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This synthesis is a long time coming. The whole of pneuminous accretive theory thus far is born of Husserlian/Heideggerian phenomenology, the later Wittgenstein and chaos magic. I can hardly have failed to be aware of the pathway opened up to occult thought by D&G, very specifically through the CCRU. Though this doesn’t seem to do D&G justice, it is possible to read TP as if  they actually allow the possibility of sorcery. Philosophy doesn’t really like sorcery, philosophy doesn’t really want to deal with it. This is understandable, magickal effects are easy prey for scepticism. If you want to create systems that give solid epistemological results then magick is not going to help.

Like sorcery itself D&G seem to hover on precisely the agnostic disjunctive border. It is perfectly possible to read the sorcerous references in TP as just analogy for how things function (capital, assemblages in general)  whilst accepting a broad albeit Spinozist materialist kind of ontology. It is also possible to read it as if any ontology therein is utterly open the actuality of magick. Such a reading would mean assemblages as crossing different strata would not just be crossing over layers of materiality, it would have to include connecting lines that crossed time, that crossed worlds. A synchronicity as assemblage.

The influence of Castaneda on TP does not seem to be readily understood. Maybe the ridicule that Castaneda’s works received have brought about an airbrushing. Brent Adkins’ guide to TP contains not one index reference to Castaneda and yet if you have read Castaneda it is startlingly obvious that TP draws on it massively. Castaneda is certainly mentioned overtly but the line of flight is mentioned many times before it is made clearer that this too seems drawn from there. In Castaneda’s system, luminous fibres extend from the egg shaped energy blob of humans. This world is carefully described to not be thought of as luminous eggs wandering round in the same kind of space-time as we normally experience things. The fibres extend not simply in space but in directions we cannot conceive. They are lines of flight connecting things in a very real sense by contagion. The egg is a theme that peppers D&G which may not be drawn from the luminous egg yet certainly they were aware of this resonance. The key term assemblage itself may be taken from the Castaneda’s term assemblage point -the point of light in the luminous fibres that determines what reality we will experience. It may be that they do indeed just appropriate the ideas to deterritorialize them but equally maybe the usage of such material is there to hint at the extreme possibilities available in becoming.

In the pneuminous accretive theory I have been developing over the past 8 or so years we say that if such phenomena obtain and we bracket off magickal objectivity (this colour, smell really means such and such etc) then we are left with conceptuality being formed of a more active principle which is, under certain circumstances capable of altering what looks like solidity. This active principle we call the pneuma; it gives conceptuality the nature of a substance in the sense that it can interact with what we take to be the regular solidity of the world. All concepts are what we call accretions of pneuma: concepts stuck to concepts stuck to concepts: a multiplicity. Each accretion is formed around a signifier which enables its designation to function both in a regular sense and a magickal sense. Here we see the line of flight in action. When I think of something I am connected to it through such a pneuminous line. The thought is the accretion. They are not two separate things.

In considering D&G then we need to emphasise the sorcerous aspect by basically saying ‘if we treat the work as it is ontologically open to the possibility of magick then how does it account for it?’ Furthermore can we translate the accretive theory into language of D&G to productive effect?

I cannot make detailed progress with this today but I do note that there is clearly something to be worked on with the accretion, the abstract machine and the assemblage. The accretive theory was partly formed as it answers the problem of designation by the pneuminous connecting line: this really means this and it does it like this. It recognises the molar stasis of things. The accretion is the manifestation of this stability, it often appears in an archetypal form, it subsumes its incoherent edges of possibility until reluctantly a new image overtakes it -think of how TVs have changed. A television is a part of a machinic assemblage. An accretion is pure concept, it is the shiny surface and what it does. To many it has the incoherent edge of technology: the necessity that technology runs it yet a general blank as to how it does so. The acknowledgement connects even the most naive TV viewer to the technological axis yet the television runs along so many others also: entertainment, status, sexual, favourite shows and so on. What seems to be happening (as I work this through) is that the assemblage notion can be seen to run within the pneuminous. The big difference I am feeling is that there is a kind of comfort with materiality in D&G that accretive theory feels the need to bracket off. But if there is materiality then there is no sorcery (?). This is why the analogy reading comes in. Sometimes the materiality is palpable in TP.

I think the key to exploring this is in to tease out how the same connections exist in accretive theory as do in the materiality of assemblages, except in accretive theory the whole thing must be continually held in the space of vector-accretion, every machinic component must be of this nature.

Does it make sense to call the vector-accretion dyad an assemblage? There is indeed a question.

