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My Encounter with the word pneuma goes back to Nietzsche. These two sections from ‘Human all Too Human’ seem relevant. The first because it includes the very encounter with the word and the second for the view it holds on the metaphysical world.

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Pneumatological elucidation of nature. – Metaphysics elucidates the handwriting of nature as it were *pneumatologically, -as the church and its scholars formerly did the Bible. It requires a great deal of understanding to apply to nature the same kind of rigorous art of elucidation that philologists have now fashioned for all books: with the intention of comprehending what the text intends to say but without sensing, indeed presupposing, a second meaning. But as even with regard to books the bad art of elucidation has by no means been entirely overcome and one still continually encounters in the best educated circles remnants of allegorical and mystical interpretations: so it is also in respect to nature -where, indeed, it is even far worse.
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Metaphysical world. – It is true, there could be a metaphysical world; the absolute possibility of it is hardly to be disputed. We behold all things through the human head and cannot cut off this head; while the question nonetheless remains what of the world would still be there if one had cut it off. This is a purely scientific problem and one not very well calculated to bother people overmuch; but all that has hitherto made metaphysical assumptions valuable, terrible, delightful to them, all that has begotten these assumptions, is passion, error and self-deception; the worst of all methods of acquiring knowledge, not the best of all, have taught belief in them. When one has disclosed these methods as the foundation of all extant religions and metaphysical systems, one has refuted them! Then that possibility still remains over; but one can do absolutely nothing with it, not to speak of letting happiness, salvation and life depend on the gossamer of such a possibility. For one could assert nothing at all of the metaphysical world except that it was a being-other, an inaccessible, incomprehensible being-other; it would be a thing with negative qualities. Even if the existence of such a world were never so well demonstrated, it is certain that knowledge of it would be the most useless of all knowledge: more useless even than knowledge of the chemical composition of water must be to the sailor in danger of shipwreck.

* pneumatologically: pneumatology is the ‘science’ of spirits and spiritual beings.

A lot of what it says here is relevant to what I try to say in my writings. I use the word pneuma because it does mean spirit, but also because it means air. Those with a cursory knowledge of the western magickal tradition will know that the air element is associated with the mind, the analytic swords of the tarot. It is this double meaning that makes it (to me) suitable as the concept I want.

What is pneuma in the accretive system? Pneuma is said to be the stuff that concepts are made of. Pneuma is sticky and can be made to accrete. The accretions of pneuma follow from the phenomenological lead of the world that is already interpreted. Everything is an accretion of pneuma. This is metaphysics, absolutely. The questions obviously arise: What do you need pneuma for? Why would you want to substantialise conceptuality?

The answer goes back to phenomenology of magick and the agnostic disjunction. Nietzsche thinks the possibility of the metaphysical world is worthless for life. Of course he says this specifically with Christianity in mind but equally seems fairly clear; any kind of spiritual world might be acknowledged yet leaves us with nothing positive to say about it. This is a very reasonable opinion, the problem I feel is that the manifestations of such a world cannot be put to bed. Spectres, UFOs, synchronicities continue to haunt the world and every time these phenomena occur they present to the individual with the agnostic disjunction i.e. was that real or not? The disjunctive question is agnostic because any answer of dismissal is only done on the question begging grounds that such things are not possible because this (solid) world does not admit of them. Equally though if one decides the phenomenon was real, then one must face the incoherent sense of trying to reconcile what it would mean for reality for this to be the case.

Pneuma and its accretions are what I believe to be the best answer for anyone who thinks that the ‘magick obtains’ arm of the disjunction is worth thinking about. It is true that pre-determined harmony of some kind is on the table and partially represents a competing force of the side of actual metaphysical connection. This investigation is for another time. Let’s be clear about pneuma though, on the side of the regular solid interpretation of the world in which these phenomena are coincidences and hallucinations there is no need for pneuma. Pneuma, the conceptual stuff only has work to do on the magick accepting side.

So what does it do? Pneuma is called a substance precisely because it can do things, it is no longer the regular sense of a concept that is just ‘how we understand something’. In the system there are essentially three layers. The pneuminous accretions, the vector field and the umbratic. The accretions are everything we perceive with any sense. Everything is understood as something even when that something is ‘the unknown’, this too is an accretion, a concept. This is pneuma bound into endless blobs, connected in myriad ways by pneuminous fibres: homonyms, metaphors, shared qualities, all these and many more are the ways in which the accretions connect to one another. Temporally they are altering, largely under the sway of the neurotic accretions of pneuma (ourselves) who are also nothing but accretions, yet ones with ability to restructure the pneuma into new forms or keep it stuck in old ones.

