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There is a recurring intuition that appears across very different moments in intellectual history: that reality is not fundamentally composed of discrete things, but of relations of forces, connections, transmissions. Sometimes this intuition is expressed mystically, sometimes philosophically, sometimes aesthetically. In the Renaissance, it appears in the work of Giordano Bruno as a theory of vincula, bonds that hold the cosmos together. My long standing reformulation of this is pneuminous theory, a phenomenological model that works outwards (largely from synchronistic phenomena), to suggest a field of information-conceptuality. This field can accrete/intensify onto regions within awareness (the vector field) with an underlying resistance given by a putative but unreachable umbratic. A more recent addition postulates an essentially mystical/energetic perspective can show this as a reticulum or network of connecting fibres and nodes.

Whilst Bruno has been on my register for a long time (since reading Crowley’s Little/Big nearly 40 years ago) I have only more recently come to appreciate the similarity of his model with the pneuminous one. I do not seek to collapse one into the other, but to show how they resonate, and how, taken together, they can be clarified and extended. Bruno provides a powerful ontology of relational immanence. Pneuminous theory, in turn, offers a way of specifying how those relations operate, how they stabilise, and how they can be deliberately altered.

Bruno’s starting point was radical for his time. He rejected the idea that the world is composed of inert matter arranged within a fixed hierarchy. Instead, he proposed an infinite, centreless cosmos in which everything is alive and internally related. He leaves no clean division between spirit and matter, no passive substrate awaiting form. Rather, the world is a living continuum, and its structure is not given by substances but by relations. These relations (vincula) are not merely logical or symbolic. They are real channels through which influence, desire, and form propagate.

The vincula connect everything: person to person, image to object, mind to world. They are affective, imaginal, and cognitive all at once. Desire binds, images bind, thoughts bind. To exist is already to be caught up in a web of these bonds, and to act is to participate in their rearrangement. This is why Bruno treats imagination not as a secondary faculty, but (like Henri Corbin) as an ontological one. Images are not inert representations of things; they are operators within the structure of reality itself. To imagine something is already to enter into relation with it, to participate in its configuration. From this perspective, what Bruno calls “magic” is not the summoning of external entities or the violation of natural law. It is the deliberate manipulation of bonds. Through carefully constructed images, intensified imagination, and directed desire, the practitioner reorganises the network of relations that constitute reality. Nothing is brought in from outside; rather, what already exists is reconfigured so that a different pattern becomes dominant.

Pneuminous theory begins from a similar intuition. Any image is pneuminously connected to something e.g. its creator (to the imagination and subtley to the memory fibres that feed into it) or that which it is an image of (if representational). Likewise a word (though Bruno is less approving of words than images he would surely still see the trace there) is not just an element in syntax, it is either an accretional bond representative (prepositions) or it is connects to its referent directly through the pneuminous reticular (in this way pneuminous theory is comfortable with actual designation as essentially metaphysically instantiated, but acknowledges prior to this that Wittgensteinian use criteria establish the word-object relation coming into being).

So instead of Bruno’s vincula, pneuminous theory speaks of reticular or pneuminous fibres, but the notion is the same; a kind of binding means that cuts across spatio temporality to bind what seem to many totally separate phenomena, concepts and physicality. Bruno emphasises desire, imagination as means of connection, pneuminous theory has no disagreement with this, indeed it seems an appropriate phenomenological extension.

What Bruno lacks is the vector field, which is a crucial conceptual addition that prevents various problem of naive word object relations. The vector field is a heuristc pure blank awareness (internal and external). Every ‘thing’ is a region in the field which acts as a carrier (vector) or a concept (but that concept is actually attached to the vector not just psychologically). Externally for example, your phone is essentially a blank vector region, but it has accreted to it the concept phone, thus the concept-accretion and vector region make a unity that we then naively think of as one thing called phone. Internally we might consider how we identify emotions and call them a name, hence there was a region, a feeling, that we gave a label to which then again made a naive unity. We might note in these examples that external and internal are both vector regions that these concepts attempt to cover. The problems generated here are dealt with elsewhere by the incoherent/coherent structure of concepts.

Magick is the possibility that other relations between accretion and vector are possible. Other accretions can be imposed, whether weakly (as fleeting associations) or strongly (through sustained attention and will -magick). In this sense, reality is not a fixed set of objects but a layered field in which multiple accretions coexist, compete, and sometimes override one another. The reticulum (the network of relations) is constantly being reorganised by these interactions. As stated, it is here that the resonance with Bruno becomes most apparent. His vincula correspond closely to the connections of the reticulum; his operative images correspond to accretions; his emphasis on desire as a binding force finds a parallel in the role of will in structuring and directing pneuma. Both systems reject the idea of inert matter and affirm that meaning, imagination, and relation are constitutive of reality rather than merely descriptive of it.

