interpretation of the encounter. Does it actually seem to entail an alteration in the structure of the seemingly solid externality or doesn’t it? This externality is either inert to the conceptual overlay (pneuma) or it isn’t. In the occult event the externality seems breached by the pneuma, but the interpretation may draw it back into something commensurate with the solid externality -illusion, hallucination, confirmation bias.
In the Narp the different assimilation-accretions compete to take control of this space. This is difficult to move freely beyond because the nature of the Narp is also agnostic disjunctive: Is there an actual whole self or are there just the competing assimilation-accretions? What even would this difference look like?
In fact the latter entails the former insofar as the name of the Narp forms the centre around which the pneuminous structure accretes. This name-accretion is what we usually call the self, as such it is just one more assimilation-accretion in the Narp, except that in what we call psychological health, it is the dominant one (the neurotic accretion from the term NARP). The first arm of the disjunction on the Narp nature does not mean this. It rather suggests a real self somehow independent of the name. There are no doubt various shades of these but the basic real self or contingent self disjunction is primordial to the problem.
Now neither arm of contingent self/real self does not ally itself necessarily with either arm of magick obtains/does not obtain, rather it discloses these options:
i) Real self-Magick obtains
ii) Real self-Magick does not obtain
iii) Contingent self-Magick obtains
iv) Contingent self-Magick does not obtain
i) The sense of (i) is difficult as of magick entails that information affects what it overlays, we cannot have a self that resists pneuminous interaction (claims itself to be apart from it). It is true that one could define magick such that it only affected reality outside of the self and one might also define the self as the higher self (the ensouled ontologies also feature here). In this sense it is possible to rescue (i). It is however minimally the most untenable of the manifestations.
ii) Is a situation a lot of people identify with. The self is real but our concepts do not affect the externality. It is difficult to make sense of this insofar as a rigid self is always difficult to justify -it is hard to see how any kind of self is inert to our interactions with it (without defining it out of harms way). However it has a coherence for people’s beliefs insofar as the solid external reality is reflected by a similar inward picture.
iii) This is the chaos magickal world commensurate with the philosophy described herein generally. The self is an assimilation-accretion and the possibility of the various assimilation-accretions linking up to make the externality change are actual.
iv) Describes a very rational understanding of the world. Pneuma cannot restructure reality but the self is recognised as contingent. As such assimilation-accretions happen but only at psychological level.
It will be noted in this that there are more manifestations lurking that have not yet been uncovered. The situation is constantly being referred to as one of a Narp conceptually comprehending an externality. This is of course what it looks like yet this situation itself is fraught by manifestationist decision. There may be no actual externality. The whole thing might be nothing but Berklean idea without even a God to prop it up. Of course this kind of idealism is difficult -a pure pneuma with no umbra- because nothing then is given to determine why the world looks like one thing and not another and why it hangs together so well. It is however perfectly functional with magick, which now is not a conceptual overlay overpowering an umbratic but just restructuring of the information. This does also leaves the problem of within the pure idealism there are solid ideas and unsolid ones yet one can however posit this kind of idealism without actually having to explain its mechanics. It is a manifestation and one requires no externality that exists at all without the Narp. This pure idealism must also have its non-magickal opposite. This would be a situation of pure ideality which nevertheless is completely solid. In this manifestation, if it were possible to peek round the curtain one would see there was literally nothing outside of the Narp-field (presumably other aware beings too) yet within it it held together in an absolute consistency in which the idea world was not swayed by the ideas in each Narp. It is always interesting to note that such a pure idealism cannot extirpate the phantasy of the umbratic. Of course the idealism looks extremely untenable anyway but even from within one would still come up with the notion of what is there outside the Narp-field. The idealism must be raised as a manifestation though its agents are few and far between. It just needs noting as the means by which the externality may be rendered incoherent.
This incoherent idealism supplies the reinforcing clue to our starting point. The notion is that each ontology is not a singular ontology, but rather each is a manifestation but must also be bifurcated into its magick obtains/magick does not obtain disjunctive forms. This raises the possibility of other non-pneuminous magickal conceptions. For example transcendental realist/magick-obtains might invoke a completely different condition of possibility [for magick], a picture that might look more like a Harmanian occasionalism.
