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The point I was trying to articulate in the last post is closer to this. When then shaman travels to other worlds, these worlds may well be accretive formations of pneuma based on his environment. The spirits are the local animals etc. These worlds are real and can be travelled to. The point of pneuma as a theory is that the accretions once made are not simply accessible by one individual, they have autonomous existence. Nevertheless these shamanist upper and lower worlds are accreted to certain vectors in the shaman’s world. These worlds do no whisper sinister secrets or at least if they do, the shaman knows what to listen to and what to avoid. The point being there is wisdom and power that is beneficial to the community in these worlds.

Writers like Rickert and Kingsley identify presocratic thinkers like Parmenides as half shaman, half priest type figures. They represent a transitional stage that still has access to the other world, before Plato placed reason as the source of wisdom. Thought in this way, Parmenides did not think his writing up, he accessed his ideas from the other world, and, if we are to believe Kingsley, inaugurated the west itself through the ideas he accessed through visions. The connecting wisdom then became lost and we are now adrift (I am not commenting on the correctness or otherwise of this pronouncement).

The Lovecraftian connection is that the realm of strange shining cities and books of odd symbols is the same place the shaman and the presocratic priest/shaman accessed. The King in Yellow’s home is exactly such a world. The ‘weirdness’ of these worlds possibly comes from their (as stated) being accreted to ideas outside of religion. That is, their presentment as places of other dimensions or worlds that are simply absolutely other gives them a feel that no living hermeneutic category understands adequately (other than weird).

When the Gods are real, the Gods can manage these realms. When they are not, then alien forces appear. As the alien forces appear it becomes harder to access them as sources of wisdom, for they may appear as strange and terrible and sinister as Hastur himself.

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This Tooth is called Superman/Boudica. It is weird that it has this double title. No doubt this is partially to do with its relation to the Chariot of the Tarot (which features the notion of chariot and hero). It is also remarkable, as was commented before, that in the Hyperqabalah (Eildour), it is the feeder node of the Teufos which is fetus. Hence Superman and Boudica produce the child. However the child as Hyperqabalah node has the curious name Teufos, reminiscent of Teufel (German for the Devil) and also Te UFOs , which could be an adaptation of the Te Deum. It’s tree is the holly, its animal the hare.

How can we make sense of Sunyata? What has happened to the relation to the accretions? Such a person is said to live through a primordial intelligence, seeing things as they are. We can translate this into seeing the vector field itself, but this only makes a certain level of sense. This is because to experience the vector field is to see the regions with no concepts. This is what Sunyata does, however the event of Sunyata also has a being that can still function, they can still use the concepts. 

What are we to make of this? In the ordinary situation the concepts plug into the vectors connecting self-accretion and external vector via accretions (of pneuma) attached to the vector. Clearly the Sunyata person-site is still functioning with the same array of concepts but also has at their disposal other ones that are invisible to regular NARPs ( Neurotic Accretion, Regional Processor) to use the old CEO terminology).

Since we speculate pneuma as a kind of substance, possibly a much simpler process of conceptual naming and recognition is employed in relation to the vector field. The pneuminous accretion is there but reduced to practically nothing; something we don’t consider possible with the heavy accretive layers we commonly attach to things. This gossamer level of minimal attachment is all that is required to enable the same level of communication whilst also revealing the vector field (a sort of things nakedly as they are to humans) itself. The description is of greater richness of perception. One can easily see how the conceptual (accretive) removal could achieve this. The questions remain about more a priori concepts (Kantian categories) and how much Sunyata also can remove these.

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Postulates of Magick

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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