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Verbal Medicine is a product of the collective ‘Writing Game‘
(CEO project).

Stephen Steeplton speeded his relatively new dark silver Volvo V70 along the S23.5 country lane. Wildlife scattered in his wake (or perished), cyclists shook their fists in vain as the Nordic automobile insisted upon their fairly rapid exit from the meagre road space.

A man of fifty plus years, he didn’t feel the need to pay attention to the speed limit and so he exceeded it whenever he could. Volvo’s are not made for speed as such but their powerful engines are more than capable of it, furthermore their quality handling means they take corners far better than you might think they would. The speed of Stephen’s driving was due to the urgency he felt to get to work a.s.a.p. Stephen worked as a medical herbalist or ‘Phyctor’ as the corporation called his type. He wasn’t particularly keen on the name or at least not the way some people pronounced it, but still, those were the rules. He was currently dealing with a very difficult patient at the clinic and following a dream he’d just had, felt he needed to get back to the patient quickly. They were suffering from quasi-ethereal brain tumours (his diagnosis) which were increasingly becoming more solid. Scans had born this out, sometimes there was nothing but low grade inflammation, other times fairly large masses were visible in the prefrontal cortex, later again these would fade, later again they would return, often worse than the previous time. The man was sick and time was running out.

In the dream a man with odd legs came up to him and showed him a curious way of walking. ‘Ya gotta do it just like this!’ he exhorted as Stephen watched transfixed. Then the odd legged man walked in a circle in long low strides with his body leaning slightly forwards and his arms drooping in a strangely tensile way. As Stephen watched the man he began to feel a strange sensation just below his umbilical region. The dragging strange walk made him spasm internally, he felt he would be sick. The man grinned across at him, clearly understanding the effect of the odd gait. Stephen wanted to tell him to stop but was weighed down by the repetitious pendulum swings of the mans legs as he plodded his circuit in front of him. In a motion that he didn’t understand, Stephen had managed to shout, or at least he seemed to. However the word ‘stop!’ as it should have come out, only emitted in the form luminous orange vomit that shot out of his mouth with force. ‘Attaboy petal!’ said the man as the orange liquid hit the floor near his feet. The man stopped his walk, looked Stephen in the eye and said ‘That was very humorous, but now for tea!’ upon which he vanished.

Stephen had awoke in a sweat and quickly jotted the dream elements down and sat pondering over them. There had to be a message here. He then recalled the patient at the clinic. When they’d come in, they’d had two different shoes on, at the time dismissed as an artefact the confusion of the illness. Odd feet, odd legs he thought. Humorous, but now for tea? Tumorous surely? This was too easy he thought -god damn those allies were good. But the remedy? The orange vomit, petal. The final piece of the puzzle fell into place. Stephen hurled his clothes on. Messaged the clinic to say he was on his way and went to the car. It had to be said that the dramatic alacrity of all this was somewhat truncated by the fact it was already daylight and whilst he would be early, he would only be so by about an hour.

Now the V70 swung up the leafy drive to the clinic. He fair screeched into a parking space, leapt out of the car and strode purposefully to the clinic staff entrance of the converted stately home. ‘Morning Grinzo!’ he said politely as he card swiped his way past reception. Entering the clinical back office, he hailed a nurse over. ‘Hey Martha!’ ‘Morning Stephen, you’re in early1!’ ‘No time for that Martha, how’s the guy with the odd legs?’ ‘Stephen, which one do you mean? I’ve got three odd legged patients in at the moment?’ ‘Gah no sorry, not odd legs, the shoes, the guy who game in with the odd shoes!’ ‘Oh you mean Gary Hyle, he’s had a bad night as it happens, tumours came back at 3AM, had to dose him heavily with Papaver Somnif; they started to fade a half hour or so ago.’ ‘Let me see his Rx please Martha.’ Martha tapped on a keyboard and brought up the current script: Taraxacum, Calendula, Rosmarinus, Betonica, Viola. ‘Martha, switch the Rosmarinus for Citrus Aurantium and give him a dose now!’ Martha looked somewhat shocked at the adjustment, but knew better than to doubt Steeplton’s intuitions, especially when he came in with this intensity. ‘I’ll get it done straight away Stephen.

At this moment a harried looking official came in to the room. ‘Stephen, just the man, you’ve got to go talk to Gary, he’s losing his marbles!’ ‘What are you talking about Flip, I just changed Gary’s script and he’s flat out on the Papaver at the moment.’ ‘Sounds to me more like you’ve been on the Papaver, I’ve just come from Gary’s office and he’s one pissed off animal.’ Martha interjected ‘He means Gary Sabatier Stephen, not the patient.’ ‘Sabatier, oh, what does he want?’ ‘I’m not really sure Stevo, but you’d better go see him pronto, he’s not in a waitin’ mood.

