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This  note forms part of an ongoing discussion at the CEO regarding a number of issues regarding accretive ontology. One such issue involves the possibility of an accretive typology of sorts. No doubt there will be more on this in the future, this whole discussion though seems to have unearthed a general movement towards recognising pluralities within the system.

What seems interesting as a possibility is to try to push the occult descriptions much further than the usual synchronicity area to see if anything can be gained from doing so. Let us consider animism with a serious eye. Animism fits well with accretive theory. The concepts of being alive are accreted to the various things such that they do indeed respond in certain ways. We cannot say what ways such things would be. What we do hit upon here is the modality of attaching significance to plant, stone, river etc behaviour as if it has volition. Such a belief requires connecting phenomena together in certain ways e.g. considering the swaying of plants in the wind to be part of their movement and stronger still than that, that such movement might be discernible as communication or some other kind of action. The wind itself could be viewed in such a way, the wind as a being with a volition.

Such perceptions are only possible under choosing the first arm of the agnostic disjunction ‘magick is real’ or ‘magick isn’t real’. However this choice is not as simple as the synchronicity option. In the case of the synchronicity the phenomena is overtly there as something strange. The event itself raises the issue. After the event we will decide whether reality can really do that in the strong sense (pneuminous accretive intervention) or if really it is just coincidence.

In the case of such animistic interpretations we do not have the same strong reason to make such a choice. There is nothing to prompt any upheaval of our regular interpretation of the inert unresponsive nature of things. To make the choice to do so seems insane and yet we have to be aware that the same issue with reality holds sway. Since we do not have an absolute understanding of reality we cannot say that inanimate things definitely cannot respond in some way. This of course isn’t really much good, it might be true but we have no grounds on which to believe it. The grounds however can come if one makes an experiment to treat the things around as if they were in some sense animate. Such a belief needs something like accretive theory to keep it from descending into indefensible nonsense. Accretive theory at least can give good grounds why anything can be imbued with some form agency if we attribute it to it. If then, we make an experiment of seriousness to treat things as if they had an, albeit incoherent, sense of life, then likely enough we will get some kind of synchronicitous or other like phenomena that seem quite remarkable.

At this point the agnostic disjunction can kick in with greater force to suggest that maybe there is something to animism (or accretive theory at least) because now we have an interference level phenomenon to substantiate it. Of it is a disjunction, we can still opt out. But now the appearance will be such that the strange phenomenon (whatever it was) may well be exactly what it would look like if animism were real, hence the appearance of the regular world and the newly discovered animistic one become equal. The discovery is something like a conditional proof in which we had to assume the truth of animism in order to make its possibility visible. Of course as soon as we do make any kind of acceptance then many ontological problems kick in. Given our habituation e.g. how it that wind and plants are not just contingently connected? How did the lake make the fish leap out at the correct moment to our talking to it in way that seemed beyond chance?

For these things to be actually strange and not just psychological projection we again need something like an accretive theory. This does not tell us the mechanics of how things work, for it is only a phenomenology, but it does say that a reversal occurs in such instances. That is, where normally the concept is determined by the vector, in these circumstances, the concept  (pneuminous accretion) manages to reach into the umbratic and alter it such that at the level of perception the (ambiguous) incredible is perceived.

Make no mistake this does unambiguously assume reality is much stranger than it seems. Such an acceptance seems to imply local reality fluctuations are perfectly reasonable that are often totally undetectable to others.  It also has the infuriating implication that many strange phenomena will not display themselves unless engaged with. This of course would seal the sceptics opinion as it would be literally impossible for them to enter such a world.

Note, none of this is an endorsement of animism or any other stance for that matter. All it says is that the appearance of the phenomena generate ambiguities which are not often impossible to close down (agnostic disjunctions). Animism is interesting because it does not suggest itself in the same way that synchronicity can appear as spontaneous rupture. Few would infer animism from synchronicity, but probably synchronistic phenomena would occur as a result of engaging with animism.

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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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1 (a movement)
To be god(s)-forsaken: to sense divinity, to stumble upon its signs (to have at least that one, memorable time, been a sign of divinity), but to have pathways elude you.

The outsider mystics, their painstakingly codified systems of (non-)knowledge found sometimes in both basements and attics, both living rooms and tombs: in all of their splendour and candour, in all their wealth, they are all predicated on a gliding, veil-piercing movement.

