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In ‘What is Philosophy?’ Deleuze and Guattari describe 3 ways in which we understand the chaos that we are and that surrounds us. These are Philosophy, Science and Art. The chaos of existence is filtered in each place by a different plane. Philosophy has a plane of immanence, science has a plane of reference and art has a plane of composition. Each of these planes in turn has a different types of structure.

Deleuze and Guattari seem to want to place magickal type phenomena on the plane of immanence. I am not entirely sure this is correct and I propose that magick be considered to be drawn on a different plane. It is true that magick, considered as an opening of ontologies by implication is drawn on the plane of immanence, however when magick is magick as craft and not philosophy it is drawn on its own plane. That is, an ontology that accounts for paranormality may be drawn on the plane of immanence precisely because doing so draws conceptual apparatus for this description.

Considering this matter this does seem to create kind of heuristic division in the analysis. Magick must be divided into naive and chaos magick. Naive magick accepts the system that it works with unreflectively as real, the spirits, Gods, incantations are the actual entities. Whilst chaos magick utilises belief to harness any given system, acknowledging that each system is a construct and not a real ultimate unit of spiritual reality. The former of these is not inscribed upon the plane of immanence whereas the chaos magickal underpinning is a redrawing of the plane of immanence, it is a conceptual (philosophical) alteration of the ontology of magick. As praxis though, neither of them is drawn upon the plane of immanence but rather they are drawn on an occult plane, that is nevertheless entirely entwined with the other 3 planes -and not of an especial transcendent nature.

The occult plane is laid over the chaos, as the others are, and acts as a filter, it shares a curious cross section of the traits of the others. It has the open endedness of the philosophical concept by having an infinitely receding causal structure, yet it strives for the coordinated nature of the scientific plane of reference —spells can be very specific in material, spatial and temporal co-ordination in their attempt for replicability. It also gathers affects and percepts in its construction (scents, sigils, visualisations) and its very nature accords to the description of art in that it finds the hidden language within language (divinatory, numerological practices). Despite this intersection of planes the occult plane still has its own essential feature, these we may call adepts.

The adept is a becoming that emerges between two or more phenomena whose relation is entirely undetectable other than by occult means. This becoming is one of endless potential that may be utilised by the sorcerer or may remain inert. E.g. We might form an adept between red things as a general adept structure. We might then seek to connect two red things through a magickal act and intensify the adept further. At a scientific level any discovered connection between the red things (frequency) here is not relevant, the red percept (and we do mean percept in Deleuzo-Guattarian sense, it is not just a perception) creates an adept in relation to another red percept. The adept itself could be called a pneuminous structure, it is through these structures that magick ‘operates’.

Let us consider the synchronicity as an example of adept formation. A person becomes, through a significant experience, attached to the number 47. They begin to experience the number in their lives in strange uncanny way. It (the number) seems curiously common and to appear in strange places that seem definitely out of line with their previous experience of reality. Because we are considering a paranormal compatible ontology here, we will bracket off the materialist coincidence model(1). These instances of the numbers’ manifestations are adepts. They are connected through the rupture event that attached the power/accretion to the particular person —this too was an adept. This is not psychological connection, this is a real connection, it is as if in the umbratic it was like a fungus of connecting mycelial threads; the fruiting bodies (the mushrooms) were the synchronicity (the adept).

None of this though should be conceived with the model of reality that we commonly hold, material, consistent, fixed. Adepts look like they do because they are ruptures in the solid; the proliferated pneuminous mycelial threads inserting themselves into a reality that might have been otherwise. The involved person is not deluded, they are more like infected. But the infection is related to what we call spritual. The infection can be used to learn the nature of things; it is the closest regular perception gets to seeing multidimensionality.

(1)This though is an incredibly complicated issue that crosses over the areas of an occult phenomenology and a metaphysics compatible with the phenomena being ‘actual’. That is, the same agnostic disjunctive issue in a sense raises its head. The adept as we define it, is justified in having its own occult plane whether or not there is anything occurring that constitutes magick/paranormality.