This is an attempt to solve the problem I often perceive to occur in OOO in its sloppy ignorance of all the linguistic philosophical progress that was made last century. I think it’s pertinent because the language relation is crucial to understand the alternative realities that lie flickeringly present beside the dominant materialist convictions. Let me say that the notion is under construction so I expect some conceptual difficulties. Nevertheless here at the CEO we are encouraged by the potential exhibited so far.
The term vector is taken from the notion as a host which carries a parasite, the parasites here though are concepts. The vector term can be used in a fairly ordinary solid world compatible philosophy or it is equally applicable to the fluid world magickal one.
- Vectors are the phantasy of the myth of the given. Phantasies are agnostic disjunctive options that are not dominant but that will not go away. The notion of pre-interpretive perception is exactly such a thing. It looks cogent and not cogent at the same time. We can somehow easily conceive that we could see things without our having names of them yet when challenged we find that perceptual content is comprehensive conceptually grasped albeit incoherently.
- Vectors are regions (vectors do not settle Kantian or otherwise arguments) that have certain natures, certain restraints to them. These restraints enable conceptual attachment (accretion).
- E.g. the classic hammer. The ready-to-hand hammer before it has reached further accretive levels (noun/image like present-at-handiness) is still the primary form of attachment to a vector. If you want to say that the people had a concept ‘stone’ then we acknowledge that ‘stone’ too is attached to a vector. Vector regions enable the concept stone via accretive similarity (hardness, coldness, in the earthness), but all the concepts are formed by the Narps or other beings capable of some kind of informational cognition. The set of restraints that enables the vector to facilitate the concept stone, enables the facilitation of hammer (with some further restraints, like shape etc).
- There is no talk of vectors as noumenal or in themselves, they are just what allows certain conceptual attachments to make sense. They are not real objects. ‘Real objects’ has a grammar depending on your ontology that is itself facilitated by certain vectors, what kind of thing can have ‘real object’ attached to it? This sends us down a circularity that reminds us of the need for manifestationism (the competing world of ontologies) indeed vectors may be able to part of manifestationist theory as the transcendental condition of what can count as some kind of discreta in a given ontology.
- This is worth repeating and may indeed end up as the stumbling block. Vectors are not objects, rather object is a concept attached to a transcendental vector. OOO wants to widen this to non-physical objects, this is a reasonable aim that the vector notion aims to deal with more successfully than ‘object’. Objects in ooo are not carriers for concepts, they are often phrased as simply being something. This is inadequate for their description in relation to other things. A ‘stone’ is not lying next to a ‘hammer’ outside of our perception, unless of course we think of the strong pneuminosity theory in which the hammer accretion is actually attached to the vector, making it in some sense a hammer for anything. There is certainly a complicated picture to paint in relation to the nature of different kinds of objects, we should be wary of simple reductions.
- In a sense a vector is not a discreta, as discreta is the basic restraint for ‘object’. Vectors are preconceptual restraints in accessible being that allow concept attachment, either as use or just name (‘this is called Maxwell’, doesn’t tell me what its for, or how it will behave). We might in this respect speak of a vector field as potentially comprised of regions that disclose themselves owing the Narp interaction.
- A given ontology wants to say ‘this is an object’. To do this it must cogently be able to say what restraints apply. Object is also a concept. If the grammar of this ontology says that physical discreta are objects, then vector regions for this concept must have e.g. discretion and space taking as features.
- The vector can only be detected by its transcendental status. If concepts are autonomous they may attach to each other (pure pneuma) or to umbra (vector regions). Concepts are not just for Narps, animals clearly have some degree of conceptualisation and other pneuminous bundles with processing abilities may also exist. Noun-concepts are just a refined more accretive form of pneuminous relation.
- The restraint by the vector makes the accretion of the pneuma possible (the concept formation).
- Objects do not ‘withdraw’ because there is no object to withdraw. An object cogently spoke of as such is an object which relies on a vector. The vector does not withdraw, it is just the host for the object concept, it is visible as such.
- A concept may inhabit any vector that allows it to do so (meaning as use).
- In magick we may attach concepts to vectors that seem to defy the grammar of the restraints of the vector e.g. this piece of paper has the power of healing.