To know the movement (is to know that the veils are infinite). To partake in raptures, in instantaneous instants of being-taken, or being-wave-swept. To have mastered the technique of a burning point whose scintillations inaugurate paradox: the pendulous continuum; to live through methods of sense derangement and to lick the funkiest underbellies.

Never, however, to be invited onto the flights of ever-penultimate fancy about the likes of which you read in codices, in grimoires, in encrypted files.

In other words, to suffer through a god(s)-forsaken mode of environing: to be unable – when a glide occurs and a power is seduced into being-experienced – to harness that power, and to be incapable of fuelling with that power a mythopoeic (en)act(ment).

To choke on a ghost.

2 (wastelands)
To question whether they should have harnessed it and put it to work rather than tremble.

To remember that they have all remembered that ecstasy is in the gap, or is the gap – whatever one feels upon inserting one’s carnality into an other orifice – even if they would never admit the accuracy of ambiguity.

Iconophilia: to subvert encryption by loving the cipher; or by destroying the crypt instead of opening the catacombs of the alphabet. To be without a crypt, without a tombstone: to no longer be banished into absence and separated from a(n after)life of disintegration, dispersal, alien nutrition.

A wasteland may be a realm in decay, plagued by the incompetent rule of a limping king. In spite of that, a different wasteland: to squander is to sanctify. To be holy while being trash, intoxicated and meditating atop a pile of corpses. “I’m a poison worm, I thrive on poison.”1

To contemplate is to designate a temple space: a place for contemplation. To contemplate a system is to effect a (hypo)stasis. There are subsystems contained within metasystems which are simultaneously subsystems of other metasystems, but to suppose a system is to vivisect a preselected section of something not larger, but simply faster – to cut off a stem and proclaim it dead even as it sprouts new leaves, to ignore the fact that everything glitches.

To glide is to glitch. To fall off the map, but onto what territory?

Demons have been put inside the body of flesh, of earth, of all the elements. Angels are posited on the outside of these bodies. To move past these hypostases: towards non-spatial motion: towards emotion. To go neither demonward nor angelwards. To go awkward: in the wrong direction.

To collapse onto yourself is to receive the gift of the rift. Into the outer they have carved the inner, so that the inner seems to be inside, or in the middle of the world. Or: the map shows an exterior, an interior, and something in between, a middle realm: skin, membrane, the media realm.

Koanic query: if there is a middle realm and an interior, which one is more in the middle?

To collapse onto yourself is to receive the gift of the rift, the rift being the gap through which viral movements pass, and thus through which perpetuation occurs.

“Haunted by the idea of knowing what the key to the mystery is, a man becomes a reader of detective novels.”2 “Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison.”3 To write is to send letters from the bone prison of written word.

Quest: to perpetuate the possibility of sainthood in a god(s)-forsaken wasteland.

3 (to follow your sound tracks)
To grieve for reverberation in architecture, to fear its death in lived experience: to track tracks for tracks’ sake is paramount and tantamount to attending to voices in decay. To hear is not to listen, or are you always tricked?

Heteroglossia: those who voice themselves through you are many, but this can still be orthodox, which is to say homogeneous; all hail the spine spire. Heterodoxy: those who voice themselves through you are many, and they bring with them heterogeneity; are you sure there’s only one tooth per socket in those velvet, violet gums of yours? Alternatively, you may trace the curvature of a previously unknown rib.

To, upon speaking, scrape your tongue on the bristled multitudes that populate you. To recognize that you are a medium, a mediating body, a rift elemental. To reverberate is to be made of multiple echoes.

And yet, those (and many other) things: to unfurl like a budding fern, that is to say to reveal nothing but the unfurling, the movement; to trust that you have received a message in (y)our sleep – to challenge your world to warrant such trust.

If to abandon transcendence is to assume it has already been achieved, then to undertake katabasis is to exit existence. Existence: a fortress of hypostatic transcendence, an error which no longer wants to err. The bone prison.

Regardless, to pursue transverberation and attain the state of grace alongside which “the heart receives, it knows not how or whence, a blow as from a fiery dart.”4

To sustain transverberation is to be pierced through (a shiver is sent down the spine spire, a quake shakes the ouroboric ribcage). Subsystems within metasystems within subsystems within metasystems ad nauseam; a hypostatic body of echoes transverberates itself, inserts itself into an other orifice.

Labyrinthine metamorphosis: to glide is to glitch is to be pierced in a veil-piercing movement, which is not to say that it is simply you who are the veil. To say so would be to merely homogenise.