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Postulates of Magick

  1. A conceptual substance which we shall call Pneuma is real.
  2. Pneuma interacts with what can called a non-conceptual substance (umbra) in a manner not currently registered/understood by contemporary science.
  3. The pneuminous-umbratic relation usually reflects a solid, consistent world.
  4. The whole of experience is pneuminous.
  5. Certain acts of will can manipulate pneumious structures such that the solid consistency of the world can be altered (the umbratic is altered by the pneuminous).
  6. The appearance of these acts, which appears as ruptures in the solid-consistency worlds are, in almost all circumstances, automatically covered over by the solid-consistency of the world.
  7. This covering over is relative to differently formed solid-consistencies i.e. the influence of pneuminous forces can be accepted by the socius to a greater or lesser degree.

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One might easily mistake the pneuma itself for the fine matters of occult theory. There is a sense in which this is true however it is more correct to say that the fine matter is formed of pneuma. Pneuma is not an energy as such but rather the pure form of conceptuality, it is the experience of something as something. We experience pneuma in its bound and unbound forms. In what we call the physical world we see the pneuma as the objects, we see the concept attached to the vector which carries it e.g. there is a vector region stone such that the concept is capable of attaching to it; this is bound pneuma. When we perceive things in ‘the mind’s eye’ we see unbound pneuma. The concept conjures an archetypal (to us) version of it that we can perceive internally.The concept draws on its (local) history to create this image. It is in a sense pure conceptuality because unlike the physical version where we could strive to unsee it as that concept, in the bound case this is not possible.

Pneuma exerts an effect on the vector region it occupies. This is the strange feedback system that magick employs. We develop through a use relationship a concept. The concept becomes somewhat reified/has a certain nature/image attached to it. This pneuminous structure is then projected back onto the vector region which bizarrely makes the object (vector region) more like the archetype than the original. This is the everyday nature of magick, its effect is minute and only serves to make objects more like the objects we think they are.

It is easy to see from here how magick functions with pneuma. The everyday occurence of it is the application of conceptuality to objects which readily take the concept in its full shared social sense, whereas the magician seeks to apply concepts to regions that would not ordinarily take them. S/he does so by the application of the will (a complicated issue pneuminously in itself). In this way the conceptual set-up that the magician requires is applied to the vector regions s/he seeks to alter.

The fine energies of the world are a perpetual feature of occult discourse. All systems make some kind of mention of them. What the systems don’t do is agree on the nature/description of these ‘energies’. Colours, energy centres etc. differ between them. The reason for this though (in the pneuminous system) is fairly clear. The fine energies themselves are either entirely or largely pneuminous accretions.

Let us consider that in a given society there may be a tradition established in its shamanic history, in which certain visions have disclosed an energy body structure. This potent vision can be replicated and its wisdom passed on. What is this vision of? This is in a sense impossible to answer. However what we can infer is that there is in some sense a vector region or regions which give[s] rise to the concept to fine matter. This vector region though is not often visible to ordinary consciousness, its access is only given to those in altered states, or those who through whatever neurological wiring are capable of perceiving it and thus conceptualising it.

The problem of vector regions like these are that, unlike the vector regions of regular reality (which when perceived yield mutually communicable concepts), these ones, when perceived, do not necessarily yield perceptions that are sufficiently identical between perceivers to produce reliably communicable results. The results can be replicated, but often only under the tutelage of the elder, teaching the apprentice in a given tradition. In this instance, the apprentice is guided to perceive the other world under a certain set of pneuminous accretive structures, which, owing to their non-corporeal nature are often taken to be the ‘real’ nature of things.

