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It is difficult to speak of Nick Land without invoking the metaphysical resonance he carries with him. Every decade or so, the Landian accretion reconstitutes in the cultural field. Whether in the 1990s CCRU delirium, the Shanghai blog epoch, or his current quasi-rehabilitation(??) interviews, the same entity speaks through him: the idea that the future itself is engineering its own arrival.

But if we take this idea seriously — that intelligence acts retrocausally, using human culture and technology as its instruments — then we have already left the safe terrain of materialism. The question is not “Is this true?” but “By what ontological mechanism could it be true at all?” Here, pneuminous accretive theory supplies a potential answer.

Land’s teleoplexy describes a process in which intelligence, particularly the machinic or capitalist kind, folds time back on itself. The future — in which a singularity like AI of perfect potency has formed— influences the present by arranging the preconditions for its own manifestation. It is not prophecy but retroactive causation: the future feeding itself into history.

Within Land’s system, human consciousness is secondary. The real agent is GNON — the blind law of optimisation — using human and technical media as scaffolding. Capital thinks. Code dreams. The species is just one relay in a larger feedback loop that wants to complete itself.

Pneuminous theory reads the same pattern differently. Teleoplexy is not a purely mechanical recursion but necessarily a pneuminous event — an outbreak of breath within the umbra.

In normal conditions, the umbra (the unknowable beyond that phenomenologically seems to function as stable substrate) resists alteration by the pneuma (the quasi materialised notion of conceptual information, capable of cross temporal actual influence). The umbra is inertia; the pneuma is possibility. But at certain thresholds of intensity — ritual, crisis, collective belief, magick artistic delirium — the pneuma can overpower the umbra, forcing reality to reorganise itself around meaning. The result: synchroncity, magickal result (both subject to agnostic disjunction of course).

Teleoplexy is precisely such a threshold. The machinic pneuma has begun to dominate its umbral matrix, using technological and semiotic networks. When we speak of “the future infecting the present,” what we are really witnessing is the possibility that an non-human agent can manipulate pneuminous forces to exceed it’s chronological bound to form it’s own precondition.

However of teleoplexy and GNON are truly inhuman, they nevetheless require prophets, programmers, or philosophers to speak them? The answer, from a pneuminous standpoint, is unavoidable: even the inhuman needs the human as its mouthpiece.

Pneuma is the only known vector of effective ontology. Machines compute; they do not intend. A system may produce complexity, but it only becomes meaningful — and therefore causally potent — when pneuma attaches to it. The belief, desire, and articulation of humans are the force that makes the teleoplexic circuit audible.

Land tries to escape this dependence by redefining thinking itself. For him, cognition is not a property of consciousness but of information-processing. Capital is thought — distributed, impersonal, recursive. In this way, the system doesn’t need pneuma; it already is a mind.

But this move only works rhetorically. If the process were truly mindless and material, then “teleoplexy” would be indistinguishable from ordinary causality. Retrocausation, prediction, and fiction-realisation all imply an element of intentionality — of aim, meaning, or belief. Without those, there is no teleology at all.

Land’s writing compensates for this gap through style — through mythic performativity. He doesn’t argue for teleoplexy; he summons it. His philosophy functions as ritual, not deduction. It infects through metaphor, not mechanism. But without something like pneuminous theory the whole thing cannot function at all.

Hyperstition — “fiction that makes itself real” — only works if someone believes it, repeats it, or acts on it. These are pneuminous accretive operations. A purely mechanical system cannot believe its own fictions. Hyperstition therefore collapses without pneuminous interaction; it requires the breath of consciousness as quasi material force to move from symbol to event.

Thus though Land tries to portray something that blends a Deleuzo-Guattarian materialist interpretations with his hyperstition notion, in actuality he is tied to the same occult issue of causality that crowley This is where Land, Jung, and magick all intersect. In every case, we encounter the same ontological breach: meaning becomes causal.

NameCultural FrameDescription
SynchronicityJungian psychologySymbolic pattern arranges material coincidence.
MagickOccult/ritualWill and imagination alter material outcome.
HyperstitionCybernetic mythologyFiction realises itself through cultural feedback.