A machine carries on carving insides into outsides, and you cannot leave the machine without remaining inside the opposition of in and out that is now carved inside you. It is of no use to exit into or enter out of; the machine is still in order, powered by the ugliest myth. Gone, went to the other shore, or are you still swimming? Were you ever not swimming? Thus, to abscond (is often to sound like the reverberating decay of a high-pitched chime).

Question?

Note
To have ventured with the following companions:
Georges Bataille2 (a sorcerer’s apprentice),
Bruno Schulz (a mythopoet extraordinaire),
T.S. Eliot3 (a Knight of the Round Table),
Michael Kirkbride (a loremaster),
Ramprasad Sen1 (a goddess’ poet),
Timothy Morton (a dark ecologist),
Jean Baudrillard (a shadow dancer),
R. Murray Schafer (an ear-cleaner),
Hildegard Westerkamp (a soundwalker),
Saint Teresa of Ávila4 (a heart-pierced lover),
Dorothea Tanning (a sleepy alchemist),
Julia Kristeva (an investigator into the nature of milk skin).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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I am forced to ask myself if the philosophy I partially advocate is compatible with panpsychism or not? I say partially because I still have not satisfactorily overcome the problem of manifestationism as raised by the agnostic disjunction. Agnostic disjunction simply points to the way in which metaphysical options are just choices that are bolstered (or not) by criteria in the ‘reality’ we currently occupy. Hence according to this rather paralyzing meta-epistemology, panpsychism is one metaphysical option, it has agents that fight its corner and it has enemies that seek to denounce it. Neither position can triumph over the other without the philosophy transforming into some kind of physics that in some way settles the matter (and even then the enemy agents will always be there).

Rather like occult phenomena though -to which panpsychism is easily related, even if panpsychists would like this not to be the case- panpsychism can only be shown to be true, strong evidence to its untruth will not eradicate the suspicion that it might be true.  Consciousness might be clearly demonstrated as an emergent property of a level of complexity and some people would still wonder if being in general was  in some sense conscious too. Materialism doesn’t get a similar similar treatment, in many ways, owing to the continual solidity of things, materialism looks a fair bet, yet it is this default like status that renders it so vulnerable. Materialism can never do enough, because the anomalies and metaphysical possibilities only need science to back them up a little bit to show that something is clearly seriously awry with it. The reverse doesn’t seem to be true. This is because panpsychism can only be the major ontology by being demonstrably true -in the modern world. And if it’s demonstrably true then materialism isn’t going to be considered seriously, because presumably in this panpsychic dominated world, we can clearly show how to interact with/demonstrate consciousness at large in existence. I think this is something to do with the fact that panpsychism is additive but materialism is subtractive. That is, if you can show things are together then this is just the state of affairs (panpsychism) and it can be accepted, but if you wish to subtract something (consciousness) then you be perpetually gnawed at by the possibility that the two things may well be connected -it is an effort to keep them apart. But this is an aside.

The actual philosophy that I wish to consider as and ally of panpsychism or not is the CEO’s own brand of chaos magick friendly ontology: pneuminous accretive theory. This states something like the following.

i) All experiences are formed of a conceptual substance ‘pneuma’. All images, sounds, smells, sensations are pneuminous.

ii) Because everyday experiences suggest structure -solidity, repetitive possibility-, there is the minimum of the idea of restraint upon the pneuma -we do not live in a perpetually mutating dream world (only an occasionally mutating one). That which restrains what the pneuma appears as is the umbra -at least in the case of physical objects.

iii) Memory forming capacity accretes pneuma. Concepts and all the psychological baggage that is attached to them are such accretions.

iv) Concepts are not inert structures contained in minds in bodies, rather they are pneuminous accretions that exist out there in the pneuma, that organisms create and plug into.

v) Concepts as pneuminous accretions are literally attached to the umbratic structure that restrains them.

vi) Pneuminous accretions can, under certain circumstances, affect the restraining umbra. This is experienced as magick/synchronicity/various paranormal anomaly.

vii) All scientific investigations are within the pneuma, there is literally no exit from this, for the umbratic, if real, is necessarily without concept.

viii) The umbratic is not necessarily real but it is a necessarily real idea.