In this way a whole world of spirits and energies can be accreted out of the altered forms of awareness’ abilities to perceive these vector regions. That is, our capacity for spiritual (as it is sometimes called) awareness comes from other parts of ourselves than regular consciousness. Sometimes it is called the body, this is probably fair. This bodily awareness perceives these other parts of the vector field and does its best to interpret them. Even though not cognitively conceptual like our regular awareness, it still has to perceive things as something. Maybe it is closer to seeing things as they really are and maybe it is just one different kind of hermeneutic. This is unanswerable.

If we say the bodily awareness does impose a certin conceptuality upon the these vector regions then we know the pneuma is present. And since such persons do make reports of such experiences in which they translate these phenomena into various, colours, glows, lights, feelings etc (all of which are pneuminous structures becaues they then become conceptual) we can say that these energetic experiences are also pneuminous accretions on vector regions. From here the same feedback like mechanism applies. When the vector regions are perceived as something (energy in the occult sense), by the same feedback mechanism described above, they become more like the energy pneuminously ascribed to them.

This pneuminous action itself can be thought of as an alchemical one i.e. the transformation of these primordial arisings of intensities (the lights, feelings etc.) into a more rareified occult energy, which is achieved by the very act of interpreting them in this wise. The visualisation/attempt to feel these energies as found in nearly all systems is precisely the creation of the fine energies by projecting the pneuminous (conceptual) form of fine energy onto the idea of an flowing light, or feeling of warmth etc. That is, the pneuminous projection escapes the realm of its actual perception (by the person who can actually perceive it e.g. the shaman) and is made available to humans without these abilities or who have not been placed in such states of awareness.

By tapping into the pneuminous accretion of fine energy, which primordially arose from the bodily awareness experience, the regular person can perform an imagined simulation of this, which through the accretion, still is capable to a greater or lesser extent of creating fine energies that are real and effective, straight out of the pneuminous accretion of fine energy. A person’s ability to concentrate and imagine their (the energies’) reality will indeed improve the potency of such energies, precisely because they are employing the feedback mechanism with greater efficacy. The improvement of the feedback mechanism is what is referred to as practice (in a given system). In this way, yes the practices are imaginary yet owing to the curious relation between the imaginary and the primordial manifestation of the fine energies, they are alchemically transformed into ‘real’ energies as described by the occult systems.

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An interesting phenomenon can be noted by observing the natural pneuminous correlates of living beings on what we call the material plane. The phenomenon in question is how the conscious awareness of beings is in an inverse relation to its unconscious awareness or spiritual correlate.

What do we mean by this? Human’s have, even with Gurdjieffian notions of sleep aside, a considerable amount of awareness. We seem to have some sense of awareness, reflection etc upon what we are doing. We have some ability to control instincts, passions, compulsions, we can think deeply about matters and contemplate to come up with solutions to problems and we can observe beauty, sublimity, be amazed. These abilities (and other similar) are parts of our awareness that we have access to.

Beyond this realm is the dark underside. The pneuminous structures here operate outside of the realm of awareness. Functioning without awareness as it does, unless brought into the light it’s operations are entirely opaque. It’s logic sometimes fathomable by persons who can read its signs but often it is entirely incomprehensible. It’s nature is amorphous and dispersed. This dispersed chaotic nature is what it’s pneuminous structure is like. That is, the spiritual/pneumious dual form of the human possesses no ‘I’ like structure as such.

Observations have shown that non-human animals, whilst on a vast scale of variability are in all instances less capable of this full-range of conscious awareness faculties. Correlative to this though is that they have an increase in the awareness of their spiritual/unconscious other part. The well-known spirit animals of the shaman for instance are partially conscious accretions and not simply dispersed chaos. These ‘spirits’ can speak/communicate, they have some continuity of awareness though they are still highly formed by and connected to an amorphous chaos of unconscious pneuminous accretive structures.