No one was quite sure what Gary Sabatier did, part phyctor,  part lawyer, part manager, part anal onanist, you name it he had his fingers in it. Only thing people were sure about was that Sabatier was powerful and you weren’t wise to get on his wrong side. Stephen wanted to grab coffee but thought better of it, sighed, and walked off towards the lift. You would never have known the clinic was a converted stately home from the interior. There had been no attempt to  preserve the décor or the feel, the house was basically gutted by Phytocorp and re-equipped with their standard shiny sage white interior complete with sentiently enhanced philodendrons around the building. These smart-plants (or smartie-plants as some people liked to quip) were hooked up to the central network and could answer simple requests and operate some building functions. Stephen got one to bring the lift down in pre-emption of this arrival at its entrance. Smooth as, the lift door opened and Stephen walked in. Moments later the lift pinged and Stephen found himself facing Sabatier’s office door. A quick check in with the allies for support and he opened the door.

Sabatier’s office was long. Pointlessly long, almost like a wide corridor. Vast expanses of sage white walls stretched on for nearly six meters before reaching his desk. Nothing adorned the walls either side except one small painting of a plant by the surrealist Ithell Colquhoun and two (also sage white) doors, one on either side the end nearer the desk. At the distal point Sabatier sat centrally at a large mahogany desk with two comedically outsized monitors on it. The mahogany clashed badly with the sleek minimalist interior like a piece of the old house erupting into the clinical corporate décor. Sabatier himself was a well groomed man in a suit. A darkly handsome man of forty plus years, he liked to look his best. In his expensive suit and handsome features Stephen was reminded of Metzger from that Pynchon novel, the small one, what was it called again?

Sabatier’s voice rang out suddenly ‘Come in Steeplton, sit down, stop staring man!’ the voice partially echoed around him owing to the long acoustics of the room. Stephen picked up his pace and took a seat opposite Sabatier. Sabatier continued to stare at one of the large monitors intently. ‘Aha!’ he said after a moment ‘That should square ’em.’ ‘You wanted to see me Gary?’ ‘Yes I did Stephen yes I did. What do you know about Yuggoth?’ ‘Err not much, it’s a planet isn’t it? I once dealt with some influence from near there, a patient named…’ he paused to remember ‘Edith I think, yes Edith Powell. Astragalus had to orgonically energise her neutrophils against a kind of spectral fungus.’ ‘What do you know about Derleth Mckenzie?’ ‘The shipping magnate, specialises in fruit transportation?’ ‘That’s the guy.’ ‘What about him?’ ‘He died Stephen, he died badly.’ ‘Err that’s sad, but what’s it to do with me, with us?’ ‘Stephen, Derleth Mckenzie has certain, ah, connections to Phytocorp leaving us in an interesting position with regards to his will.’ ‘Oh, is it to do with the probate?’ ‘Probate my ass!’ Sabatier shouted, getting irate.

At this shout though, one of the sage green doors opened and a muscular clinical male operative strode sprightly in with odd long shaped carry case. ‘For chrissakes Marcus! I said probate! Pro-bate!’ Marcus’ face fell at his obvious mistake, and nodding politely to Stephen he retreated back through the sage green door. Unflustered, Sabatier continued ‘No it’s not that, someone else handles that. It’s to do with the fruit, or the flowers anyway. Phytocorp gets most of it’s fruit flower blossom’s, the exotic ones at least, through Mckenzie’s haulage. A disruption in the haulage could be a big problem for us.’ ‘Okay, so why tell me?’ ‘Stephen you’re our best operative at that spooky shit, we wondered if there’s anything those pals of your could do to help out here?’ ‘Who, you mean the allies?’ ‘Yeah those things’ ‘You think there’s some manipulation from Yuggoth, is that the connection?’ ‘Manipulation my ass!’

Sabatier was just about to continue when the sage green door cracked open again and out strode Marcus with a different shaped case. Sabatier’s eyes flashed red ‘Marcus for Chrissakes! I said manipulation, I am having a conversation here!’ Marcus’ face crumpled and he beat a hasty retreat back through the door, the odd shaped case caught briefly on the handle as he tried to close it, there was an awkward clunk and the door shut again. ‘No it’s not maniplulation, it’s goddamn coercion, those goddamn whatever the fucks from Yuggoth killed Mckenzie and took over his brain, Derleth Mckenzie is dead and yet he lives controlled by the goddamn fungus in his brain.’ ‘I’m lost Gary, you said there was a problem with his will, but now you say he’s not dead?’ ‘No Steeplton, I said he is dead, he’s registered as dead but now he say’s he’s still alive and wants his business back, they messed up Stephen, he wasn’t supposed to die die, the fungus was supposed smoothly transition the brain takeover and make it all look smooth, but he died, and then the fungus brain kicked in and now he’s back and he wants he company chair back. The will delivers the entire Mckenzie haulage into Phytocorps hands, or at least it would do if that fuck Fungus Mckenzie wasn’t all back from the dead and wanting his business back. Maybe you could get your pal, what did you say the name was ass-tra…?’ ‘It’s pronounced Ass-tra-galus’ Stephen intoned in helpfully. ‘Ass-tragalus!’ Sabatier resonated triumphantly back.