- Vectors deny any concept being applicable to them.
There is no spatial, chronological or privileged difference anymore between the real and the concept it mirrors. The real is imaginary and the imaginary is real. It is the closing of this distance that creates a flat, immanant and blindly operational space which I call assimilation. We cannot even relapse into older physicalist notions of the real such as external space and time: an action figure toy does not breathe-in the atmosphere of such a ‘space’, it’s context does not refer to that context shared by physical bodies in space and their social-political narrative.
King Kong is no less real than the chair you are sitting on. Both can be represented in external or eidetic space, Both have a use tem in language (i.e “have you seen King Kong?” or “where is my chair?”). Both have other relations that differ from their present use; King Kong is identified through various relations, contexts and histories such as Science-fiction, the toy industry, the film industry, exoticism, the place Skull Island etc.
Reality – the sum of experience – is not weird, funny nor horrific, ‘It’ simply is. The only other capacity that can achieve this indifference, this reality, is neurosis (hence equating neurosis with experience). In Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle neurosis is the only thing that escapes designation (goes ‘beyond’ it). Content in the mind is designated as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, ‘pleasurable’ or ‘painful’ but neurosis is the condition which produces content in the brain; it decides, through repetition, whether X will appear bad or good. In other words, the neurotic capacity to repeat and fixate (i.e to simulate experience) is found in both sane and insane experiences, both happy and sad ones. Ergo neurosis is this indifferent reality that we speak of (or at least the condition for it). The ability of this Expressivist (Deleuze) or Contructivist neurosis is precisely what Baudrillard is talking about when he observes the relative autonomy of simulation and simulacra (from army training courses to Disney Land); that the real is manipulable based on the relatability of signs, and it is only ‘use’ (and the conventionalising of use) that separates the reality of Disney Land from the reality of a romantic relationship, a 9 – 5 job etc. To be sure, there will be simulations (assimilations) that appear without your consent (what has been ontically found in traditional psychological neurosis); your mind will try and make a reality out of something, a web of designations that one could live within. Based on generic and personal dialectics between general concepts (their ‘shareability’) and your experience, such tensions will spark semantic tensions, but this doesn’t have to be exclusively psychological; a man’s fear of nudity might stem from him encountering his parents having sexual intercourse at an early age, but other symptoms can occur simply by living in a restrictive society. The idea of getting up at 6am the next morning is semantically implicated by the state of drunkenness I am in at midnight. These are not neutral concepts changing under circumstances of the individual; they are concepts that have their own pleasure principle, their own likes and dislikes, their own preferable assimilative processes.
Similar to psychology, however, there seems to be a heuristic difference between process and form; the almost vitalist force of un-designateable reality, of infinite neuroses and assimilations, that only take on meaning when formed and chafed by humans (or living creatures), that become representations amongst other representations like some form of atomistic idealism. The designation of meaning is superimposed onto the domesticated world through our practices, and we inherit these meanings as they enjoy dominion over us or become ‘challenged’ (Nietzsche). The usability of the concept has always carried a correlate of desire with it (the need to be used) and hence concepts cannot be severed from the desire for designation, ergo, concept traces will always tell you more than what is designated on the surface (see Graham Freestone – ‘Spider-Spit’). We always knew this sensitive fragility in the ‘human subject’ (the psychological subject) but now its time to look at the concepts ‘themselves’, as artefacts of the incoherence/incommensurability of present day human.
The first dictum of psychology ; one should never blame themselves for themselves.
What Harman calls the intentional image is the pneuma as accreted into a particular form. There are some similarities between OOO and pneuminosity however these are largely superficial. In pneuminosity there is no ‘real’ object as opposed to an intentional one. This underscores Harman’s dubious interpretation of Husserl in which he seeks to separate out the intentional object from the real one. For pneuminosity this separation does not occur. The pneuminous object is what it is, information (pneuma) is not an inert separate image/sensation that is apprehended, rather it is the totality of everything that the Narp experiences -and is made up of. Being-burned by a fire is still an informational happening within the Narp-field. The only need for something beyond the pneuma is the notion within the pneuma that there must be something beyond it. This is the phantasy of the beyond. It appears in Kant as the ding-an-sich and in Schopenhauer as the will. Those familiar with CEO terminology will understand that phantasy does not mean something negative but rather suggests a region whose ontological status is wholly indeterminate.The manifestation war rages over the nature of the beyond.