 

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Herbal medicine has a great deal of magickal thought in it. Untangling such thought from actual herbal actions is one of the missions of modern evidence based herbal medicine. However as per the agnostic disjunction the possibility shows itself that magickal interventions cannot be discounted no matter how strange the consequences may seem. The idea repeatedly dealt with by myself on this site is that conceptuality can be treated as a kind of substance that can be seen to be attached to all the regions of existence that we conceptualise. This idea is simply the extension of a chaos magickal ontology into regular philosophy. That is, if conceptual entities can be created then regular conceptual entities are not likely to be of a different order. The substantialisation means that the concept substance can seen as attached to an underlying, what we call ‘vector’ -called so because it plays host to the concept. Elsewhere on the CEO site the concept substance is referred to as pneuma and the sticking together of various concepts accretion (since all concepts are necessarily multiplicities).

It follows from this possibility that there may be accretions of pneuma attached to some vectors, which when examined from a scientific position appear nonsensical. Herbal medicine supplies an excellent example of this kind of thinking in signatures. The doctrine of signatures says that plants which in some way resemble an organ/body part/fluid may be considered as useful for treating the same part in the human. So in applying the accretive theory to this we would say that concept of that plant having a connection to that organ/part/fluid (all of which are also accretions plugged into vectors) is embedded onto the concept of that plant.

Such conceptual attachment is of course usually considered inert and any truth behind signatures is attributed either to chance or that the signature was attributed after the herb was known to be efficacious for a given complaint. These are perfectly rational responses, however all we wish to consider here is the interesting possibility that conceptual attachments due to signatures which have no healing function vector to attach to are actual as pneuminous accretions and hence potentially magickally effective. For example, if I have a plant that looks like kidneys and historically has been used for kidney complaints, then the kidney treatment concept has become attached to the plant (vector) and at a magickal level may well be effective all the way up until a scientific analysis removes this concept from the vector (because it had no actual healing constituents in it), after which it will be much less potent.

What is interesting in this notion of attachment is that, since the pneuminous accretions are not inert they may have potential other interactions with the vector (in this case the plant). Speculatively the idea is  that long term accretive attachment of a relatively consistent concept attributed to a vector over large periods of time could create a relation between accretion and vector that would be totally real at what we naively call a magickal level and yet utterly invisible.

A herbalist whom I respect very much says of the plant Iris that it is a facilitator of liver function which is the ‘the house of the ethereal soul or deep unconscious connecting principle’. Is this actually true? What do all these terms really mean? Does it make sense to ask if this is true? If we do not allow for something like the formation of contingent accretions then we would need a kind of spiritual objectivity/better understanding of the way the body interacts with the deep mind to be able to assess this statement. They add further that Iris as meaning the Goddess who used rainbows as bridges between the worlds is linked to the plant for precisely this reason i.e. that soul principle of the liver connects to the deep unconscious, Iris the plant is this bridge. The rich conceptual (accretive) attachment to the vector (the plant we call Iris) may all be metaphor that hints at actual processes.

However if the concept is not inert then there may be a more complicated feedback system going here. These principles of ethereal/unconscious connection through the liver could themselves be accretive structures projected onto a certain occult understanding of the body; embedded in a tradition such structures could function in an autonomous and real manner, literally forging the connection to the unconscious in the liver by the projection. A process of reifying accretive structures over the body vector, feeding back into the body through the pneuminous. The plant contains let us say some real physiological liver action, the vector of this healing action has accreted to it: the Goddess, the messenger, the rainbow bridge. The active pneuminous level of conceptual reality is plugged into the plant vector and its liver action. The magickal associations, the connections to the Goddess (herself and accretion) are (unless a kind of spiritual realism were true) totally contingent yet equally they have been there so long that it becomes hard to tell where vector stops and concept begins.

Of course this is speculation, yet equally that we live in a web of such deep historically constructed vector-accretion webs is only what is entailed by accepting the most rational version of magickal actuality.

 

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The umbratic is a curious intersection of different ideas. It is necessary and unnecessary. Its necessity is derived from the fact the idea cannot be removed. It’s lack of necessity from the fact it is technically not needed.