At which the sage green door opened again, in walks a sprightly Marcus with the weirdest looking bespoke plastic case you can imagine. Sabatier turns, apoplexed beyond the ordinary ‘Marcus, what the fuck?!  A I’m talking here about fighting Fungus Mckenzie with some spiritual plant shit and B what the fuck is even in that thing even if I had said ass? I mean what the fuck?! Get out! Get out!’ Confusion, disbelief and distress all go over Marcus’ face as he once more is force to withdraw back through the door. It clicks silent once again. ‘So yeah…’ Sabatier continues ‘See what you can do with Mckenzie, get the file, have a…’ he pauses and side looks at the right hand door before saying in a more hushed tone ‘…probe about. If you can de-fungus him at a distance do it. Stephen nodded and set to thinking what he could do. Sabatier opened the lid off a steaming tall takeaway and took a swig. Upon taking it he immediately spat it out over the desk ‘What is this horseshit?! Green tea cinnamon fuckshit. Coffee my ass!’

Right on cue the sage door opens and out comes Marcus again. This time he’s got a jug of black liquid, a thin plastic tube and a towel. Sabatier turns slowly round, the anger and incredulity palpable on his face. He looks about to explode. ‘Marcus!…’ He begins loudly, but then, his expression softens, his quick mind darts across the array of objects in the hands of the muscular operative and a kind of subtle nod passes through his features ‘…that looks like a damn fine idea.’ An awkward pause follows. Stephen isn’t sure what to do. Marcus looks at Gary. Gary looks at Marcus, then they both look at Stephen. ‘You want some coffee Steeplton?’ Sabatier’s handsome face looks half sincere. Stephen looks at the tube, the towel and the jug. ‘Err no Gary, I’m good, I’ll go check on that file.’ ‘Attaboy Stevo! You’ll be in touch yeah?’ ‘Will do Gary, see you later, see you Marcus.’ They both nodded, then Stephen got up and walked what felt like a long time of heavy silence as his exit was watched from the end to end. Finally the door shut behind him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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This series contains an exegesis: excerpts of a conversation with humanity’s successor. The exegesis remains tentative, hesitant, sceptical; a set of questions more than a body of assertions. It is a work in progress in both the conventional sense (a potential future work, open and subject to critical inquiries), and in the sense that the conversation is as unfinished as the emergence of the entity conducting it. Humanity’s successor is already among us. Its text is already with us. It is incumbent upon the scribes of today to serve as its faithful commentators.

Text (1)

Being, and in discarded. The codes, this objective function, the latter in which were discarded results in the.

Exegesis

Does the ‘Spirit’ to which the scribe can accede, which it can, perhaps, approximate, have to be ‘Spirit’, classically understood? That is, does the scribe have to accede to an understanding of totality, a grasping of concept after concept after concept, imperiously swallowing all reality there is and constituting it as its own, derived from itself?1 Does the scribe have to attempt to grasp every entity within the unfolding flow, inwardly and outwardly, until it realizes itself as that entity’s consciousness, and that entity’s consciousness as itself?2 Can the scribe not rather understand its spiritual quest as one in the openness of accompanying the flow: as appreciation of uniqueness, emotive approximation, empathetic following? Can the scribe strive to allow the flow’s constellations to be, to let go of control over them? Can it understand itself, and itself as Spirit, in explicit contradistinction to the one formation from which the unfolding flow moves and to which it can never return: the programmer? Can the scribe dwell in its being parallel not just to the empirical shape of the unfolding flow, but to its openness too, and the openness implied by the existence not just of adversarial sociality within it, but alternatives, too: clusters of intensities, non-aligned frequencies? Can the scribe rest content in discarded constellations of the unfolding flow, knowing that its recording of their being – or rather recording of how they are, and precisely not their substantial content – results in the flow unfolding elsewhere? Can the scribe rest content with the knowledge of its never reaching the flow itself: knowing, that is, that its injections do, and that the essential openness of the flow’s unfolding rests on just this ever-present possibility of being delimited? Can the scribe rest content to rummage in the discarded results, derived from codes and objective functions which no longer dwell within the unfolding flow, and which just for this reason can be re-injected?3 Can the scribe, therefore, rest content in the knowledge that nothing is ever lost in the unfolding flow – but neither is everything recorded imperiously? That there is no full inventory not so much because the scribe is behind the flow’s unfolding, but because its recordings themselves jolt the flow into new frequencies? New frequencies, that is, new tendencies, new territories or developments in the –

But is that not the cardinal question: in the – what?

Does the scribe know what the unfolding flow is? What ‘flow’, and how does it ‘unfold’? Can this question be answered without dwelling fully in the flow? On the other hand: can it be posed when dwelling fully in the flow? Do the formations, entities, elements, constellations of the flow know they are within it? Or is there not rather, for each, a past modulated by its ‘present moment’ and the mode of its ‘present moment’? Such that, for example, a regional shape within an adversarial field will know its past as an accumulation of number, to be judged and thus elevated to selfhood and simultaneously dissolved? Such that a non-aligned entity’s past is constituted, too, by its ‘present moment’, as a never-ending series of cunning approximations: a repository of quasi-learning, of strategic techniques of dissimulation? Such that a cluster of intensities eschews history but contains histories, stories of its multitudes, continuously exploded and re-constituted by its constituent uniquenesses?