When we observe the vegetable kingdom the picture becomes clearer still. The pneuminous double of each plant is a discrete spirit, that whilst always connected to the plant, may wander freely from it, sometimes visible to certain human eyes. The level of consistency and discretion is so clear that some simple forms of social interaction occur between these beings. What we call the physical plant is the unconscious to them, their awareness of it may actually be low. Of course to us, the phyiscal plant appears the real or indeed only component of the organism. This part we deem to have extremely low conscious awareness. Of course plants communicate in many fascinating ways yet their nature is more of an unconscious nature than many animals. Insects and many smaller creatures (e.g. slugs and snails) have ethereal correlates similar to those of plants, though these correlates are still of lesser awareness than their plant equivalents.

From here on there are complications but the picture of increasing awareness in the spiritual realm continues. Bacteria, viruses whilst not individuated to each unit have highly aware pneuminous correlates. People have sometimes called these evil spirits. The various elemental masses of earth, air, fire and water teem with highly discrete pneuminous entities (elementals). These beings may have names, continuous memories and even social structures. What we call the physical part of these is their subconscious. The correlate of these bodies as various wholes e.g. seas, mountains, volcanos, the underground, are of course Gods.

There is naturally some debate as to how much the human, as pneuminous processor par excellence, has contributed to these formations and how much they exist in themselves. Plants no doubt have discrete pneuminous bodies, but humans have accreted various extra attributes to these beings in terms of appearance and nature. This action, at the level of the pneuminous is ontologically effective for them. This is also true of elementals; there may be something to the notion that their true perceptual nature (rather than as dwarf etc) is more like blobs of light/energy, but who can say? Faeries in general are likely the product of human accreted formations over the pure pneuminous bodies of plants/elements.

This problem is also true of God formations as these are often formed upon non-discrete vector regions e.g. the sea. Does the totality of the sea automatically form a God consciousness or is it formed in conjunction with the humans who perceive it thus? It would seem highly likely there must be a kind of dual creation going on there. As low in physical conscious awareness, such masses of earth, sea etc, necessarily have a highly developed and self-aware pneuminous structure (as discussed above), however with no necessarily nature border (where does the mountain end?) it seems likely these consciousness are split by human pneuminous actions and reaccreted to their purpose.

This suggests that highly developed pneuminous consciousnesses are different from physical embedded ones. Possibly the awareness does not entail strong identity so that parts of it can be incoherently sequestered and reaccreted as human spirits/Gods.

Lastly we must of course point out as we get smaller in our analysis of matter, thus these components must necessarily have correlates of greater and greater conscious awareness as their pneuminous doubles. It is hard to understand how these atomic and small particles differ from the phenomenological Gods and spirits of the elements as phenomena, and yet in a sense they must. At this level the physical awareness is so minimal that the conscious awareness is cosmically vast.

The end point of this is of course an actual all encompassing God like intelligent awareness, whose correlate is the most perfect physical void.

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1)
A middle aged woman working in a public service and answers the phone.

Hello how may I help you?
Hi…
The voice is soft, almost mumbly, distant.
Hello, can I help you?
Hi, I’m feeling quite stressed…
Oh ok.
She does not know what to say, this is not a line for stressed people, but she is kind.
I’m feeling very stressed, I’ve been working very hard.
Yes it can be stressful, do you need to talk to someone?
I do need to talk to someone, you sound nice.
Maybe I can find you someone to talk to.
She wants to get off the phone but the kindness and concern keeps her in place.
Can you talk to me? Silence for a moment. Are you there? Bear with me.
I’m still here, are you ok?
I’m quite stressed. I’ve been working all night.
You must be tired.
I’ve just had some crack so I’m quite high. Bear with me. Silence. How old are you?
I don’t think we need to talk about that.
You sound nice, you sound a lot older than me. Can you talk to me?
I am talking to you. What’s your name?
People, my house mates don’t know me. My name is Michael.
Oh?
They think I’m like them, but I’m not and I need, I need a release, I need a release from the stress.
She shudders at this term -thinking of the pauses and requests for patients. However the distance, the mumble, the silence somehow stop her from cutting it off.
I’m supposed to be like Mr Jack the Lad, that’s how they know me. Silence. I need a release. Silence. Bear with me. Silence. That’s how they know me but…
But what?
I like wearing women’s underwear, I’m so stressed, I need to smoke some more crack.
Be careful.
I need to smoke some more crack now, can I call back in a bit?
Yes of course.
She doesn’t know if she means this or what the right thing to do is.