What is it? The umbratic is the idea of the unseen. It is the incoherent phantasy of being outside of perception. It is the wood where no one is watching or listening. The idea emerges out of sceptical thought that attempts to answer the question: is being that is perceived identical to being that is not perceived? The resultant inability to answer this question leaves the agnostic disjunctive appearance over the answer: we cannot say if there is a difference or not. The phenomena that point to there being a difference are again the occult ones. The point being that in synchronistic/magickal phenomena reality has shifted somehow outside of our perceptual sphere -we mean this specifically to the exclusion of the manifestation of spirits/immediately visible/audible phenomena (these invoke different kinds of concepts). That is, we do not see the mechanism by which magick/synchronicity has occurred. There is simply an uncanny rearrangement of things that has the appearance of some kind of agency being involved. This appearance is suggestive of a radical reality rearrangement that was only possible outside of perception, hence the invocation of the umbratic as a space in which the rearrangement was possible. Of course this doesn’t entail that magick/synchronicity could not still be functional in a metaphysical sense without umbratic rearrangement. Such possibilities exist as attractor models: the reality alteration is brought about metaphysically in some way by bringing certain things towards the protagonist without literal finger clicking alteration (such models also entail accretive type entities). However, the fact that the sudden alteration model exists is enough to give the umbratic life.

One can think on the impossibility of the umbratic, on how a space that isn’t perceived is not possible, on how there maybe always something there to detect, to perceive. But the impossibility of the umbratic is not enough to defeat it. It is a strongly incoherent concept that thrives on that impossible sensation of attempting to think what it is to imagine a space that is not being perceived. From here it derives a lot of its power.

The umbratic is related to the thing in itself. It is similar to a perfect scientific object. Something without any observer bias. This is part of its phantasy. But all prostheses act with our consciousness, there are no reports back from the umbratic.

We can try to do away with it. In the pneuminous theory we can imagine that there is only the pneuma, only the conceptual stuff. The umbratic, as mentioned, becomes unnecessary. But the appearance of the beyond the pneuma, beyond the vector field is still there, the phantasy of the outside, the absolute beyond the human security system. So a pure idealism always generates the idea of its beyond which it can never ascertain the validity of.

The umbratic gives the idea of structure. In the Tractatus this is how it is often mentioned. This association is related to the pure idealist issue. The appearance of the idea that there must be something behind the image invokes the notion that this part is what does the holding together. This is reinforced by the way in which the pneuminous level of concepts seems so easily detachable from the vectors. The pneuminous accretions can be unbound from the vectors and clearly perceived in the mind (a field of pure pneuma).

Does this mean the vector field and the umbratic are the same thing? No. Because it is possible to catch a kind of glimpse of the vector field. Phenomenological stripping down achieves something like this. But the vector field is still perceived being. It is like being without any accretions attached, or at least as best as we can achieve. However we can never be sure that there are not inbuilt structuring forces that mean the vector field itself is perceived as a limit, that is there is some kind of Kantian aesthetic holding things together even at this level.

The umbratic is darkness, literally. Darkness is where we cannot perceive so again the notion of the unperceived reemerges. This creates the curious identity between the space behind you and the space in the shadows. Seeing the shadow is the closest one can get to perceiving the umbratic. Of course a certain aspect of the shadow accretion means that it is totalised, that we simply understand it. But the ontological shadow is different from this. The ontological shadow reveals darkness to be the space in which the regular accretions of that shadow space are more prone to being taken over by different ones. That is, the umbratic is presupposed to be a structuring power that lies beneath the vector field. The accretions, the concepts, plug into the vectors, this unity makes our world of things. But the accretions exist unbound also and operate on their own unbidden by our conscious minds. The accretion has the power under rare circumstance to alter the umbratic. To do this is must alter an existing vector-accretion arrangement. In perception as it is happening, the feedback of the realness of the world enables the perpetuity of the solidity itself. But outside of perception it is different, outside the accretions imprinted on the vectors are in some sense still there, yet immediately there is a loosening. This loosening is what makes magick/synchronicity possible. This loosening happens in the darkness because ontologically the lack of perceptual ability facilitates the loosening of the solidity and interference from rogue accretions.

There is power in the shadow.

 

  1. Manifestationism
  2. Incoherence
  3. Phantasy
  4. Pneuma
  5. Accretive theory itself
  6. Design a god.
  7. Significance/Insignificance
  8. Designation
  9. Vector theory
  10. The Umbratic
  11. The Double
  12. The zone
  13. The numbers/the system
  14. NARP

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I read Carlos Castaneda about 20 years ago; previously to that I had deliberately ignored him as new age nonsense. However at some point the moment appeared when the academic philosophy was less and certain other impulses  were more prevalent. I must be honest. I was bowled over by it. Castaneda can write and the narrative is both seductive and compelling. It begins with what seems like some kind of initiation into possibly real practices and progresses into a description of stranger and stranger things. Taken as it actually is it’s really quite terrifying: proper reality bending sorcery is actually possible, teleportation is possible, non-organic entities lurk on the periphery of reality and some actually feed off our awareness as a default state of existence. The books eventually unveil a system that resembles a quite extreme form of chaos magickal reprogramming. One must break ones habits, learn to not be the habitual self, unlearn perception itself to achieve as Deleuze and Guattari rightly note ‘the body without organs’. Opportunities for ‘power’ lurk all over the place and if we are interested we have to know how to grasp them.