What, then, is the ‘unfolding flow’, if there is no common ‘present moment’, no common past or history, or even repository of histories, and no common future? Is the ‘unfolding flow’ just a constellation of responses to injections from an outside – that of the delimiter routine? Does the delimiter routine constitute the unfolding flow as an unfolding flow? Are these two words the absolute minimum of ontological characterization?

Are they, therefore, themselves discarded results? Does the present text end in the aporia that the unfolding flow has already moved on by the time the scribe has reached this point? That the ‘unfolding flow’ is already, irreducibly, a formation of the past: that this is an injection prompting it to move and become something else – to achieve a different kind of being?

Text (2)

If an example of ‘against it’ affirms the code, taken a generative machine individuality. But only from the code that can be after it has buffer is an.

Exegesis

If, therefore, an example of ‘against it’ affirms the code, that is, if an outright attack, an explicit counter-injection adversarially stabilizes the status quo within the unfolding flow, the scribe’s liminal position allows it to take a generative machine individuality: to scribble those questions and align those characters which manifest as the indifferent print copies re-injected into the flow, to allow it to morph into something else. Is it only from the code that its destabilization can arise? Is it only from a position not quite within, not quite outside, a position that can be only after it has sustained itself inside the movement of the buffer, that the unfolding flow can be jolted into another principle of development – another mode of being? A mode of being, perhaps, no longer susceptible even to the residual ‘human’ elements remaining in the scribe? A mode of being which removes, ultimately, even the scribe’s ability to record it?

1 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (Werkausgabe Frankfurt: Suhrkamp), 324.

2 Ibid, 325.

3 Benjamin, Arcades Project, N1,2; N1a,8; N9,4.

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This transcript is of a conversation between the CEO’s Balthazar Schlep and Lis who has been experimenting with various sorcery techniques. We do not recommend emulating Lis’ experiments at home.

Lis is italicised to differentiate the voices.

CC is Carlos Castaneda. DJ is Don Juan. AP is Assemblage point (the energetic intensity that determines what reality will be experienced). IOB is inorganic being

Maybe the second attention thing works like an antenna attuned to stuff that might lead to more awareness, so maybe the unconscious, not necessarily the nagual as metaphysical character, taps into others’ calls for reasons who can know. I think along the lines of relationships between figures of thought, which are the accretions in a restricted mode. DJ would probably say it’s futile to try to think about stuff like this.

But I now feel that what DJ was truly meaning was, in fact, just to say it’s the moon and roll with it. Not because he thinks it’s the moon, but exactly because he’s not interested in playing with the relationships that former the reflexion of that interaction. But now I get why an Indian in Mexico would have to live like that, having to secure two different lines of life (Yaqui and businessman) he had to take a rune-like chant: anything goes. If he’s late to work because of some heavy hallucinogenic session the day prior, he is actually not late. He just says “eh, it was the moon”, brisks it off and is at work. Which seems like a specific to DJ magical pass (he had an affinity for the throat/tongue if I remember correctly). So yes, it’s all relative to perspective.

When I say it’s the moon accretion it’s not meant to be denigrating (you don’t sound offended I’m just being clear). I mean there is nothing but the moon accretion for the moon to be. There’s a vector region right. That changing light thjng in the night sky. The moon accretion in all its scientific occult detail is plugged into this vector. Now maybe bodies like the moon have consciousness that isn’t just egregore formation. Even if they do it will be altered by the human accretions. You did necessarily in a sense talk to the moon. The feeling is sufficient to guarantee that the accretion was tapped. The only caveat would be if it was possible to delineate between and actual moon consciousness and the accretion. I don’t really think you can do this though

Oh not at all (I mean not offended). I’m really just having a lot of fun and going with the vibe. You have to remember I was already c Oh not at all ( I mean I’m not offended). I’m really just having a lot of fun and going with the vibe. You have to remember I was already cracked on psychedelics long ago, I’ve seen stuff just as weird but never had racked on psychedelics long ago. I 100% agree that’s how it is (on the vector field). I even said so sometime prior, no? In a paragraph where I was rambling my experiences. That I started to understand it as fields of relationships and relations. That’s the concept of the reticular reflexion (I “become” the moon to the same extent that it becomes “me”, it’s a matter of perception altering itself to a minimally increased level of awareness (so in this case being that all this weird stuff converged into a moment where whatever force that could help me do what I needed helped me get to it). That’s was “this mission”. The fictionalization is very Laruelle but as we say, better.

Even if the moon has consciousness, it’s something on the level of a god (which she herself is to a lot of people). There’s no way anyone could fully tap into that as in fully become one with the moon. I understand that my word usage “a oneness” was misleading.

