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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.

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This post references concepts found in this document.

This is a hard thing to write about for how can we restore the sacred if we cannot speak about it (a notion commonly said of the sacred)? There is no easy way round this. From our perspective the sacred applies to no particular feature of the vector field, rather it potentially covers all of it. The sacred then is obtained by something resembling a Wittgensteinian aspect flip rather than by some features of existence being discovered to be sacred.

The sacred then exists as an agnostic disjunctive feature of existence. It is possible to view everything as sacred and it is possible to not do so and there are no criteria to determine which is correct. Some vector regions (those we call synchronicities, visions, spirit encounters) suggest the sacred more than other regions. These regions though are merely more noticeable peaks that can facilitate the perception on the flatter regions.

There is no way round the fact that apart from for certain individuals, the perception of the sacred is hard won. This is the reason for the endless systems, all designed to, in different ways, hammer away at the accretive layers of ego and other unhelpful structures.

It must also be understood that though we use the word sacred here, there is a complexity to the issue. Modern science does have a way in which in can enfold both arms of the disjunction. The increasingly wide scope of neuro-typical possibilities make it entirely viable that experiences/perceptions of a spiritual kind are simply a product of differently wired brains. This interpretation folds the sacred back into a kind of nihilism as simply an evolutionary accident that has had significance attached to it owing to the quasi-value it has given societies through its strange and sometimes weirdly functional alterity.

A second complexity comes even if we accept that other aspects of existence are being accessed through alternative modes of perception. This is the possibility that the geography of the pneuminous is multiple yet is generally conflated with being roughly singular. That is, that the different systems/traditions do not access the same place, the roads do not all end up one unified spiritual field. This possibility preserves the reality of genuine magickal alterity but offers the possibility that the occult landscape is strangely varied and that the attempts to build bridges between different systems are entirely misplaced for they truly do not access the same places -though some may be similar.

The pneuma as we have described it generally is a kind of conceptual substrate that plugs into the vector field which cloaks the deep structure of the umbratic (outside of conceptuality). Usually the umbratic solidity remains, however under certain circumstances the structures of the pneuma (the accretions) warp and alter the umbra; this we experience as the anomalies.

The pneuminous system is essentially chaos magickal insofar as it considers the accretions to be potentially magickally effective yet contingent. Further more they are creatable; we can make accretions with acts of will and this can be done with magickal effect. The pneuminous system cannot do the work that facilitates the necessary shift in perception for anyone. People must use all the usual tools for themselves to do this.

However, it can help to faciliate the general scope of the sacred onto general reality, though realistically it can only do this when there is a degree of acceptance of the weird nature of this in the first place. This is achieved by the recognition that all conceptual perceptions are themselves accretions and as such tiny magickal feedback loops. These loops operate in the direction opposite to what we usually think of magick as doing, that is they attempt to keep objects being what they are -they make the vector regions more like the object that the vector region itself actually is.

The second way in which it attempts to do this is by the structures it offers for usage in the form of the reformed Gra-Tree Qabalah, the Pneuminous Calendar and the Hyperqabalah.

Of course these are contingent accretive magickal structures themselves yet they strive for a unifying inclusivity that is a new system itself (though built on others). The Gra-Tree Qabalah offers a unifying number/letter system that also tallies to Tarot, Hebrew and Ogham. The Calendar projects this onto the temporal plane, accreting to each day one of the paths of the Qabalah whilst utilising approximate solstice/equinox points more accurately that the current festival system.

If we accept the nature of pneuma we can can understand that the vector region we call ‘day’ can have concepts accreted to it beyond the empty Gods of Wednesday, Thursday etc. It’s not that these Gods are not real, it’s just that the accretive link is to their sacred potency is largely severed. When we choose to accrete pneuma on the vector regions, we forge the link that can be called sacred.

This general notion probably makes some sense of the notion that speech itself is sacred. Speech accretes pneuma to the vector region, this is the magickal act.