Here at the CEO the beyond-pneuma is known as the umbra. This is not the same as the ding an sich as it makes no claim to be the totality, indeed it is something less. Since pneuma is wholly its own substance with no necessary umbratic behind it, the phantasy (maybe it is more like a fantasy) of the umbra is something less than the in itself which could only be conceivable as both pneuma and umbra. Because all we have access to is pneuma the umbra is just a pneuminous accretion of the impossibility of itself. Of course it is not this simple because precisely one of the manifestations that wants to control this realm is the continuation of information beyond the Narp. This seems wholly reasonable yet it is still the product of an agnostic disjunction. We do not know what the ontological status of things outside of the Narp field and phenomena like pneuminous interference suggest it may be extremely strange. We cannot presuppose the same kind of informational interactions that we experience happening within the Narp-field as continuing to happen outside of it no matter how incomprehensible that might seem. Incoherence is not a criteria for rejecting something because incoherence goes all the way down (and up).
There are forms we term pure pneuma, these are dreams, images in the putative internality of the Narp, visualizations projected [outwards]. These kinds of visual pneuma have no umbratic restraint, for it is the restraint that gives the idea of the umbra to the Narp. These kind of things have the pneuminous structure of exactly that i.e. what it means to know these things as such things is that they have no beyond and this is necessarily true of them (if we accept the definition of pneuma as substantialised information). Those things that we might consider not as pure pneuma are still wholly pneuminous; the only difference is that owing to their recalcitrance they suggest that there is something beyond them on the level that is sometimes called present-at-hand (that level which considers extensional physicality and not use). A hammer is pure information (pneuma), within the Narp field the comprehension that the strike upon the nail will yield a result is all part of the pneuma. Yet the hammer in darkness, outside the Narp field, what is this? This question immediately presupposes the individuation of things cogently persists outside the Narp field. That pneuminous suggestion of solidity and continuity outside of the Narp field is so seductive and it is not that it needs outright rejecting, it’s just that it needs comprehending in its radicalness as just one manifestation.It is not a problem for the hammer, it is a problem for the allness that falls out side of the Narp field, solipsistically and collectively. This is the true implication of this mess.
‘Phantasy’ as CEO terminology has a pseudo technical meaning. Phantasies are those ways of interpreting being that stand in a certain relation to what we call reality. Reality can only mean an appeal to what we take to be real. This is a use-term with its correlative accretion. ‘Reality’ designates the accretion, ‘is that real?’ is one of the many uses for the word (its assimilation of us) that feed back into making its accretion.
The difference between fantasy and phantasy is that the former is wild pneuminous ramblings of a Narp that might extend down any threads at all with neither rhyme nor reason. Super-powers and unrealistic sexual ambitions are common fantasies. A phantasy is the suppressed option in an agnostic disjunction. Agnostic disjunctions exist in all strata of the world. They notably exist when there are viable criteria supporting both sides of an argument. The resolution of such disjunctions is not determined by criteria that apply to common language games of truth (which exist because the criteria to undermine them are more akin to fantasies). In the case of agnostic disjunctions the decision is made by the agents who work for each side, one of which will gain general hegemonic control. Pneuminous interference (previously known as synchronicity) is the classic example. The disjunctive split is in its simplest form (it can be complicated further) between a magickal interactive world and a solid-material one. The general scientific-western agents have pushed that latter option as ‘reality’, but because of the very nature of pneuminous interference and its concomitant implications it is not possible to extirpate option 1 (if pneuminous interference did obtain it would still look like the existence we have). Hence pneuminous-interference is a phantasy.
Phantasies are not just the domain of occult speculation, they proliferate in the realm of conventional media. This rather biased article seems in places to suggest we need to stop listening to conspiracy theorists and fake news and listen to the establishment line. For one though it is a bit dubious to lump both phenomena in the same bag (though they are related, fake news are more akin to fantasies) and secondly it is precisely the point there are good criteria for not believing the establishment news media. The consumption of such media is nowadays strongly infected with scepticism about its motivations -both of corporate and political agents. Of course the paradox appears there that is was the established media that revealed the various lies of governments/corporations, without which we would not have been able to be scepticism. This though purely points to the fact that some agents of the media are state agents, some are corporate agents, some are journalism agents (and there are others too).