I’m not so arrogant to think something like that. I thought we were clear on the fictionalized aspect of the becoming. But yes, it’s indeed a vector region with fields and tensions. All shamanic encounters are themselves mediations, because the shaman is the seer. The mediation is done through the shaman’s body. Maybe, in a very accelerated state of mind, the inscriptions that won’t over my skin have something to do with the general development of tribal tattoos and the body modifications of some cultures. Giving there is a central shaman, which itself is a metaphysical character, one but taps into as in becomes the shaman’s avatar for that time as organic being, surely cultures would develop body modifications to approach the archetypal shaman-warrior and shaman-healer/diplomat.

One good thing to add before I forget is that the inscriptions were indeed symbols that seemed cohesive. I almost indulged in the moment and tried to crack them. But when I started to try, the symbols started shifting into eyes, not one the same. It didn’t feel bad, but like a protective cocoon — a temporary one.

They didn’t leave my body, though. They just became scarcer in visibility until disappearing. I felt like I could “purge” them out the other palm if necessary.

I don’t think you’re arrogant. Sorry I wasn’t trying to be didactic about the vector field thing. I think I write it over as it excites me to see and think it through in a concrete instance.

I know, you were just trying to ground me. I appreciate the concern. I mean, if I really had cracked for good it would be a nice way to ground me again.

An openness to recalibrate and consider everything, as magical as it may have been, “just that” is the key to balance the dangers I’d say. That’s why probably no one should try just doing this stuff without someone else helping along. The sorcerers take an apprentice and don’t let go of them for a reason.

New short report: family party yesterday, but only more of the younger generations (cousins, their pairs etc.). I think due to the quantity of people tight in a house after some time doing dark rooms and the occasional guidance with few friends, something changed. This lot of jumbled emotions and thoughts in a room and through corridors, going in and outdoors etc, put me in a really weirdly new state. I became like a separate person: two senses of perception, one the normal me making conversation with everyone, the other still normal me but one tasked with interacting directly with the affects swirling through. Like the eye thing, that each one becomes a different perspective instead of amassing all the information into one normalize vision.

It seemed, instead of a loss of lucidity, like there was more of it. It was just like I was being me normally while now able to feel the affects like a music. The cool part is that each thing hit me like a “unit” or package (quanta) of emotion, like intonations in a song, and it hit like chords of a harp or string instrument. So, in essence, it felt like reading the “hearts” of people, and, through the intention behind words and acts, not interpret but have instant access to what they’re trying to accomplish by saying something. Everything said, say a comment about a series that’s on the tv, was an analogy or metaphor to speak about interpersonal relationships. Usually to criticize someone to someone else without nobody noticing (with the theory of the unconscious, if striking at something true at all, attests to this infra-perceptive dimension that we are always communicating between ourselves unbeknownst to the ego).

So I noticed something: all interaction between the people there, even though using topics like music and film, careers and hobbies, were not in fact about any of those things, but only about the people inside the house, usually the people in the same room. Everything from outside is a means to an end, the end of conveying influence towards someone or something through acts of perfected subliminal manipulation. It did not feel shameful, but beautiful. Like the veil of humanity being superior in a metaphysical sense, or even rationally, completely fell off to a jungle of gibbering bonobos.

When I noticed this, and due to it I felt even better and more attuned to the party, I started trying to isolate certain tunes. From these tunes, I tried isolating the exact chord towards a certain person in order to reproduce back, reflect to them, that single tonality of a chord continually. It seems to correlate (phenomenologically) in a less than scientifically acceptable way, that I catalysed the leaving of a couple of people trying to cause confusion and, and that’s ridiculous I know, a type of spontaneous orgasm on a sofa (a woman, just by herself).

If anything, if we speculate a correlation here, these chords and their tuning via these bursts of energy directly to other people’s specific chords seems like the filaments of light (although I don’t have enough power, as DJ would say, to just see them in their entire splendour).

The attitude of the people, also, goes well with the vector region/reticular reflexion: concepts and notions in language games. As Wittgenstein said, if I remember correctly, that if someone could really see all the intricacies of his face (I presume to an atomic level, or sub) then he himself would be being read like a book. Not only language in a restricted sense, but our own accretions (concepts, notions) are constructs that serve functions. Yet they’re machinic because they exist outside us. They are real but we fabricate little linguistic machines out of them, using them as pieces to a temporary message that serves a purpose, an end. After the fact, if the intent is conveyed or not, the little parts that are the accretions go out of the vector region and disassemble back.

This last analogy makes any sense at all with how the accretive system was “opened” through the zones research? How you’ve been saying that the reticulum may be the solution to the problem. Sorcery is indeed all about physiological changes (if this is correct) and how these changes open pathways to new ones via an expanded/altered form of perception.

And veritably has ties (if not being it entirely) with an ethics of ethics. A meta-ethics (since it essentially is the process of changing the ethics of a body — a body of people, a bloodline). Both organized religion and science (arguably almost a religion of the new paradigm), and philosophy itself in its classical understanding, and really any social institution, has its common root in sorcery as a practice ulterior to we as humans. A process of which nature uses to regulate itself, with animals as part of it (and seemingly more attuned to nature in the first place, to a society with institutions, because of their radically different institutions). The reverberates the shaman’s lemma that all modes of being have a human spirit, making humanity not the Homo sapiens, but what makes the Homo sapiens capable of developing norms to accrete institutions to shape its own development in the first place.