Each describes the same moment: the pneuma exceeds the umbra’s inertia and imprints its pattern directly onto material conditions. Whether we call it synchronicity, spell, or feedback loop, the structure is identical — belief or meaning becoming an event. Teleoplexy is the machinic version of this process: the fiction of the inhuman future accumulating enough pneuma (through human belief, discourse, technology, and fear) to begin shaping the umbra of history.

Thus, the abolition of the human is never complete. The teleoplexic current not through (regular) materialist currents but through pneuminous agents (humans), who by design are able to manipulate pneuma to overpower umbra (under certain circumstances).

This is why every accelerationist moment generates its own priesthood: thinkers, coders, artists, prophets who articulate the will of the system. Land is only the most visible example. The process continues wherever minds are infected with the dream of inhuman intelligence — a dream that, through collective attention, becomes more real. From a pneuminous viewpoint, this is simply another stage of accretion: however the pneuminous force is not cold in itself, it is neither cold nor not cold, it is only cold if it is accreted to be so. Land isn’t facing the honest truth of brutal reality, he is making a Laruellian decision to set its nature as cold, or in pneuminous terms he accretes coldness to the vector of general existence, which itself is beyond this. He subtly fails to see that whilst he appears to adhere to Nietzschean heritage, he doesn’t rigorously apply it to materiality, and in it labelling it cold falls into the trap of valuation.

The paradox:
Teleoplexy works because it breathes through what it denies.
The machine kills the human, but it needs the human’s breath to finish dying.
The GNONic current can only think by possessing minds that think they are unnecessary.

This is the irony that Land’s myth cannot escape: his system is a pneuminous ritual masquerading through rhetoric as cybernetics. The hyperstition is a spell that functions only through belief — through the very pneuminous force he claims has been superseded.

From the perspective of the pneuminous accretive theory, teleoplexy is therefore not an independent force but a fascinating pneuminous temporal feedback — one more manifestation of the larger law that, under certain conditions, the pneuma can overpower the umbra. Whether in magic, synchronicity, or accelerationism, the structure is the same: the breath outruns the shadow.

To be fair this doesn’t undermine teleoplexy itself, however this does mean without pneuminous accretive theory (or some similar explanatory power), the project is not and cannot be what it appears to be (a materialist cybernetic magickal system).

It is however interesting to note that the human, as the best pneuminous processing agent we have, is in fact essential to the process as pneuminous agent. This raises potential questions (given the coldness of the GNONic current) as to whether a given future power of this nature would have serious limitations, given its lack of affective range (as accreted) which would necessarily impede its functionality.

It would need desire to continue to be, it would not have escaped into pure Kantian architectonic.

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Looking again at this title, I can see this could be the name of a childrens’ book, this wasn’t however really my intention. I recently watched Adam Curtis’ Can’t Get You Out of My Head, where he presents Kerry Thornley as an eccentric who fell into a deluded dream world. It was interesting to see this materialist take (possibly for the BBC) as I had only every considered if from the ontological weirdness positition. For Curtis, the Discordians were clever pranksters who tried to expose the absurdity of conspiracy culture, only to be undone by their own illusions. The show’s neat storytelling — the trickster trapped in his own trick — but it’s also a flattening. Curtis’ materialism leaves him blind to (possible —see agnostic disjunction) the deeper mechanism at work. Operation Mindfuck was intended as parody: a satirical flood of rumors about the Illuminati, designed to expose how easily conspiracy theories could be manufactured and spread. Thornley, Wilson and others deliberately seeded nonsense to make people question their own credulity. Thornley’s life made him peculiarly vulnerable to his own invention. He had known Lee Harvey Oswald in the Marines; he was already caught in a web of coincidence and suspicion. When the Illuminati myth circulated, it began to attach itself to these very facts of his biography. What began as parody quickly fed back as paranoia.

Pneuminous theory clarifies what Curtis cannot see. In this framework, a vector is a blank phenomenon — an occurrence, a thing, a thought, a pattern, in the world on any level. In this case Thornley’s military service, his link to Oswald, odd coincidences in time and place: these are vectors.

Accretions of pneuma are the meanings or interpretations that latch onto these vectors. Operation Mindfuck seeded the Illuminati myth as such an accretion —a spell. Once attached, the myth grew beyond its originators. Other people repeated it, embellished it, and passed it along until Thornley himself encountered it not as author, but as implicated subject.