I could go on with these, but this seems sufficient for an outline. What they deliberately don’t contain is an explicit theory for how consciousness comes about. The question as to whether pneuma has always been there or not is not answered either. This is because I have tried not to stray into speculative metaphysics. You might laugh there, noting that clearly that is exactly what I have done. This is true but, as far as I can see these metaphysics are just the logical consequence of accepting something like chaos magick to be ontologically true and not just psychologically true.  The basic condition being that conceptual information must be capable of altering the putatively solid. You could have a pure idealism and not need the umbratic, yet the phenomenology of our experience continually yields the umbratic as concept -the thing in itself being a good example- hence it is inserts itself as kind of necessary agnostic disjunction. As a phenomenology of magickal types of experience, accounting for the cosmological nature of things doesn’t come into it, though clearly there are implications. However as soon as one tries to follow them the agnostic disjunctions begin to proliferate.

So is pneuma conscious? Pneuma is conceptual potential, but that doesn’t make it conscious. Everything you are experiencing is an accretion of some size or another -whether purely mental or physical perception. The chaos magickal compatibility part of the theory says that we can create conscious entities by intent. Essentially by treating something as conscious, so it begins to acquire some form of this possibility. These interactions are magickal and as such temperamental. This is what is known as applying a concept to a vector that will not normally take it. Rocks are not normal vectors that have the concept consciouness ascribed to them. So if I want to talk to a rock I must talk to the rock as if it would respond -ascribe consciousness to it. This will create an pneuminous interface of consciousness sufficient to generate some of kind interaction with the rock. The interface will make an unstable interaction, not a regular kind of conversation.

This commits any physical thing thing we can conceptually describe as being capable of some form of consciousness -of course this is also true of certain kinds of non-physical thing too, but these are often intentionally constructed e.g. egregores. This does not entail that everything is conscious. Certainly in such an ontology, making the pneuma into God would be fairly logical, yet it still remains the case that this does not seem necessarily the case. Nothing about it entails consciousness is everywhere. What it does entail though is that consciousness can escape its home.

If we hypothesize that the appearance of organisms results in the simple binding of pneuma. Evolution of these organisms increases the complexity of the accretions that are formed. Time binding organisms create more and more complex accretive structures. In the history of animism a key question would be whether or not the ascription of consciousness to non-living (to our modern selves) things is the application of concept to unwilling vector or whether it is a primordial appearance that appears alongside the recognition of ourselves and other creatures as sentient. The latter seems quite reasonable, yet of course the actual answer is agnostic disjunctive. If it were the latter, this would mean there was a feedback of primordial ascription of agency (consciousness) towards non-living being, which would in turn -by the magickal thesis- cause the world to respond in a quasi sentient manner. The post hoc version does not have much of a different result, it is simply that the agency ascription is not equiprimordial to agency ascription of other living creatures. It would in this sense represent a kind of primordial ontology -everything is alive. Such an ontology of course would not be doubted, it would be just how things are, it would though be slightly secondary to the recognition of each other as conscious agents. This primordial ontology of animism would indeed render everything as conscious. Yet this consciousness would not be necessary, it would be contingent. Contingent upon there being such a being as possesses the accretion forming ability such that the projection of consciousness upon existence at large was possible.

There is a side issue that we might touch on here. The usual presupposition is that of course animals recognise other creatures as such -different kinds of indices. We do however always presuppose that animals perceive other creatures as different from the general environment. We might consider the possibility that animals consider environment and each other as a far more homogeneous continuum than we have previously considered.

The answer then as to whether pneuminous theory entails panpsychism, seems to be possibly. This contingency may have a kind of historical necessity to it insofar as human history may have entailed a world view of an alive world. If it were true that any being that emerges into self consciousness necessarily views the world as alive in its earlier stages, then the theory would be have to say that some form of panpsychism is necessarily true -though it would be one that entails animism- yet equally it would posit a time in which it was not true -prior to the feedback occurring.

If conceptual potential can be identified with consciousness then panpsychism could more strongly be inferred from the theory. This however would not eradicate the problem of the umbratic. This is as follows: we believe we can conceive of Being without any organism present, yet we must be agnostic about the nature of this unperceived reality. From a pneuminous perspective the impossible beyond pneuma (the umbratic) is an idea we cannot remove. A thoroughgoing panpsychism would not need an umbratic, existence would be self-perceiving in some fundamental way. Having said that the umbratic is a necessary idea, not a necessary truth. So maybe the notion of pneuma as conceptual accretive potential working intimately alongside more regular physical forces is sufficient to reconcile the two? This though would stretch the metaphysical speculation beyond the phenomenology. The phenomenology suggests that consciousness can be said to be true of everything in our reality -contingently. But it would also point out that the umbratic possibility of absolute ineffability lurks literally, just out of sight.