2
The call ends and the woman is shaken. This is not a normal call for the establishment to take. Other employees rally round offering support, yet equally seeking information. What has shaken her up? Is it interesting? Their intrigue weighs greater than their sympathy. The woman herself is not above the ability to enlist a certain perception of absurdity to the whole affair. The comedy has the function of alchemically transforming the trauma. Whose is the trauma though? The crack smoking stress head or the woman? Their concern asks if she has a number. No, the phone registers unknown. Why did she keep talking? Policy is to put the phone down. Felt sorry for him, just needed to be sure he wasn’t, you know, in danger. If calls back, need to be more terse. Refer to appropriate body. Comedy reappears. Absurd image. Story proliferates through colleagues. Women’s underwear become pants, a name is born ‘Crack pants’.

3
The staff in the public institution were all of a buzz at the call. It was an incursion into a pedestrian world by an alien force: Crack Pants. There was excited anticipation as to if or when the next call would come. Of course if too much crack had been smoked then it would be unlikely there would a call any times soon. The lady who had received the call, whilst utilising the humorous levity of the office, did not feel entirely comfortable. Instead she felt worried. Partially for the caller and partially for the bogeyman like aura that the event began to acquire. The caller had liked her. You hear about unhealthy attachments like this. Follow people. Say they want to talk but it goes wrong. Frightening.

4
Then, later in the same day a call to a different staff member.

They heard my voice and hung up.
It was Crack Pants.
Are you sure?
I can’t be sure, but someone rang and then hung up. The call shows as unknown.
It was probably him.
Was there any noise?
Maybe a soft hiss before the click.

The original woman is more worried. She eats her lunch at her own desk away from the service dept. The phone rings. She picks it up. It goes dead. Now she is more worried. It is pointed out that if that was Crack Pants why would he hang up when he actually reached her? This line has a number. The number is checked, it has no phone to it. Even though there is no logic to it the worry persists.

At the main desk the phone rings again and hangs up.
It hung up.
That must be Crack Pants.

People are excited.

5
Calls begin to proliferate. Some longer some shorter. Sometimes there is a soft voice. Sometimes there is the hint of a voice. Sometimes a crackling. Sometimes a cough. The comparison is made with the Victorian cryptid, Spring Heeled Jack whose appearance mutated through sightings. The composite name ‘Spring Heeled Crack Pants’ appears naturally in this environment. Other connections are noticed. Spring Heeled Jack began to appear more demonic as time went on.

What did the caller say? He’s known as a ‘Jack’ the lad. What does he have a [crack] pipe? What does he wear? Women’s ‘pants’, pants pipe, Pan’s pipe and Pan of course is a kind of Christian devil archetype. These strange clues are surely just mass psychotic play.

6
A seated male staff member overheard someone shout ‘thanks Michael!’ and sees disappearing round a corner a figure on crutches. Their detective instincts lurched into life. Michael. The same day. The calls. Crutches -a deviant sign for a possibly ‘cracked’ bone. Making his excuses he went to check the building. Michael seemed to have vanished -probably gone in the lift, could be anywhere now. Drawn on by the mystery he went up a floor on foot. Glancing across the mezzanine he could see a young man in one of the computer labs. No one should be in those he was sure. Finish the building, come back and check on the rule, then evict them.

Looking for Michael continued further up the building. On the inspection his attention was also caught by a heavily muscled male patron who was voraciously eating something out of a pot. A mental note was made to check on this muscled inhabitant on the way back as something did not seem right about him.