The vector field is the transcendental field that we must presuppose in order to say that the accretions are attached to something. The possible field of all perceptions of all kinds is the vector field. It can be glimpsed by imagination/phenomenological reduction as that ‘what things would be if we try to remove concepts’. The blur of stuff, smells, sounds. The vector field is pneuma, but it is pneuma unaccreted (other than as the vector field, or hyle etc.). Pneuma bound into a concepts (accretions) is attached to the regions of the vector field. It is called vector field because the different regions are capable of behaving like vectors for the higher up formed accretions. That is, they play host to them; a certain region plays host to the concept ‘curtains’, another to ‘duvet’ and so on and so on. In this way the concept is not simply in the mind of the neurotic accretion, rather it is in the the vector itself.

The umbratic is the phantasy of everything that cannot be perceived for whatever reason. The notion of the umbratic is generated by attempting to perceive existence when one’s head is cut off, as Nietzsche put it. A similar agnostic disjunctive issue concerns this region of correlationism as it has come to be known. Either science is perfectly good at telling us what existence is like independently of ourselves, or it still remains nothing but prosthetic extensions of our faculties that, whilst assuredly expansive still does not  and cannot totalise the titanic otherness that lurks out there.

The inference in this phenomenology goes that, since this metaphysic accepts a kind of correlate, albeit one that is partially autonomous from us and since things remain solid and reliable most of the time then there must be some structure that maintains this solidity beyond this pneuminous interface. This restraint on the vector field is inferred to come from the umbratic, though its actual nature is unknowable (in these metaphysics). So the implication that comes from magickal phenomena is that conceptuality must be capable of altering the umbratic, or as it is phrased elsewhere ‘the pneuma can affect the umbra’.

Here then we see the point of having pneuma as not purely epiphenomenonal. Magick means that conceptuality alters things. The definition of magick we work with here is ‘a concept that is applied successfully to a vector region that would not ordinarily take it’. Synchronicity is often the appearance of objects, words, numbers, images in places that seem somehow pertinent to the individual. The explanation here is that unlike the ordinary state of affairs in which the regular array of the world (as determined by the umbratic) displays what is on offer, in this instance the autonomous action of the pneuminous accretions has somehow restructured the situation such that now physicality (the umbra) serves the pneuminous action. Magick is just a more active form of the same. If synchronicity is achieved by the accretions acting under their own steam, then magick is the manipulation of the umbratic through the actions of the neurotic accretion (self). The NA desires that a certain region of the vector field which is occupied by a certain accretion should not be occupied by another. For example, that I am poor is a concept applied to a region (myself and my lack of funds). The money hungry magician seeks apply the concept of himself being wealthy to the vector region instead. Magick is the process of trying to make the new accretion stick in such a way that the umbratic is forced to alter at the behest of the accretion.

We do not here, offer how this happens, such descriptions stray beyond the point of such a phenomenology. We only say that under this system, if we do not accept predetermined harmony or the non-existence of the phenomena, this is what somehow must be happening. Pneuma is the concept at the heart of all of this. It is the force required to make it functional.

Nietzsche maybe underestimates the power of the appearance of the metaphysical world. There is not necessity to its incurring notions of guilt. This only belongs to the metaphysical world that instantiates the judging god. The appearance of the metaphysical world of fluid but magickally potent conceptuality opens action up to all manner of magickal beseechings that may or may not be effective (agnostic disjunctive epistemology again). Drawing this conclusion about the metaphysical maybe enables it to be reapplied to life rather than shunning it in favour of physicality. The appearances of the metaphysical world in physical will not go away and our ability to decide upon their truth will not increase -unless it is favour of the metaphysical. Any conception of life needs to take these appearances into account without dogmatising them into a system.

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The vector field is a transcendental plane or rather series of planes that act as an intermediary between the accretions and the umbratic. The vector field can be thought of as unaccreted pneuma. The physical vector field is that experience that phenomenologists often try to perceive as part of their systems: the Husserlian hyle, the pure sensation block that becomes differentiated into different things or as we will say with regard to the vector field, regions. It is that field[s] of existence that can be dimly be seen when try to pretend we don’t know that everything ‘is’ all the different things we see before us.