So what the vector field does is introduces several clarifications and extensions. First, it provides a more explicit account of competition and instability in the accretive field. Bruno’s bonds are dynamic, but he does not strongly emphasise the way in which multiple configurations can coexist and contend for dominance. By contrast, the notion of accretion allows us to describe reality as a field of overlapping structures, some of which stabilise while others collapse. This makes it possible to explain why certain magickal transformations “take” while others fail.

Second, the concept of the vector provides a heuristic site for these interactions. Where Bruno speaks in more continuous terms, the vector allows us to isolate points within the field where accretions attach and interact. A single vector can sustain multiple accretions simultaneously, which makes it possible to understand ambiguity, reinterpretation, and deliberate reconfiguration in a more precise way. To clarify (though hinted at already), magick is seeking the dominance over a vector region that in the natural course of things is not going to take on that accretion. A vector region is not simply an object, it is any identifiable situation. For instance a failing business is a situation, the accretion ‘failing business’ as a concept is the accretion applied to a certain set vector regions. Using magick (if hard work is not working) we might seek to apply the accretion of ‘a successful business’ to this vector region; if successful we will have drawn this accretion onto the vector region, disloding the ‘failing business’, and thus reality will manifest the new picture -increased sales etc.

The umbratic also plays a significant role in the expansion. The umbratic is the phenomenological in itself. The in itself appears as an idea of what is beyond the vector field, but as ‘beyond’ it can never be ultimately accessed. If the vector field is understood as the field of possible appearance and interaction (what can be engaged, interpreted, and structured), then it cannot be assumed to exhaust reality. There must remain an excess beyond it, a dimension that cannot be fully captured by any accretion. This is not necessarily a separate world; it might in fact be identical to what appears (this direction involves bringing the agnostic disjunction into the picture which is too in depth for our current purpose). But that identity can never be confirmed, because any confirmation would occur within the vector field itself.

The umbratic thus functions as a limit condition. It plays the role of what seems to supply pushback against the accretive ability of anything to be anything. It ensures that no accretion, however powerful, can fully determine or exhaust what is. It introduces resistance into the system, making it possible to distinguish between accretions that resonate with the structure of the field and those that distort it. In this respect, it plays a role analogous to the “in-itself” in Kant, but without enforcing a strict separation between appearance and reality. Instead, it marks the necessary incompleteness of any attempt to capture reality within a system of relations. The caveat though (magick again) is that under certain circumstances the accretions can bend/alter the umbratic resistance.

This framework also allows us to reinterpret traditional “forces” such as the planets. The so-called wandering stars (Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, and so on) are physical vectors: objects within the field of appearance. But their associated meanings (expansion, conflict, limitation) may not be intrinsic properties of those objects. They are accretions that have formed historically, stabilised culturally, and proven operationally effective. To work with “Jupiter,” in a magical sense, is to engage with a particular accretion attached to a particular vector, not to access an essential property of a celestial body. From this perspective, even modern additions such as Uranus can be understood in the same way. Its associations with disruption, electricity (makes me think of Lynch and Twin Peaks), and sudden change are not given by its physical nature alone, but by the accretion that has formed around it. These accretions are contingent, but they are not arbitrary. Once stabilised, they become powerful organising structures within the field.

Taken together, these elements form a coherent model. Reality presents itself as a vector field structured by competing pneuminous accretions that bind images to appearances. These accretions are real and operative, organising the network of relations in a manner analogous to Bruno’s vincula. Yet they do not exhaust reality, which always exceeds them through the umbratic. Magick consists in the will-driven modulation of these accretions; truth consists in their resonance with a structure that can never be fully known. Bruno discovered that reality is a web of bonds. Pneuminous theory seeks to explains how those bonds are structured, how they compete, and how they can be made operative, while preserving the limit that prevents any system from closing completely upon itself.

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Consider the virtual/pneuminous. Here we are in the pure present (again the accretive problem arises) the virtual/pneuminous presses against us from both sides (the future and the past). Endless lines are drawn between all phenomena that might facilitate rupture like occurences.

Rupture like occurences are the synchronicities, the hauntings, Jung’s room crammed full of spirits so thick you can scarcely breath. This world is there, it is real, yet it hides behind the purely brilliant now, ever unfolding, ever receding.