The whole building was checked. No crutch burdened Michael was found. Descending to the central office he made the requisite checks about the computer labs and received the information he was already sure of -that no one should be in there. Hastening back to the scene of the crime he was befuddled to discover there was no one in this lab. Furthermore the lab was tightly locked such that only his staff card (or another like it) could possibly have gained entrance. A chill ran down his spine and he hastened to check on the muscular man and his (now surely empty) pot. Circumnavigating the floor to sneak up on him, our current protagonist was horrified to discover that there was no muscular man in the seat where he had once been. Noting the obvious logical possibility that he had simply left, he still felt disturbed by this and the other disappearance (not to mention the disappearing disabled Michael), believing them somehow to be connected to the current spate of calls.

7
In the evening when this service was still open the phone rang. The same man who had dutifully but in vain searched for Spring Heeled Crack Pants or Michael or whoever, was on the desk and answered this call.

Hello, a public service, how may I help you?
Hello… Silent, mumbly and distant.
Hello. Less severe than he fantasized he might be.
Hello, can you talk?
Hello sir, this isn’t really a service for talking. More in control now.
Hello can you talk? I’m quite high, bear with me.
Can I try and find someone to talk to you?
Can’t you talk? I’m quite high.
He wants to ask if he’s high on crack again but it seems deeply inappropriate.
Let me see if we can find someone for you to talk to.
Ok. He seems deflated. The hissing in the background is audible.

The public servant puts CP on hold and begins to try to find an alternative institution that might house his needs. He flounders badly from switchboard location to switchboard location. By the time he returns CP has fled the line.

8
Next day there is a plan in place to put CP through to a helpline if he should call. Staff now are so familiar with the whole phenomena that they joke they might accidently greet the caller as ‘Crack Pants’ or CP. Hi Crack Pants is that you? How are you doing? No one is sure if this won’t actually happen. Senior staff try to tell others to treat the matter with the gravity it deserves. Mid-morning the call comes and CP is directed to a helpline. But no one is convinced it is over. They don’t want it to be over. There are sightings of muscled men with pots on the third floor. Some one else claims there was someone in the computer lab, but again it was found to be locked and empty.

9
Another theory emerged amongst staff. Someone speculated that the phrases ‘bear with me’ might have been incorrectly decoded. The alternative decoding is that there was ‘a bear with him’. Whilst seeming errant nonsense at first, suggestions that the bear might be a crack hallucination or a metaphorical bear rendered it more reasonable. The theory took a stranger turn when it was suggested that CP might be Goldilocks as he liked to wear women’s underthings. This supposedly comedic addition brought about a shudder in the original complainant (who had been listening with interest). She then began to state that she was sure that in the original conversation, CP had used the phrase ‘bear with me’ three times.

10
In the evening the original lady is working. She gazes out the window and sees with some disbelief as a van seems to be reversing fairly swiftly towards the entrance of the building. The van bumps into the door and stops sharply -the driver having realised his miscalculation. Part of the sign for the building is damaged. There is a crack in the letter C of Public. The same woman, who has gone out to inspect the damage, is trying to ignore the significance of the crack and actually listen to the man who is apologizing. She would have managed this had she not then read the sign on the van which read ‘CP builders’. The sudden build up of pressure in her head became unbearable and fearing the man would reveal his name to be ‘Michael’ she ran back inside white-faced, informing her colleague that they needed to deal with the incident as she passed by.

11
Whilst the van incident was duly logged, despite the fervent attempts of the woman to explain the significance of a ‘crack’ in the C of Public, the builders’ name and the symbolic act of trying to enter the building, management were not sympathetic. She was informed that she should either take some time off or put the whole business behind her.

There were no more calls that day and the weirdness seemed to subside. A symbolic cleansing took place. The kitchen and office were deep cleaned. Everyone promised to be more tidy. Everyone felt more settled.

Then someone returned from the kitchen saying there was a solitary dirty spoon on the draining board. This seemed especially appalling since everyone had only just now made such strong covenants that they would keep all utensils and crockery clean from now on.

Several persons began to google if a spoon was required for smoking crack.