The most extreme visual vector field is the physical world as pure undifferentiated sensation, however the vector field has not entirely gone in effect on less abstract levels. True the spatio-temporal existence itself can be viewed as vector-field regions, however even when these are established, the effect is still present. When we enter a room and many of the devices in that room are unknown to us, these are now vector regions. They may have a broad scope accretion like ‘machines’ attached to them, but we may have no understanding of where one machine stops and where another ends. They exist in an unintelligible (incoherent) mass. Then the technician comes in and explains the machines, she gives me the names for the different regions and tells me what each one does. The concept (accretion) sticks to the vector. We say in this regard ‘this vector region was capable of taking this concept’ and mean that the word is appropriate to the thing.

The meaning of vector then is like that of a vector which carries a parasite, virus, bacterium. Vectors carry accretions and in the regular language of everyday life this is how language functions. Different regions of the vector field play host to different accretions. Many vector regions are capable of housing more than one accretion. A saucer is easily an ashtray. The vector region that takes the accretion ‘saucer’ easily also takes ‘ashtray’. Sometimes the vector region that takes the accretion ‘log’ can take the accretion ‘seat’. Found objects of unknown original usage still have their original accretion attached but it may then be covered over by a new accretion. The grammar of ‘really’ means ‘original’ but if the new accretion can be taken by the vector then it is just as equally this thing. This is all it means for something to be something.

Equally a different appearing object may house the same accretion. I might show someone an old device and ‘say this is a phone’ (this vector can house the phone accretion). They do not understand how this is true but then I show them that this is the case. They were trapped by the modern appearance of ‘phone’. Likewise the person from the past would not be able to respond to ‘pass me my phone please’ from an array of objects on the table. The black oblong lying next to my keys is a vector that they do not know is capable of taking the accretion ‘phone’. This highlights a feature of accretions in relation to vectors. In a given historical/cultural setting a given accretion is often attached to a vector region or range of similar vector regions that generate false essences. False essences are appearances that pretend to be what the object ‘really’ looks like. These contingent archetypes are often the way the accretion looks when one summons it to mind. Ideal forms like these are related to ‘incoherent coherence’, the apparent sense of definition which always masks the multiplicity of ways in which a thing might appear on three axes: the past, the future and the other (a different culture which might feature the same use-thing in a different form).

False essences as accretive images are the molar aspect of accretions as they struggle to maintain stasis against becoming. Furthermore as accretions exert a magickal effect upon the umbratic powers beneath the vector field, the act of trying to keep something in a particular form will have some effect. This is similar to the way in which false essences are related to the phenomenon of the double. The double is the way in which the accretion once attached to a vector, through the archetypal image (false essence) attempts to make the the vector more like the accretion than the original vector was. This is a process that necessarily goes on all the time.

Of course the vector field is not a purely visual/physical field. For this reason we can speak of the vector field having different planes that intersect, visual and physical being two such -as accretions might be visible without being physical and vice versa. The wind is a invisible region that is physical for example. Audible and olfactory can also be said to have their own planes. Some accretions cut across different planes, some exist on purely one. The planes themselves are of course also vector regions with accretions attached. The olfactory is an accretion that may be applied only to certain kinds of phenomena. However these vast accretions form planes by which a kind of heuristic may be employed. Smells can be learned. There are a myriad of smells in the world that we have often no knowledge of but could be understood. The undifferentiated or ill understood olfactory plane can have accretions applied to its regions. In sounds think of bird song, a twittering mass can be differentiated into individual refrains ‘does that sound take the accretion wood pigeon? No it is a collared dove’. The experiential world is filled with noises. The garbled noise of this plane too can receive greater accretive infestation. Vector regions can be analysed out and have accretions attached accordingly.

There is also the emotional plane. We have named the regions of the emotions. They can be named because the recur. There are rules for feeling and recognition. The regions are a fluctuating mass and their peaks and troughs are the accretions ‘happiness’ ‘anger’ ‘sadness’ etc. False essences occur here too, archetypal dominance is powerful and stasis of these natures encouraged. Small eddies of the emotional plane receive no accretion for their grammar is hard to capture. Sometimes we meet others who know these eddies and we name them together.