Where are these lines? What do you mean? The lines are drawn in the pneuminous, in the other world, in the virtual. Maybe they are not drawn in it, but rather are it (then this line drawn is a key). Nodes and lines shimmering in the umbratic nothingness.

The rolling madness of pneuminous feedback layers endless complexity into the system. As the regions are named so they accrete; hammer, table, computer, seratonin, differential equation, on and on. Every accretion trying to solidify, failing at its edges. Not just these terms but vast abstractions like time, space, present, future.

Know that everything is formed in this way. Wittgenstein is a priori absolutely correct to say meaning is use. This truth is unassailable. However because reality is the way it is, it is also more than this. Each word exists in intensive use and extensive object . Open horizon, vertical structure. Every potentially ephemeral use summons the virtual hoard which accretes to it, affective and intellectual. When words are relatively simple like ‘table’ the accretions, the rules, whilst still swarming with affective virtuality and formal possiblity are much simpler than that of ‘time’.

Time too is an accretion. The word is a use word, its being exhausted by its use. And yet not, for the meaning of time as accretion is the bewildering morass of contradictory theories and overlapping similar uses that form this node. It is for this reason there are three different language games of time: chronos, aion and kairos. These being measured, numerical time (chronos), eternal time of future and past (aion) and qualitative heterogenous time (kairos).

What occurs that makes magick possible? Only the natural feedback that happens especially with beings that have complex conceptual breakdown of the vector field. Each identified region produces a contingent archetypal form, an ideal image of that kind of thing. This is the unbound pneuminous accretion. This unbound accretion is projected upon all the instances of this kind of thing encountered. The effect of this is to bring the phenomena more in line with the ideality (the pneuminous form). Magick imposes the ideal pneuminous accretion upon the empirical pneuminous form making it more like itself.

How can time become more like itself? As Bergson observed, chronos has come to dominate time, so that nearly all is perceived under this auspice. Mathematically measured time becomes our phenomenology. Time as accretion comes to mean this. Time is a vector region, whatever we can use the word time for is the use of time. What facilitates this grammar. The underpinning experience that makes the grammar of time possible. But when this grammar shifts to time as chronos, the accretion itself as it is embedded in the vector exerts that small but powerful effect upon it. The vector region that makes the grammar of time possible is made, in a subtle way, more fixed, more solid, like this incohehent chronological archetype.

One of the key ways emphasised to faciliate access to the other world is through our experience of temporality. Bergson and Deleuze and Guattari say this, but (Deleuze and Guattari especially) pull the punch. Intuition is a kind of act of imagination that can give access to reality other than our own but the occult significance of this is played down. Goethe understood it because he actually could do it. Elsewhere it appears as a myth. A fantasy whose literal reality the world of philosophy struggles to cope with -the pulled punches.

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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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“Are you or are you not?”

42mph = 67.5924kmh

Top speed of a camel.

Camel’s odd & uncanny legs make it capable of 42mph in short bursts.

The vulva of a Volvo.

Odd-legs indeed.

Sexy legs.

Stephen repeats… data, information.

The interrogator has had enough. She is ready to waterboard Stephen. “Are you the saboteur codenamed Agent Orange?”

“Orange you kinda sexy,” Stephen says with a gin-and-tonic grin.

Stephen knew that the Kraken would come after him. He had flown under the radar for far too long. All his life… he knew… he knew he was getting away with something. Never quite sure what. He was faking his existence. People would find out.

Stephen would be exposed. Stephen would be rearranged. 

“Bring the orange crush!” Lily-D yells.

“No!” Stephen cries.

A bucket of orange crush is poured over Stephen’s head. He cannot breathe. He cannot speak. He cannot think the thoughts he thought he could think. Stephen is a vegetable. A mineral. A fruit.

He inhales. Big mistake. Inhaling is a mistake. Simulated drowning becomes… beyond a simulation. Peace. Peace in death. Peace in life.

A piece of orange. What is language? Are you satisfied with your limit-experience?

Stephen’s mind-machine spins & spins.

Wittgenstein says: If an orange could speak, we could not understand it. 

Not true! Stephen understands everything. Every word the orange speaks. Every half-thought. Every gesture.

Investigation lamps. What are “investigation lamps”? The investigation lamps grow brighter & brighter. Like three suns in a triple-star system. 

Imploding & exploding. 

Breathe, Stephen. Speak the breath.

Stephen speaks “silently” to himself. Reflection. What a technology! Phonic signals. The alphabet.

What does Stephen say?

What can Stephen say?

[i]… [i]… I am a human being.

Are you sure?

What evidence?

May It Please the Court. My name is Stephen Steeplton. I apologize for the missing “e”. 

It was not my fault.

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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.