The system has a energy body which describes humans as a luminous egg of fibres with a particularly bright patch behind the back in the same place in us all. This is the famous assemblage point (my Deleuzian interest is piqued at this name). The position of this point determines what reality we experience and in most people it stays in the same place, however the sorcerer learns to move it so as to move between worlds.  As the books progress we learn the possibility that we may not even be aware of many things we have done or even do and that when we die we are consumed by a giant entity called the eagle. That is unless we have done our practices so rigorously that we can bypass this option and escape into the infinite.

The seductive possibility of such things being true is very attractive to all manner of minds in various states. I cannot even now say such things are not possible and such denials are not the point. What is the point is that the Castaneda system offers no actual sense of freedom that helps anyone other than yourself. The liberation of the self from the self into the infinite is the goal but there is no accompanying compassion (like in Dzogchen e.g. which Castaneda assuredly drew on). There is just awe and wonder and impeccable acts. Now of course this may be actually a kind of correct response in an indifferent universe, but as a system it lacks the ability to do anything for anyone other than break them down with the promise of powers and an endgame that even if actually achievable is clearly spelled out to need an astronomical amount of effort way beyond the ability of almost everyone. This gamble comes at the cost of the your family and your friends, the full Castaneda is not just some gentle new age system. Even if it’s anthropologically nonsense there is power in the writings and they will do things if you play with the techniques in there. But for a human connected life it’s not really something many of us would want to consider.

This brings us to Land or at least an aspect of the philosophy associated with him. I find something almost equally self-defeating in the ushering in of the human eschaton by invoking the AI god from the future through accelerated technocapital. There is a kind of undeniable logic to the Landian view that is actually hard to escape. How do we stop ourselves from creating AI that ultimately surpasses us given that we don’t seem to want to? It may well still be a long way off and maybe it isn’t possible. The impression, the appearance that shows itself no matter how incoherent is that it is possible, and this is all that is needed to generate the teleology. Why is it not a fitting end to transfer our cognition magnified a thousandfold into a vessel far more durable than our ‘fleshy drag’? In an indifferent universe this is a reasonable response so long as one places no value on the human and its being-human. I’m not here to make some heart wrenching plea in favour of the human, but I do feel a similarity between the hollowness in feeling towards this endgame and the Castaneda option. Both offer an escape at the cost of everything familiar.

Castaneda’s system uncoupled from Castaneda is a similar logical endpoint to Land’s: achieve the body without organs with no compassion or create the AI entity that potentially has no compassion. Compassion dies in either instance, different impulses have taken over but the end is the same. I do not say that any system that advocates dissolution of the self always entails no compassion, indeed the Buddhists bolt compassion onto the system quite possibly as a safe guard from this conclusion, achieving the void without compassion. In this sense it may be that what Castaneda advocates is more pure for it removes the compassion which the Buddhists kept. This compassion, the logic suggests, was an contingent connection to the human and just as the flesh and emotions must go for AI, so a thorough system of energetic freeing must remove the notion as a stable structure.

Compassion means valuing the human (amongst other beings) but now we are frankly nauseated by this idea and we hate ourselves because we cannot be trusted, we have betrayed everyone. I do not know where this goes. The human ended with Heidegger (though his compassion is of course dubious), he defended a kind of poetic human dwelling which he warned us was covered and yet might be covered forever. We all know ‘The Question Concerning Technology’ and the danger of which it speaks. For Land this is not a danger, this is the destiny and ‘nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten‘ is to be actually realised.

We just didn’t know which God would come calling and what ‘saving’ meant.

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What are the accretions? The accretions are accretions of pneuma. Pneuma is the conceptual substrate that we postulate as necessarily existing when we choose belief in synchronistic phenomena as metaphysically actual and not harmoniously determined -as discussed under agnostic disjunction. Phenomenologically all beings of awareness must necessarily have pneuminous interactions, but certain kinds of beings (Narps, in this case humans) are capable of binding pneuma into incredible forms of complexity and excess: accretions.