Possibly the most curious plane of the vector field is that of rationality. Does thought have a vector field plane? Of course ‘thought’ must have, for it is an accretion, it has a grammar. But the universal similarity of thought as accretion is even less reliable than the contents of the emotional plane, where at least physical displays are common as part of the attribution of the accretion to those regions (happy face, sad face). The action ‘I was thinking’ might be unspeakably different between different beings. But still there are operations of thought, logic for instance. Modus ponens as a concept, as an accretion is just one concatenation of thought that we do all the time. Incoherence does not destroy logic, it merely renders incoherent  the concepts that fill in the Ps and Qs. There is an action we can make that either fulfils the criteria to be called modus ponens or not, hence some kind of vector region exist for it. All logical sequences can have this said of them. What about maths? What is ‘plus’? A rule, an accretion that fits a vector of a certain action. As we explore this area it feels as if there is a suggestion that these mental actions are echoes of the physical plane. They are unbound accretions whose home is solidity.

What is language itself? A word is an accretion attached to a vector. There are the noises we hear between us by which we communicate. Every single word is an accretion attached to a vector. Every letter is an accretion attached to a vector. Scribbles, lines on a page. This symbol says ‘A’. See the symbol as vector region. It is nothing but lines, it plays host to ‘A’.

Everywhere a vector region, everywhere a host, everywhere an accretion.

 

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Postulating there is no deity setting actual rules for existence (other than deities which are themselves vast hoary accretions, or potentially powerful pneuminous beings not of our creation, either of which would not be an ultimate being) what can we say about the ethical status of the accretions? Does this question even make any sense?

We believe there is some kind of commentary can be made on this topic, though it is difficult given that all human existence is a priori accretive (if we accept the theory). All the ideas in your ‘mind’, all the stuff you can see and hear, even yourself are all accretions of the same conceptual substance -pneuma. The commentary requires a kind of wondering. The wondering is something like this: is it possible that attaching too many accretions to the self (the neurotic accretion or NA) is in some sense negative? Again this is tricky because of the issue of value. In an ethical void, whether we exist as pneuminous beings bound up with endless threads to endless other accretions or whether we minimise the lines of connection seems to matter little. However there is the matter of the functionality of the organism. Is it possible then that weighing the NA down with endless accretive layers impairs its functionality?  This doesn’t really seem unreasonable.

Using our the recently developed D&G plug-in we can say that extra accretions are formed through intensities. Emotional attachments, patterns of behaviour, these are how it happens. Keeping things, holding onto feelings, being fixed in routine. If accretive theory is correct then these kinds of actions are creating actual accretions of pneuma that themselves accrete to the NA. Some kind of affect, some kind of will makes this happen.

It is easy to note systems like Buddhism eschew attachment (many religions touch on this kind of aspect) and in that sense encourage forming as few a lines as possible. What we find interesting is the tension between the poles of maximum and minimum accretive attachment. A truly minimal engagement with excessive accretions is often the aim of occult systems. The notion is that the accretions encumber the ‘energy body’ and thus reduce its capacity to be effective. This, in its harshest form, could involve separating oneself from even other persons in order to free oneself from the bonds both of our attachment to them and of their ability to pneuminously restrain us through their perception. At the other end of the spectrum is the pneuminous hoarder. Some NAs don’t know how to let go of anything , either emotionally or physically. Pneuminously these are near identical. A physical thing is just pneuma attached to a vector, it is the pneuma we are in contact with, not the vector. ‘Physical thing’ is just one more concept (accretion) itself, admittedly a deep grammatical one. Unbound pneuma (the contents of the mind) is just that, pneuma unbound to the vector field plane that gives rise to physical grammar. Emotionally charged accretions, either bound or unbound can be astonishingly powerful and the NA may feel it cannot separate itself from them. Artifacts, memories, places all can be accretively bound by intensity. Extreme cases of being wedded to endless accretive structures can be reasonably said to impair the well-being of the organism.

But in the middle of this spectrum, isn’t this where ordinary human existence lies? Accretive formations are a regular part of existence that humans generally manage to negotiate without lapsing into the hoarding pole -the other pole is generally perceived as less problematic and certainly not something one is likely to lapse into. What is interesting to speculate about in this regard is the role of capitalism in relation to our accretive relations. Mass production, endless improvement and easy replacement arguably have a negative impact on what could be seen as positive accretive relations.  Whilst it can be seen as unhealthy to be excessively attached to appliances, furniture etc, it is possibly better to have some kind of intensity attachment to such things as opposed to viewing them as purely disposable. Disposable is fine if the disposability can be dealt with, however we can see that this has not really worked out.