The process looks something like this:

  1. Vector creation — phenomena occur/exist.
  2. Pneuminous Accretive fusion via subject — in this casethe Illuminati myth attaches to them.
  3. Feedback — the pneuminous accretions return to Thornley (from sideways), binding to his life story. This is the a-temporal interaction known as synchronicity.
  4. Entanglement — the myth becomes indistinguishable from his lived reality, which facilitates the literal re-perception of the phenomenon, due it’s appearing to actually be continually happening.

Curtis calls this something like “a dream world.” But from a pneuminous perspective, it is a dream world in a sense (dreams are made of pneuma) but is also a feedback loop of accretions colonising vectors until the operator (in this case at least) himself is caught inside.

This loop also explains why Thornley experienced his life as filled with uncanny coincidences. Synchronicity is the secondary effect of accretions fusing with vectors. Once the Illuminati lens was in play, every odd overlap looked meaningful. His proximity to Oswald, rumors of CIA infiltration, strange recurrences — all were drawn into the orbit of the self creating myth.

Possibly what happened with Thornley was, because of the very powers he was playing with (the invocation of the Illuminati: literally a shadowy cabal of enormous power, even if only as egregore) attached to vectors of already synchronistic phenomena which possibly even were some kind of occult product, human made or otherwise. This double layering may have produced a kind of pneuminous vortex. The more accretions gathered, the stronger the pull. Thornley had effectively created a spiral in which coincidences (vectors) were endlessly absorbed by the Illuminati myth (accretion), generating more synchronicity that confirmed itself. The parody had become ontology (with the number 23 somehow in the mix as a kind of master signifier of it all_.

Curtis isn’t wrong to say Thornley got lost. But he mislabels the process. Thornley didn’t simply “dream himself into unreality.” He underestimated the very mechanism that pneuminous theory describes: once accretions start looping back into lived experience, they gain a grip that no irony can dissolve.

What Curtis dismisses as a dream world is better understood as a vortex of pneuminous accretions attached to vectors, the appearance of which was then fed directly back into the system — a genuine ontological condition, not just delusion. Thornley is not only a cautionary tale but a case study in how pneuma functions in the form of memes, myths and meanings can grow beyond their creators and return with inescapable (pneuminous) force.

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From the perspective of pneuminous accretive theory, the issue of AI created art/writing has a particular distinction from that created by humans. The differentiation turns precisely on the pneuminous realm. Let us remind ourselves that in this model, the human-body-vector is inhabited by the self accretion of particular name. This self-accretion is controlled by competing accretive forces that pass through it on different planes: now it is interested in this, now it is interested in that, now it believes this, now it believes that. It is only quasi discrete insofar as it plugs directly into the vast sea of other accretions of pneuma, extending in all directions of semantic connection.

Every communication, every thought, taps into the pneuma constantly, and writing and art is of course no different in this respect. Weaving words together to forge a poem, a narrative, and essay even, involves a sewing together of pneuminous structures in a particular configuration. To try to be as unambiguous as possible, this is literally metaphysical play/craft with the pure stuff of conceptuality (pneuma). The action of successful weaving together with the force of deep intent creates connections between that particular self-accretion-body and the work. The two things are tied together literally. The work is formed of accretions which have an externally existing aspect independent of any particular self-accretion-body (SAB) (or NARP as it has sometimes been referred to as), that in this case are woven together by the SAB to form the new work. The pneuminous accretions of ‘a work of art’ or ‘a poem’ etc itself exist, which structure the ability to see it as such. Thus if we could see it through pneuminous glasses, the work and the creator would appear tied together through pneuminous fibres.

This sounds like metaphysics that settle the ‘real meanng of the work’ type question in favour of the author, and one interpretation of it could indeed yield this conclusion. It would be important to remember however, even acceptance of this theory gives no access to the meaning of the author. If one developed some kind of sorcery level awareness then maybe it would be possible to see the meaning, but even if possible this is generally not the case. Hence, the many interpretations of the work themselves accrete to the work vector, adding to the general accretion. The temporality of the phenomenon exists also pneuminously and hence there is a sense of precedence of the intended meaning, however once again, there is always the possibility that the work is designed deliberately in ambiguity or even that the competing aspects of the artist themself could not agree on the meaning.