This jumble of agents unleashes scepticism upon them all (via accretive contamination) which simultaneously frees at least a certain part of the population from adhering to it as ‘honest journalism’ and makes it appear guilty of sometimes overt partisanship. This freedom enables other agents to step in to supply their own criteria as to why they can reveal the ‘truth’. Many conspiracy theories have perfectly believable sounding criteria which if Narps were philosophically honest would accept they do not know not to be true. Conspiracy theories are often phantasies, which are often rejected by educated intelligent Narps just because these Narps don’t identify themselves as agents of those forces. A government scientist denounces the claim so the weight of ‘reality’ presses down upon the ‘phantasy’. However the agents of the conspiracy ‘phantasies’ cannot be persuaded by the agents of the current ‘reality’ precisely because they too have criteria to faciliate their belief. It is a stalemate that is made to look like a defeat.
To qualify these words, this piece is not about propping up conspiracy theorists claims but it is about an epistemologically honest description of the situation.
Some Narps like to talk about phantasies of food from previous ages that protected them from various failings in the regional processor itself (the fleshy bit). By a pneuminous thread to the accretion of ‘the natural’ and its various positive value pneuminous parts, such accretions have various agents working for them. In these putative instances of ‘the natural’ the Narps didn’t eat the food to protect themselves, they just ate the food that was available. The claim tends to be something like that the diversity of foods and the unprocessed nature of such food stuffs made for a generally Narp preserving recipe. Of course as since most people didn’t live very long back then its very hard to tell how much truth there is to this and of course it seems cogent that not all diets from the past were the same, some may be have been more diverse than others.
In writing this we already can feel the neurosis creeping in. Once the Narps created the nutrition accretion (itself formed of neurosis) they generated the possibility for more neuroses. The afore-mentioned notion of nutritional diversity is exactly one such. Whilst the notion of diversity of foods being healthy may have existed, overriding it largely would be something more like survival value (enough food), the worry as to whether or not a given Narp is eating a broad enough range of different foodstuffs would not be likely high in their pneuminous field. But now this neurosis can easily take over us; the knowledge that different vitamins, proteins, amino acids exist in different foods can easily make us paranoically supplement or extend our diversity to top up all these endlessly depleting reserves.
This neurosis -the phenomenology of the nutrition assimilation- extends effortlessly into the medicine accretion-assimilation. Certain foods are not just topping up essential parts they also actively preventing potential enemy assimilations from destroying the regional processor. This kind of nutrition-medicine accretion has various scientific criteria to make Narps heed it, as well as various unscientific ones; both of these have different kinds of epistemic power. Further neuroses feed into this pot. Narps are also infected with ‘too much of something can be bad’. Self medication through plant-technology (herbs/plant foodstuffs) and supplementation runs part of the Narp preservation script (a transcendental neurosis) in a baffling neurotic display: I should take this, but how much of it? How do I know when I have taken enough? Endless proliferating agnostic disjunctions whose resolution is decided by dubious criteria (themselves upon analysis subject to more agnostic disjunctions) run the autonomous neurosis.
But there is no value judgement here, the message is not that we’re crazy (neurotic) and we need to step back from it. The message is rather that as Johns has pointed out: neurosis is the adequate description for the facticity of thought. The facticity of thought means its seeming autonomous arising outside of our putative ‘control’. This is just one more evidence of the autonomy of pneuminous accretions. We cannot decide that we need to not supplement or use plant-technologies or follow different dietary advice because such a decision implies we could avoid nutrition-assimilation-choice and leaves only i) consuming somehow only of necessity, but unless you are extremely poor -and we do not deny or make light of the fact such Narps exist- every choice is within the paranoic neurosis of how to best preserve your regional processor (and thus the embodiment of your neurotic accretion) or ii) the kind discourse that we should live our lives and resist this nutrition-accretions. We might think ii) is preferable it is assuredly a popular phantasy, but just try removing those autonomous accretions and their concomitant neuroses.