The point is that a certain kind of keeping things is not unhealthy attachment even if it can resemble it. Disposable and/or mass produced things mirror each other in their encouragement of the non-special. The keeping of and passing on things imbued with intensity is an important part of being-human. By this I again refer to something like the notion of Heidegger’s human. The human of the disposable is the post-human. The fantasy of freeing oneself from stuff (unless one is embarking on an occult path) is largely exactly that. You free yourself from stuff in order to passively accept the disposability of stuff. You cannot give someone a phone and expect it to be particularly meaningful. No one will keep it to pass it on.  But things like vases, plates, cutlery, rooms, tables these should be allowed to grow old (for humans to be humans -if they want to be humans) and be passed on.

In this sense capitalism gives the worst of both worlds. It generates attachment to stuff, desire for stuff. The accretive attachment becomes to ‘buying’ itself and the ephemeral status/feeling the stuff may bring. Capitalism gives no freedom from attachment to accretions like the sorcerer requires, attachment is still horribly present. But equally, valuing the stuff is lacking, for there is so much more where it came from. The attachment of affect at the level of what I have called being-human is missing.

Viewing things through the eyes of accretive theory can help to redeem some of the capitalist dehumanising. This is so because accretive theory says that the things gather what happened to them. Not just in their cracks and knocks but at the pneuminous level. Things accrete like we (NAs) do, it is a double process. Just as I become attached to it so it does to me and when I am gone my interactions with the thing are still there accreted to it. Disposability/mass production helps to develop the attitude that the things are all the same. Each thing has embedded in it its story in the pneuma.

None of this says what anyone should do. It merely describes certain relations under various conditions.

 

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What do we mean by a transcendental repression? We mean a repression that is not contingent upon trauma at an ontic level but rather a repressive structure that is built into the subject (Narp) in its functioning as the kind of being that it is. In this way such a repression would be different from any regularly occurring repressive structures that may happen in life, no matter how regular they may be as patterns. A transcendental repression would occur at an ontological level and as such could be equally named an ontological repression.

What are we suggesting is repressed in the transcendental repression? The transcendental repression has two facets, one necessary and one more speculative. The first facet of the transcendental repression is the repression of the nature of being outside of a given subject’s perceptual sphere. The continual solidity of existence facilitates this repressive structure. We conflate this continual solidity with the a prioricity that being that is perceived is identical to being that is not perceived, when in fact this is a dubious notion to help ourselves to.

The disharmony between the possibility of this non-identity and apparent safe solid continuity of existence causes the being to repress the possibility of the non-identity. The repression seals its success by the fact that we cannot of course perceive the unperceived. The intractability of this problem facilitates the repression by the sheer inability of any progress being made and the vaguely disturbing sensation gained from attempting to imagine perceiving something outside of human perception. The repression is, as stated, transcendental for the functioning of the subject, though we would concede there is some cultural leeway in which it might be lessened. The repressed possibility is one of the sources of intense anxiety for persons who experience paranormal phenomena, especially for the first time. Anomalous accretions in one’s existence immediately demand -though the notion may not be coherently thought by the individual- the possibility that behind the visible scenes some other agency is capable of manipulating the contents. Given that such phenomena do not show their mechanics in plain sight, if we give them any credence then we are committed to the idea that the manipulation takes place out of sight. In this way the repressed split is brought uncomfortably close to the conscious regions of the subject, resulting often -though not always- in considerable anxiety.

The second facet of the transcendental repression concerns the notion that other agencies may be controlling ourselves. The self, or neurotic accretion as we have named it elsewhere, is the accretion that primarily controls the sense of identity of the Narp (human in this case). The name of the subject sits at the centre of the neurotic accretion which is projected upon the regional processor (body) giving the incoherent identity ‘I am this psychic sense and I am this body’. Of course the activity within the neurotic accretion (NA) is constantly guided by all manner of influences from the regional processor (RP) itself. It is the RP that tells the NA that it is hungry, not the other way round. Likewise there will be many pneuminous accretions that will be either tangentially or strongly attached to the NA exerting various kinds of influence upon it, all of which appear as the actions of the NA. It is being-controlled-by-other-accretions that must be repressed by the incoherent NA. Of course this being-controlled is not being-controlled as such, it is simply what it is to be a Narp.