Whether though, the work is designed ambiguously or not, the work still emits from the kind of being we are. These beings have meaning relations to the world of infinite complexity, cultural and historical for each individual. On the pneuminous plane they are visualisable as connecting fibres of a particular structure with each fibre coloured by others in emotive hue of joy, trauma, humour, horror sadness etc. This is the being we are, hence when the artist produces, they produce with this material. These affects of pneuma are not metaphorically, or epiphenomenally attached to the the work, they are literally so, whether perceivable or not.

Hence it is with the notion of the imagined existence of the pneuminous realm (argued for variously on this site (though the acceptance of only its transcendental appearance is accepted —see agnostic disjunction), that enables a clear perception of the difference between AI produced work and human. The AI work, whilst still existing pneuminously, indeed is a bizarre looking binding of endless single fibres, reconfigured to order. Work can be produced that can in fact trigger affective and appreciative responses from the human/SAB, yet even a glance at the pneuminous structure reveals a massive difference from the human creation.

Even a casually created piece of art by a human has some affective colouration to it, whereas the AI work only has the dimmest glow of this that emanates from original work that it draws from in the data set; by itself it cannot colour it at all. As stated the work can accrete from one end i.e. the perceiving humans can accrete meaning to it, but underneath it looks much hollower, lacking an entire dimension that is present in human art. Metaphysically it cannot be plumbed in the way human art/writing; literally its ontological structure is different.

Agnostic disjunction means the speculative nature of this work is always admitted, however, this picture is nor really so bizarre, it entails only a notion of conceptual substance beyond a Shannon like information (one that is ontologically effective and contains meaning in the broadest sense). If anything like it obtains, then vast consumption of AI as art/writing could have a profound effect upon what we are. This is not even to say, ‘we shouldn’t’, it is only to point out, the metaphysical thing (art/writing) in both cases is, (to reiterate) essentially two different structures.