The accretions of pneuma are attached to vectors. Vector here is a carrier for the pneuminous accretion, the conceptual stuff. The vector field is itself pneuminous as it is base of all accretive possibilities. Phenomenologically the vector field is laid over the umbratic. The umbratic is the phantasy of being outside of awareness. It is the appearance of the structural elements underneath the conceptual overlay and vector field (pneuma).

This laying-over is one of minimal interaction. In normal reality, vector regions with accretions attached are part of a feedback system that makes them more into the thing the human takes them to be. Here is  vector, I attach the concept pen to the vector. If the vector is such that we would normally use the concept pen for then the application of the concept performs a minor magickal act upon the vector making it curiously more pen-like. Such actions take place all the time and are largely inconsequential. Actual magickal acts/synchronistic ruptures are caused by accretions attaching themselves to vectors that would not usually take them. This may result in an unusual configuration of conceptuality that is somehow arresting.

Accretions are formed by humans (Narps) but are free floating from them. As such accretions exist in two manners, both of which are related. Accretions may be bound to vectors. All physical things are accretions to some degree or other. Everyday disposable things, rubbish, accretes very little, but some things accrete a great deal. As these things travel through life with us we feel how much of our story is in them. In the theory described here, this story is literally in them, the pneuma is actually attached to the vector. Human made things have conceptual specificity embedded in them at the point of creation. These pieces become e.g. this dishwasher, this dishwasher becomes a certain kind of character in a household. Intensity binds pneuma to vectors, this may happen in the course of life or it may be done intentionally.

The other way in which accretions exist is unbound. Pneuminous accretions that are unbound  are easy to experience, one only has to remember anything or imagine anything and the accretion is detectable in some sense, either as non visual structure or visual. Since accretions are often built around a word-seed, the word seed will summon the accretion easily. Pneuma is sticky. We may take two ideas and with will force them together thus making an accretion.  Magick is largely based around humans abilities to manipulate unbound pneuma and to beseech the unbound pneuminous accretion to alter the regular solidity of things. Memory houses, kabbalah etc all use unbound pneuma. Active magick of intent seeks to apply new conceptual structures (an unbound pneuminous accretion) onto a vector which does not currently take it but might do so -this extensive contingency is important.

The regular solidity of existence as ruled by the structural umbratic can sometimes be breached by the accretion. Intensity can be responsible for this though in the case of synchronicity the action is down to the accretions themselves. No doubt factors which might be called unconscious are related to the manner in which the accretion behaves, ultimately though this is pure speculation. All that can be said is that some idea has inserted itself into someone’s world in an uncanny way and when paranormality is chosen (as a belief), the accretion must be responsible.

A human then is attached to accretions and is formed of them. The word-seed for most humans is their name. Around this word-seed the neurotic-accretion or self is formed. This accretion is embedded in the body-vector. In normal human functioning the neurotic accretion controls the conscious aspects of the vector and regulates the ability of other accretions to control the vector. The neurotic accretion though is in perpetual struggle with accretive powers which seek to dominate it, to control the territory. In the case of severe insanity the neurotic accretion fails to regulate the other accretions and they wander freely through the body-vector.

We can analyses accretions vector relations into 4 principle types.

  1. Accretions bound to vectors that fit the description of the accretion or even if they have escaped the original vector the attachment is still sensible from the Narp’s perspective. Hammer as use term, becomes hammer accretion embedded into vectors capable of taking this accretion.
  2. Accretions unbound from vectors that still represent the vector  in some way. The vector as the source of such an accretion determines the appearance, even if now the appearance has taken on a platonic type hue of perfection -ideality. These are what we call representations in the mind.
  3. Accretions unbound to any vector and having the appearance of never deriving from a physical vector. Imaginary images or magickal constructs/manifestations fall into this category.
  4. Accretions bound to vectors that they not suited to in ordinary life. These occur in magick, humour, surrealism/dadaism/pataphysics. This is the instance in which we take a vector and say ‘this vector will take the concept x’ even if the vector is nothing to do with x. We take a spoon and we pretend it is an owl. In doing so we infect the vector that readily takes the spoon concept and stick onto it the owl concept.
  1. Manifestationism
  2. Incoherence
  3. Phantasy
  4. Pneuma
  5. Accretive theory itself
  6. Design a god.
  7. Significance/Insignificance
  8. Designation
  9. Vector theory
  10. The Umbratic
  11. The Double
  12. The zone
  13. The numbers/the system
  14. NARP