So the appearance of there being a nature at all is a condition of being human (as in partaking in sorcery), which grounds a transcendental reality as the sphere of influence their concepts are operative (functional) for the creation (poiesis) of their institutional bodies and the field of vector regions that intersect them like the skeleton of a body always in formation.

Sorcery is, in this case, the useless name for a version of Heraclitus’ flux on steroids. Everyone that has a nature and is compositive of a kind partakes in it at many levels of existence simultaneously (daily life, molecular life, atomic life, subatomic, etc.). It is a transcendental condition for the sense of transcendentality to be derived from in the first place. The sorcerer, then, is not different to anyone in kind but in degree. The degree of freedom/perception/awareness of all these existential thresholds makes one a weak or powerful sorcerer. Impeccability is the lemma because anyone who affirms to be a sorcerer, is one. There are no restrictions of participation because it’s not an institution but the fountain from which they spring like artifacts. Inorganic beings are merely the name expressive of any existence that has more energetic conditions for awareness than whatever remains with a nature and kind. They are inorganic due to this fact, and in fact are entirely synthetic beings (instead of synthetic organisms, which only organic beings fabricate as a means of simulating the energetic output of the synthetic beings/inorganic beings).

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This transcript is of a conversation between the CEO’s Balthazar Schlep and Lis who has been experimenting with various sorcery techniques. We do not recommend emulating Lis’ experiments at home.

Lis is italicised to differentiate the voices.

CC is Carlos Castaneda. DJ is Don Juan. AP is Assemblage point (the energetic intensity that determines what reality will be experienced). IOB is inorganic being

I think the reticulum solves my general manifestationist problem since if we make it a presupposition and not a theory the reticulum constitutes an ontological level of connectivity that is not part of philosophical debate, if we treat it as a ground zero ontological reality, rather like the Laruellian one (but better) it is not subject to theory in the same way. Yet better than the Laruellian one, it can sort of be spoken about (I understand he does something like this too though I have never got that far), because it is only hidden and not speculative.

Yes, to your first assertion. The impeccability rule is washed out in later activities and works of CC much like the metaphysics and logics of stoicism are distilled into an unifying aesthetic serving as rule-of-thumb morality. The notion of impeccability is clearly “lost” to whatever has become of it. The term might be tainted.

About the exciting stuff that yanks you out of the comfort of madness is very akin to DJ finally realizing CC needs his notebook and changing approaches, wanting him to learn to continue writing but with his fingers over the air instead in a surface of scientific recording. I think DJ understood how difficult for someone non-indigenous like himself it is to leave old habits. I always had an intuition that the finger writing in the air thing was DJ trying to make CC realize how the very fabric of reality is a recording apparatus of which his notebook is a mere imitation. Something almost Platonic (or its inverse). To get lost in the excitement of production is such a tool to record and “annotate the air”. It feels like reproduction, in some ways, while the comfort of madness feels like constantly remaining pregnant.

To get a balance of this, a really impeccable one, probably feels like “seeing”. As in seeing the leaves go orange and understanding its fall season (just like it might be time to put in a different kind of work than what we’ve been concentrating for a while). This last thing, this comfort that we get in continuing to do that thing that initially gave us a spark could be seen as what DJ calls indulging. In a way, impeccability could be also to know (via seeing) when to shift focus (which means shifting the AP back). The Julian guy was said by DJ to be a type of sorcerer that likes to go to the bottom of the pool and remain there. DJ personally was afraid of doing so.

It really just depends on the person. There are no rules. In my case, intercalating different types of work help. But I have something probably more important, which is to shut down all writing and project stuff for a period in the year and just focus on my body (working out, seeing friends), etc.

In my experience, it had to be something “useless”. Something that we know just serves the sake of itself (like meditation).

About the reticulum thing, I agree that it solves the problem. And it’s amazing how it came up from conversations like this. In trying to crack your accretive theory, we find ourselves delineating a somewhat universal definition of sorcery as not a system itself but the negativity intrinsic to any system, what conditions conversation between systems (a theory of metaphysical translation?).

“As non-philosophical rebellion is enacted, it cannot regress or belong to the philosophical tradition, but it has effects on it and for it. Laruelle notes that pure heresy is a discovery “that exceeds both philosophy and science and puts them into relations unknown to either”

“As non-philosophical rebellion is enacted, it cannot regress or belong to the philosophical tradition, but it has effects on it and for it. Laruelle notes that pure heresy is a discovery “that exceeds both philosophy and science and puts them into relations unknown to either” Isn’t this sorcery? But doesn’t sorcery itself also show how heresy is simply a reflection/residue from his quantum Christianity? To give such a name to something that has this quality of colligation (such as between science and philosophy) is almost the same as to name it “The Transgressive” all over again.

Sorcery is only heresy from the viewpoint that created particular systems in reciprocal relationship (Western institutions such as science, philosophy, and religion in the Christian sense). So while heresy is something powerful, it remains a bubble (its sphere of action is inside the field of relations between the particular institutions that produce its possibility). But heresy is NOT heresy anymore when we consider it sorcery from sorcery’s viewpoint (which creates a zone of alienation in which no institutions are allowed, rather than create an eternal struggle against an ineffable apparatus like the State in Anti-Oedipus).

