We are doomed to speculate upon a moment at which an inside becomes aware of an outside. We are equally doomed to place this moment on a historical axis. Theories like panpsychism do not really help this issue, they merely shift the problem from being about the where consciousness is (everywhere) to how it becomes localised in beings capable of having epistemological crises about their own ontological nature. That is, unless panpsychism accepts that occurring aggregates themselves develop discrete consciousness as unities (animism) it is doomed to be an empty theory that posits some kind of subatomic consciousness that is essentially ineffective until it organises itself into neurological systems. At which point we may rightly wonder what work the panpsychism is actually doing.

Of course panpsychists do not want to accept the consciousness of aggregates as this road does indeed lead to animism -a fish they do not seem to care for. Of course the consciousness of things does have serious problems from any rational stance. What it does though is solve the problem of consciousness in organisms. It does this by saying that the neurological systems are not the seat of consciousness. They are rather second level systems that access consciousness but have not created it. Such a theory would say that aggregates of all kinds have  discrete consciousnesses; neurological interface organism have just overridden this more primordial mode of consciousness which they developed owing to their mobile and energy consuming ways. This kind of model is attractive up to a point, certainly it is attractive to the more paranormal minded. The problem with it is that it must presuppose human criteria for aggregates and then presuppose a world in which things behave (away from humans) along the lines of discretion that humans have imposed upon them. That is to say, we must presuppose we have selected the real objects that existence itself recognises as discrete. If we do not do this we have to draft in more metaphysical rules about which kinds of non-organistic aggregates acquire consciousness -this rock but not this rock, this pool, but not this puddle etc. The whole system becomes too layered in speculation.

If however we wish to retain objects as discrete and that exist in the world as objects we essentially need the feedback system of pneuminous accretions to secure it. This is a contentious claim of course. The part that I think is sound is ‘to secure it’. If we do not use accretive theory then the possibility exists that there is no cogent way of saying that objects interact with one another as one has no grounds by which one can cogently talk about discrete objects as they themselves are only a product of our principium individuationis.

How does pneuminous theory help? Remember that whilst pneuma is there as a transcendental condition for the possibility of magick, it is however also necessarily just the ‘what’ all concepts are formed of. The primary pneuminous relation is the inside/outside. This sets up the primal accretion of both of these. Accepting the magickal relation as true (as an arbitrary decision of the agnostic disjunction: magick obtains/does not obtains), this means that as the inside/outside notion -no matter how primitive- is formed thus it is literally reified by the effect of the accretion. Other primal accretions will be related to propagation of the organism and energy consumption. The order in which these appear can be argued about, but their general primacy can not. The result of occupying a location, being able to move, desiring energy to place inside oneself create the condition for distinguishing one region from another. Three easy pairings can be spotted: outside/inside, food/not food, obstructive/not obstructive, to which we might add (when the organism is sufficiently complicated) dangerous/not dangerous. These primary hermeneutics would all be enabling the pneuminous feedback system by which the concept applied to the thing (vector) in an ineffable way (this is a theory magick remember) makes the thing closer to the concept that is attributed to it. This attributing of structured pneuma to a part of what is (a region of the vector field) is the accretive process. Remember also that the accretion is not simply within the organism, rather it becomes literally attached to the vector region. This notion is crucial for the autonomous existence of objects as objects.

By the time we get to more complex animals, the umwelt is equally so much more complex. Every kind of region of  the umwelt that the organism recognises as a discrete is either some deliberate product of evolution (an accretions itself) or a by product of it e.g. that the very ability to spot that there different kinds of things, might escape from dangerous/safe or edible/inedible things into just general things. Every one of these region/objects is accreted with a discreting pneuminous layer attributing to it some kind of conceptual significance in its world. These amassing layers are the accretions. Furthermore the layers of pneuma are not inert. Once accreted, they exert an effect upon the region (object), external to the perception of the organism. This effect, as mentioned is the curious feedback mechanism of active incoherent reification. That is, the region is nudged towards being of the nature of the concept that was applied to it. In the natural formation of region and concept this effect will be scarcely noticeable because of course it was the behaviour of the region that determined the concept in the first place -so the two are essentially harmonious.

Further explanation is achieved by noting that that the primordial accretion of perceiving of discrete things is still in play. This primal perception -according to the theory- is perpetually making things on some level, literally into separate things. The perception of separation becomes adopted by the outside. This is a subtle change. As stated, the change wouldn’t be possible if existence didn’t permit it. Yet what to a blind existence in itself, is simply different intensities without reflection, upon the the fissure of consciousness opening, becomes the conceptual actuality of discrete things. The intensities are transformed into objects by the pneuminous layers that they must bear.

This is all that is needed. In a (chaos) magickal universe, our individuated things as things are a product of a primal feedback of reifying perception. This in turn has literally formed the autonomous existence of discrete things. Its alteration to their physical behaviour may be almost nil but what it has done, to use a slightly Heideggerian tone, is allow them to be the things they are -something like OOO can actually make sense if you allow for this kind of metaphysical picture to underpin it. Things have necessarily at least a thin layer of pneuma accreted to them, this is guaranteed by their discretion itself, many things have vastly more layers upon them.

Finally a brief speculation upon the effect of the object forming pneuma is warranted. A reasonable possibility is that the organism has accreted, along with this primal individuation a sense of persisting in time and space.  This is a reasonable correlate that fulfils our sense of such things persisting in our framework outside of our perception. It is in effect as if, as good Kantian subjects we did not only structure the in-itself with our conceptuality, but also infected it.