Is there a danger here that this quasi-scientific explanation robs the sacred itself of its sacredness? Maybe. This raises an interesting issue. If there was a true strong sacred, a God with an actual nature, then the pneuminous chaos magickal reduction would not do this version of the sacred justice. Indeed under this possibility it might even be the case that some features of existence are more sacred than others. Sacred is a word like any other. It has a use system in which it functions. Along side this ‘use system’ (it’s vector region) it accretes, the sacred is a pneumious accretion like all others.

Our usage of it has folded it back into immanent reality, one that is hidden by various natural but currently exacerbated tendencies in our nature. Whilst there is a certain abstract level in this analysis that removes hard-sacredness, there is not supposed to be anything abstract about it as such at all. The recognition that this is the nature of things, in fact is the call to the sacred. For with the perception of things in this wise comes the knowledge that conceptual attitude is not neatly sequestered in ones private head but rather part of the constant active formation of the world, the things and people themselves. The sacred of this kind opens ethical lines of consideration that can connect systems, time and being.

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One of the most important things phenomenology gives us is the understanding of how the ancient accretions/egregores/archetypes form in certain ways. One of the most obvious examples being the Sun’s descent and re-emergence from the underworld. There are various accretive layers there. In the vector field (the putative pre-conceptual realm) there is a region which we call the sun. This region was historically imprinted with the status of a God.

This is interesting as we cannot mean that this accretive formation (of pneuma) is erroneous, as this would presuppose that the modern scientific concept of the sun is exhaustive of it, when of course it’s possible that we might discover that structures like planets had some form of sentience and could indeed be considered Gods (have that grammatical game applied to them). So the vector region withholds its absolute truth. In the ancient mode the Sun is a God and it descends into the underworld. Here phenomenologically beyond the horizon is literally the underworld and the Sun descends into it. There is the vector region of these phenomena and the accretive structures imposed upon them.

Nowadays we see the Sun as continuously present in a different sense. The planet spins and creates the illusion of the Sun setting. When the Sun’s descent is literally perceived, the pneumious accretion formed creates in the pneuma the underworld itself. Though again note, the things we call the underworld are different related vector regions. Unlike in the God-sun/science-sun difference, here the structure of reality is more radically accreted differently to the solid spatio-temporal continuity of the modern world. The phenomenological appearance of the descent creates a whole world of mythology in the pneuma i.e. of tales that similarly form (struggle against the dark and re-emergence).

Since the accretions are not just psychological but real (potentially active in altering what we call physical solidity), there is then a feedback between the projected accretions and their worship. They appear in dreams, they communicate, the answer requests. Thus they solidify as particular forces, though still are actually accretions of quasi-necessity projected onto the vector regions that suggest these stories.

This fleshes out the picture from my previous post which suggested that the word of the sacred might be too challenging, too against the values of that alliance of morality and reason that the west lives in. I am not saying this is wrong. But if it isn’t wrong (whatever that might mean), if the Western model persists and it cannot return to the old ways —for they are too terrible for it to bear- then it has but two choices: to attempt the re-accretion of more reasonable deities that can mirror it or if it survives it has the prospect of forming what might be called a ‘second centre’.

That is, a new centre where reason has built a wall that does not fail, but apart from various small breakthroughs, keeps the howling madness away and forges in the pneuma an attempt at pristine world of the fake Apollo (not Kingsley’s Apollo). The second centre is that thing so many people fear, it is the absolute cut off from nature and the dominance of it by humankind, reason and morality. I do not present the second centre as desirable or otherwise, only as an actual unsuspected actual option that preserves the occult geology in its description yet in its enactment would cover it over nearly perfectly.