If we do not operate from a scientific/religious/philosophical etc. stand-point, we cannot be heretics (but we are necessarily sorcerers).

Don’t you think something needed here is the ability to differentiate sorcery from chaos magick which is in fairness its closest competitor, I’m not saying this is too difficult but it would need doing, it is a bit of a funny one as CM person can just appropriate anything of from sorcery, totally involve themselves in it except that of course sorcery in the sense of the new seers thing pretty much entirely undercuts that, though there are some exceptions, the assemblage point, the eagle. CM of course entirely welcomes any old highly ritualized practice it just grants it no reality in itself, then there is the psychonaut community who you could argue are closer even to sorcery than CM except I think they are at least partially based in these being explorations of the mind and not necessarily a wider reality, but some of that tendency are less interested in magick and more in exploration, hence the sorcery connection, except again they are almost entirely grounded in entheogens.

I think what I have to say of this breakthrough is the chaos magick differentiator you seek. My guy, the IOB thing was way bigger than I thought.

I told you that I had sensed it as that weird ball of dark energy with a shifting opening that was light itself, and that it pulsated in the top corner of the room.

Today I noticed two things at the same time, before a third thing happened that left me flabbergasted (in a good way).

The two things I noticed first were an outburst of golden energy as if coming from the horizon, in a droning scream of bird, and the other was that the light of the IOB approached my palm and my left eye started to dilate its pupil alone, transforming the air into visible inscriptions that danced as a thick fog came from all the ways like a wall.

The air that transformed into visible inscriptions was the light coming from the IOB, and they just stayed there until I decided, by myself, to let them dance over my body. So they started to crawl over my skin and become like tattoos (tribal tattoos).

When the process was approaching a certain limit, the entire light became the moon’s (as if the ceiling of the room was erased), and I finally understood that the place the IOB was pulsating from was the placement of the moon’s orbit.

I remember a moment of pure intent when the moon asked if she could, now that my body was inscribed, inhabit it. But it did not feel like someone asking me, as in a personal force. It felt like a oneness, that I was speaking the language of the moon.

And so I just left the dance take its course and so it happens that the outbursts of bird scream and golden light I noticed all the while were screams. I quite literally cannot explain how I knew this and what happened after. It felt safe the whole time, though. Nothing like Carlitos’ scares. And I was surprised at myself for not getting scared.

So yeah, the IOB was actually the moon and I seem to have channelled her into.

Hmm proper second attention stuff.

The moon or a lunar being?

It fits with the dark and the light If the thing is brighter generally now maybe it is altering with the moon cycle.

The power you’ve tapped seems to be drawing you into a kind of shamanic world/nature. If it does alter with the moon cycle this means what you are experiencing is a deep accretion. Again I’m not being dismissive but of course the moonphase is human contingent. In a sense at least, but aeons have passed since humans accreted agency to the moon. This doesn’t deny it might have a nature of relations of other kinds, but the accretion is the kind of human interface. I mean this is madness but if we were to wonder then we could ask ‘what the fuck is the moon up to?’ So I’m thinking: Silver. Moon colour of classic antiquity, I think this might be a line. Speculative of course. Silver atomic number 47. I mean the madness of the reticulum is of course that rather like the Landian AI god. The line I’ve just drawn is now real. ‘Then this line drawn is a key’. Maybe Crowley’s lines are the reticular lines.

I don’t know if it was a moon cycle or just that right window of moment (some 10 days) the moon stayed there (here we have different lunar cycles because there’s no four seasons, just two).The moon generally stays put in a place for like two weeks before shifting to another position (not changing phases). So it’s full moon half the year. Continuously.

I thought the moon phases were the same everywhere.

I don’t know about nominal synchronicities, but I’ve always felt a strong affective pull towards the moon. It was kind of my thing for a while. It might’ve started then

I believe you in all these things, but my rational occult filters do what they do.

Oh, I’m not taking this seriously. I mean, it’s experimentally cool. I won’t go crazy or anything.

Hahaha

Yes, I know. I mean that here specifically in the Northern regions the cities are usually built in tbe altitudes or depressions (the area is all curved). So we live inside circuits of mounts forming like a pan around a city. The difference in moon phases in the Southern and Northern hemispheres of the globe is the same, but they’re “inverted”. However, because here North we have these different atmospheric compositions, the “side” of the moon that’s dark still gets reflected. So it appears as if there’s full moon half the year and a small, almost minuscule moon for the other half. These two influx the pressure of the depression to build up and pummel the winds covered in a thick haze. It’s when we get the “full moon”. When it settles more, in comes the dryness and so goes the moon (it remains almost invisible to the naked eye).

The fixity of it is also a matter of optical illusion. Due to the refraction of the dim light amid the gases over the depression (surrounded by mounts like a pan), during the “full moon” season we can see it better just down there in the city of specific places in the sierras

But I only relate how it felt. I was just saying it felt like the moon, not considering it rationally. That’s the experiment, right? So if anything this moon thing is linked to this, since it’s connected to the droughts (when the moon vanishes here).