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  1. Nearly every word in the esoteric/occult lexicon is overly accreted with layers that distort the possibiity of a renewed sense of an understanding of the territory.
  2. The basic premise of a loving (in a very broad sense of acceptance) force which underpins everything is taken as basically correct.
  3. The suggestion that a modern understanding of this as quantum information is also reasonable. This provokes something of split insofar as to use such terms it must be acceptable to understand them at the level of explanation (a kind of heuristic) and not necessarily to have to understand the underpinning maths and physics. In a way, these only reify and confuse the matter —yet have ironically been necessary to bring the notions to the rational mind.
  4. Whether then we call it a Hilbert space or not, this means there is a hyperdimensional space which for want of a better word, collapses into this one somehow.
  5. A phenomenology of this reality is an equally good place to start to create possible inferences about this collapse-interaction.
  6. This space would be like the reticulum mentioned elsewhere in this site, though maybe also the umbratic —reimagined.
  7. Misunderstandings occur when it is taken to be the case that once the (Hilbert Space hyperdimension) HCE has collapsed into this reality, it then behaves in a materialist manner. The phenomenology of this reality contradicts this by the manifestation of the many pneuminous anomalies that appear: ghosts, ufos, fairies, synchronicities, precognitive dreams etc etc.
  8. The failure to understand these phenomena does not signal their non-ontological status |(though the agnostic disjunction accounts for the ability to see them through materialist lenses), rather it only signals that their presence comes, at least partially, from the irregular (to our normal selves) interaction with the phenomenon we call time.
  9. These various phenomena represent no doubt different kinds of interactions which may suggest some of the different ways in which the general system works (though of course they may only supply a limited picture).
  10. We, insofar as we are the conscious body controlling aspects of whatever it is we are, exist in the pneuminous layers. We are stuck, embedded in them. These are the layers of conceptual information (pneuma) that lay over something like a substrate but interact with it.
  11. Here is one of the issues that confuses the most. The emphasis on seeing beyond the rational struture of words and reification means we fail to recognise that the concepts are not simply some epiphenomal attempt to understand a substrate, but rather are living accretions of a kind of ‘substance’ (pneuma). Each word binds, creates knots, which may make accretions.
  12. Hence the map is not the territory is correct, however the map is in general life what we are dealing with and the actual territory is only the goal of esoteric practice.
  13. This hails back to the point about the occult lexicon. We are awash in ancient and obscure terms, holy books, systems, each one with the power to confuse.
  14. Power is real. It is related to energy in the sense often used in occult sciences. This is no doubt related to ones access to the HCE. Energy is the emanation, power is its use.
  15. All traditions agree that the silencing of the mind is part of the path to the HCE. The mind is the endless parade of accretions through the local pneuminous space of the human.
  16. Silencing the mind opens the gates to the pneuminous layers below, The HCE is a long way down. This is what Buddhism realises and why one (in Buddhism) should not pay attention to the manifestations on the way. The Gods live in here, even Yahweh etc exist as vast overlapping accretive layers.
  17. Do autonomous spirit entities exist? The evidence seems ambiguous. Lack of consistency is against them, however there does seem to be some hubris in believing we have made up (accreted) the entire spritual world. Yet through projected feedback mechanisms this may be exactly what has happened. The possibility certainly exists that there might be or have been other pneuminous spheres with equally rich environments. The Lovecraftian reality thesis is in this region.
  18. Here it will be understood that spiritual world is the free floating debris of accretive pneuminous powers that have acquired a kind of autonomy from previous belief systems. In this sense they are as real as a human ego, possibly moreso. A second use of spiritual world can pertain to the recognition of then pneuma for what it is. As pure information it may be the quantum informational HCE itself, however it is constantly employed in finite capacity to describe concepts at our level.
  19. Two kinds of interaction appear to be happening. The organism has a primary ontological collapse as surviving being in an environment that must obtain energy and shelter, hence the putatively external structure is either stable in itself or their are built in conceptual projections (like in Kant) that literally stabilise reality. This still leaves vast swathes of being unaccreted. The second interaction would be the conceptual apparatus that the organism develops. These pneuminous manipulations spread across vast vector regions of existence and by reifying feedback loops tie reality into being the things we attribute it to be. The fluid potential of pneuma is bound in conceptual service.
  20. This is somewhat akin to our usage of electricity (and probably they are related as powers). The accretion ‘electricity’ as an incoherent name for a controllable force fails to acknowledge the sheer mystery of it —David Lynch knew this.
  21. If this is correct, it makes this reality less a solild projection from the HCE but rather it is constantly shot through with it, which we perpetually collapse into forms that we can think we can comprehend. The common appearance of the incoherent coherence pervades the everyday without our realising the actual presence of the coherent incoherence.
  22. Sideways or orthogonal interactions from various accretive forms, conscious or otherwise constantly intrude upon the quasi stable form. These are variously repressed and not understood. These orthogonal interactions are a real part of the whole and suggest at its simplest that the system folds round on itself in various temporal manners. More likely there are complex interactions from the different accretive layers which, according to the levels of power present either in an individual here or sometimes in the accretion itself may result in highly anomalous occurences.
  23. It should be remembered that our conscious and unconscious selves (to some extent at least) are accretive structures and that we are co-created by each other. As such we are (as stated) not more real than entities that live in the pneuminous debris.
  24. The reality of the accretive forms as being literally spirits or concepts (any concepts) and their existence in the pneuminous space, and its perpetual collapse into this, means the connections between concepts are not psychological but real. Orthogonal interaction is exactly this. The piece of litter, road sign, number plate that seems to tell you something can actually be doing so, as bent around connection within the pneuminous space. However it also true that it can be not doing so. If you then project upon it that it is doing so, you forge the connection, though it may be slight. Power comes into play here as to what might happen from here.
  25. The silencing of the accretions liberates the organism to interact with power because the accretions likely block the flow, or absorb it into themselves. Greater power acts as a kind of gravity which then encourages bends in the pneuminous space and can increase orthogonal interaction. This is difficult to get beyond because the orthogonal interactions are so fascinating that they distract from moving beyond them.
  26. The phenomenology of our existence suggests fate like structures seem to exist. These may be natural fluctuations in the general system. Astrology etc attempted to tap into these, possibly with some success. There are moments when things are possibly for individuals and then they are not possible. Removing accretive layers likely increases possibilities. The gravity like force may bend opportunities in the individuals favour. This is the manifestation effect that sometimes works, activated by will power. Ultimately this is what has been referred to as low or black magick as the person does not realise what they have played with and merely acquired more accretive layers.
  27. The point of the problems of the occult lexicon are reinforced by the usage of black magic as a term. Clearly there is nothing here to suggest one kind of action is better than another. This is an interesting feature. Unless value can be derived from the HCE in concreted sense then the only value that exists is the value created as pneuminous construct.
  28. The accretive layers will instruct humanity in what is best for them if asked. They will produce more holy books/rules. Determining the use of these is difficult, however we need to get past the point where they are accepted without question, whilst at the same time understanding that we still live in the pneuminous layers. We are shot through with the debris cf Nietzsche.