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Recent considerations have moved my theorising away from outright human contingent paranormality –conceptuality as active substance– to a possibility that includes human accretive forces as only one element in the sea of what we call anomalous phenomena. Currently being played with is a ‘reticular ontology’, that is, a conception of everything as and endless series of lines or fibres. This is appropriated from reported occult conceptions of reality in this wise (e.g. the web of wyrd, Castaneda) in conjunction with Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of a line of flight.

Perception of the reticulum is supposed to be the closest one can have to seeing existence as it is in itself (note we do not say this is the case, we merely engage with the concept). It is also sometimes called ‘seeing energy’.

Now a feature of the reticulum is that once perceived, the separation of the perceiving being from the externality is considerably challenged. The lines can be clearly seen to extend straight from the being into the ‘outside’. There is a kind of boundary in so far as the being of awareness is a kind of node, yet the connectivity to the whole is immediately present. Furthermore the lines cannot be considered purely to exist in the regular spatial coordinates available to us; the lines bypass temporality as we know it and dimensionality.

A reticular ontology is essentially panpsychic insofar as all the lines are formed of awareness in a sense. Access to the reticulum is access to greater awareness -all psychic type events can be considered momentary reticular access. The reticulum as a whole is entirely self-aware. This is a postulate.

The formation of nodes (beings like ourselves) has an interesting consequence from this perspective. The more nodes develop there own internal awareness the more they believe they are capable of grasping what is going on. Unfortunately for the nodes, the more the awareness becomes centralised in the node, the less it actually accesses the reticulum. This then is the formula of the inverse increase in awareness in relation to the development of the node:

The greater awareness in the node, the less awareness of connectivity to the reticulum.

This means almost the opposite of Hegel’s PoS is true. The development of conscious is a retrograde step, worse still is self-consciousness, increasing narrowment of reticular awareness continues to occur until the crowning glory of this occurs -the state.

This tragedy also seems to entail a strong kind of unpleasant Kantianism. The more developed we become in investigating things with our own developed tools (maths, science) the less access we actually will have to the thing in itself. Of course Kant bars access to the thing in itself anyway, however the reticular as possible perception not only places the thing in itself partially within reach, it also means human rational attempts to fathom it necessarily get further from it. Consequentially all ‘lower species’ as we think of them have an increased reticular access, with this increasing further as one ends up in the inorganic.

Please don’t misunderstand. This is not an anti-scientific stance. Even if the node/reticular concept is accurate we generally do not live perceiving the reticulum and science has been of tremendous value to us. This occurrence of delving further and further away from perceptual access to something like the in-itself cannot necessarily be seen as worse than reticular access. Our investigations in this relatively solid seeming reality function well so the withdrawal from the reticular possibility can also be seen as highly epistemically satisfying.

This leads us to a second point about such an ontology. When we say that perceiving the reticulum is the actual connection to the ‘outside’, we consider it as a totally time/space transcendent perspective in which anything can be known (though equally there must be caution here, accounts like Monroe’s would suggest that even reticular access has many layers to it). It is minimally a totally superior epistemic state to regular human capacity. So it is easy to consider regular human perception as subtractive in its relation to reality. Even without the reticulum and simply with regard to our scientific understanding there is much we cannot see/hear/detect etc. We subtract from reality and our perception of the world is what we get.

Two points complicate this picture. The reticular ontology is totally compatible with human formed conceptual accretions which we literally layer over the regions of the outside. In the reticulum these are perceivable as emanating lines to nodes (accretions are different kinds of nodes) whereas from regular perception we often confuse concept and object.

This means we not only subtract, but that we add. We add pneuma to the externality and it stays there in the reticulum. However this actual state of confusion of regular perception -in which the connecting lines are not visible is also different from reticular perception, which for all its superior access is subtractive of the human state of perception. So our reality is additive and subtractive

Secondly then, this is why we couch reticular access as only the closest thing to seeing things as they are, for whilst it does show the accretions stuck to the vectors, it does not and cannot show the actual confusion of the nodally perceived reality state itself.

That is, even reticular access itself is subtractive.