The NA by itself is very little, it needs to be plugged into other accretions to create its identity, to act as an agent for these forces. What the NA must do though is appear to be in charge. The functioning of a Narp as we understand being a human is that the NA is sufficiently in charge of the other accretions such that none of them ever assume conscious control of the RP. A Narp who sporadically or even permanently loses control of the RP to accretions that are not the NA, suffers from some form of what we would call mental illness. Again, lesser versions of this are potentially related to paranormality insofar as other pneuminous accretions (other repressed consciousnesses within the RP or outside of it) may have access to certain kinds of knowledge that the NA does not. The experience of being-informed-of-something by such forces constitutes a rupture in the relation of NA dominance. Such experiences may be labelled intuitions, precognitions etc. At this level they do not constitute madness, only the eruption of alien accretive forces through the dominance of the NA.

To reiterate then, we see the transcendental repression happening in two principle ways. The first represses the disharmony between being that is perceived and being that is not perceived. It flattens this into an identity of being between the two states. The second represses the way in which we are necessarily multiple (swarms as D and G might say) in favour of an incoherent but necessary dominant neurotic accretion  (neurotic precisely because it knows its own self-existence will not stand up to scrutiny -it is built upon a lie).

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When you cannot see something its ontological status is unknown.

This is the most reasonable formula for the phenomenology of the fantasy that our perceiving things may be in some way altering them. Magickal understanding, at least in a pneuminous (or chaos magickal sense) means that we have to treat this seriously. This kind of ontology entails that the concepts are altering the umbratic restraint -the stuff. Does this mean perception itself is altering it or is it simply the conceptualisation of it that does the altering? The concepts are originally formed out of perceiving the physical vector field.

The idea that creates the idea of perceptual creation is the lack of metaphysical certainty that the non-perceived is ontologically identical to the perceived. In this place seems to be a bifurcation related to the necessary magickal epistemology. To repeat: is it the perception or the idea that is doing the altering (insofar as we can separate these)?

The notion that magick affects at a distance would seem to indicate that pneuminous powers can do the altering regardless of immediate presence. This means that the notion of perceptual creation is separate from the notion of magickal manipulation. Ironically direct perception seems to be the solidifying force. The irony being that the implication seems so powerfully enticingly magickal -that perception itself is altering the stuff. But this alteration is one that renders it largely stable, it is a negative entropic force upon the chaos. This is magickal because it is so stabilising, yet the thing  we call magickal is the power of conceptual alteration (pneuminous interference).

One of the features of static spatial zones is often that human perception scarcely falls upon them with the crucial addition that it used to. This is the dereliction effect. It is related to Fisher’s description of the eerie. For Fisher, the eerie is related to the absence of obvious agency to a particular local and yet the hint that there is still some kind of agency involved -maybe they have gone, maybe they are hidden.

This helps us differentiate the zone from the unplace. Unplaces have old human pneuma attached to them. They were occupied by people and now are only haunted by conceptual ghosts from our sphere. The natural world has come to reclaim the place. The eeriness in Fisher’s term is purely due to the absence of a known agent -the human. They were here and now they are not. Relatively banal paranormality may be present in the form of residual neurotic accretions unshackled from fleshy bonds (ghosts). Equally there may be just the suggestion of human previous presence with possible hints of transient occupation (trash etc.)

Zones go beyond unplaces in levels of eeriness since they become infested with agents that, though likely purely pneuminous, were not ever human. There is a tension. The residual human conceptual layer is there but this is a passive fading power. Behind or alongside it hides the actual zonal power. Zonal powers are more active. They are watching. Like Keelian ultraterrestrials, their actions are unfathomable. It is speculated that the receding human pneuma is somehow attractive to these forces, which is why unplaces are so susceptible to zonal infestation. The lack of human perception is key though. Human perceptual fields keep vector regions relatively safe -it is hard to break through all that hard conceptual reality- but when these powers are not exerted often the conceptual restraint fails.

To repeat: When you cannot see something its ontological status is unknown. 

We cannot know what kind of pneuminous restraints emit from the plants and animals that visit these places when we are not there. For that matter we do not know even if it is cogent to talk about such beings as discrete things outside of the immediate pneuminous field -for they may be just part of an interconnected flux (which of course they are anyway, but we mean by that a more severe metaphysical one in which their individuation at all is just our pure Kantian curse). Even accepting their status as perceiving agents, their conceptual imprinting powers will be radically different from ours. They may well be no ally of ours in keeping such places solid and indeed may in some circumstances contribute to destabilising the area and allowing zonal infestation.