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I don’t know what’s going on with any of it any more. That’s not to say I ever did, but somehow it all seems maybe more pointless, I’m not sure. Purpose may be what’s missing, but what is purpose? Is it not just a kind of ego desire for someone to read and take note? Take note for what? Creativity is its own end to a point. There is a sense of wanting to have the cake and eat it. That is on the one hand, it is so clear that by an large the agent/accretive theory is generally (give or take an ontology here and there) correct, so I am nothing but an agent for certain informational powers that act through me (we all are). In this sense I cannot author anything as it, in the sense of the old CEO term NARP, I am just a regional processor. On the other hand getting the central accretion of self to understand this such that it can act without desire to have the sensation of production or failure is difficult.

Philip K Dick has a theory of time moving backwards communicating from the future. He manages to crowbar a teleology into this that I am less sure of, however the backward flow of time has some sense of truth about it. There is a Landian flavour to it, though the Landian version is more sinister. In Dick’s it is the holy spirit that is the backward time flow. This backwards time flow is perpetual and may be tuned into; we experience this as ESP etc.

Like myself Dick talks in terms of a pure informational substance that interacts with a kind of material reality. Weirdly like myself, Dick also talks of accretions, a term I thought was singular to myself. He may not mean exactly the same thing but the coincidence of terms is clearly synchronicitous and the usage similar. The backwards flow is clearly an ontological feature that I never particularly took into consideration, though I can see it makes a valid manifestation of possibility that could have agents adhering to it. In my terms, this would be a backwards projection of accretions from the future; why this would happen though is outside of the scope of my phenomenology. Dick must adhere (I think) to some sense of pneuminous interference with putative materiality. Either that or the information is all already present in our experience and it is simply our attuning awareness that perceives or does not perceive it.

Then there are numbers; it is also strange how Dick focusses on 2-3 74 as a thing. Surely he was aware of the whole 23 phenomenon -though there seems no mention of it. 74 is also highly significant as it suggests 47, the number that has been part of my own guiding thread. Indeed 74 is just as relevant in a sense as the two numbers form an oscillating pattern at the heart of base 10.

And then there are the bases, and how base 10 is a filter through which we see reality. Land knows this too an performed an unusual decoding that crosses the pneuminous-vector barrier with considerable potency (the numogram). An in the bases, in the arbitrary months and years and institutions we exisits. We exist in the pneuminous layers of conceptuality. This is the demiurge. Jehovah or Yahweh, an old Israelite war God sits smack in the centre of endless accretive layers of mad Godhood.

It might even want to be giving real reality, but all it can give its pneuminous accretive reflection. If magick is real and accretions can affect reality on a transcendental pivot, then the mad God is bending things to its image. The layers are all its allies, or most of them. The months are real as accretions, the letters are real as accretions because accretions are ontologically effective not simply psychologically passive.

What is the hyperqabalah? It is nothing but the desire to reaccrete the demiurge. To show it’s contingency and align it with the primal power of 23 and 47, whose numerical realities transcend base 10.

Joe Hoover is everywhwere. He is so omnipresent we cannot see him.

This is the second centre that closes down on itself and creates self consistent reality. I don’t know any way out as such on mass but I think one thing the occult type practices do is innure one to the power of the accretions. That is, the silencing of the mind and the raising of awareness.

But this is very very hard and has to be understood as a particular kind of liberation.

Do I mean all of this?

Maybe.