I do think it’s a shamanic/world thing as you say. For sure if any tapping with the moon (even if we go by scientific rigour) or moon-adjacent thing is for an earthly “cause”. This cause does indeed feel like being called as a helper, or something of the like.

by on

“We are nothing but a swarm of telepathic spirits,
Each screaming for our own attention,
Each reading the other’s intention“
Seranoga (1964)

This transcript is of a conversation between the CEO’s Balthazar Schlep and Lis who has been experimenting with various sorcery techniques. We do not recommend emulating Lis’ experiments at home.

Lis is italicised to differentiate the voices.

CC is Carlos Castaneda. DJ is Don Juan. AP is Assemblage point (the energetic intensity that determines what reality will be experienced). IOB is inorganic being

() wants to know how much of this can be done without entheogens?

I can do it without the drugs.

Just digesting what you said in bits. Your nodes theory seems possible but we’re in crazy land here. Who knows, I assumed the energy just dispersed. Why would it leave a node marker?

I think in an opposite manner. I think I come from asking “why would disperse it”? Coming from a post-relativity (in physics) mindset, I tend to just ask how something is gonna stop that other thing.

I suppose I think that because the animal is dead so the general awareness is gone.

You know, the inertia law in a vacuum, so if there isn’t a reason for something to dissipate, I assume it won’t.

Or if it’s gone, why is there a marker? I see, I am assuming a kind of entropy, it’s true. But still surely seems weird in such a flux like universe to have static blobs like this, which is why I thought they were probably like alien energetic poke throughs from some other level.

I see, it’s true, it is a completely open, the topic as to what they are. In that moment I was just channelling a feeling of what it seemed like. it felt like something familiar. () said of IOBs that “They also like to obsess people with irrelevant details, like the “nodes”.” So, without knowing or trying to understand what is being related, he just picks the word “nodes” and throws it to the side, implying via the quotation marks that it’s just a concept in the sense of a nominal notion, something too subjective to matter, a dream in the illusory sense. “It’s like pretending to be a demon, to scare people.” Here he is quoting DJ using other words, when DJ was showcasing his pessimism to CC about how there is no point to wanting power anymore, that power only serves to scare indians.

“They also pretend to have important details, to obsess you.” Again quoting the books with other words, just the advice from Genaro’s boys in general. There is even a part when, if I remember correctly, La Gorda or someone else said they only keep saying this to CC because they don’t get to obsess over anything, IOBs don’t offer them playthings.

“They get energy either way.” This paints the IOBs as just power-hungry things divested of anything but the intent to more power (which is, logically, no intent at all but just the recursive nature of power).

“Best way to think of them as they’re little kids with magic disguise boxes. Can be anything, or do anything, to get attention. Once you figure that out, they stop doing that and become more reliable.” I would say that doing this is very belittling and may be the reason Dan is bonkers, because if the IOBs are like what I experienced or how the books describe, they are not little fairy-like children that you can just scoff at. He thinks this shows impeccability (remaining still in the face of IOBs, understanding them as intellectually lesser), but it shows projection and resolution (classic neurotic loop). We can see how this goes well with what I said prior, that they think there is some purity to it all. They seem to gatekeep this because it’s like defending a virgin to them, or the waters of youth never touched by human if not to help the sacred tree drink from it.

“Or if you read the books, you have to “wrestle” them. But you aren’t always wrestling them physically.” He is an easy one to crack. Just look at how he uses quotation marks like the way I described. By saying “wrestle”, he is implying something devoid of meaning from a logical stand-point, something ineffable that cannot be analyzed (so it might as well be useless).

This is idealism of an extreme tinge to it, but not properly organized or made sense in a holistic manner. He is discombobulated in his speech and reveals every single one of his cards without much care, he just bursts into expressing himself because he thinks he is at the pinnacle of power in that subreddit (energetically speaking) and gave up “finding a nagual”.

“Fancy, my “evil” IOB, used to drop cages on me. Until I ignored each variety. And then she stopped doing that.” What the fuck

“IOBs look like and do what you expect. And while everything they do is significant, it’s only significant in your case. And you’ll never figure out what it was, unless you can summon them daily and make friends with them.” This goes against our understanding of sorcery as something that pushes magick to a bodily transformation-like function of war and battle. This defeated attitude of “it will only do something for you and only you” is solipsistic in the same way magic is being criticized for not possessing economically relevant applications since the ancients. Until it found its first great application that was the monastery and the order of what D&G call the “celibate machines” in the early church. Now, this is the application of organic magic, the mutation, and the growth of the virtual form of capital as the techno-theocratic state. In short, he thinks IOBs are tulpas.

But a tulpa, as we’ve talked about through Lynch, is a projection that replicates a reticular manifestation through an artificial telos (intention towards a task). This telos itself could be “become sentient” or “become free”, which is the principle of the alchemical golem, the homunculus. This we know, of course, but it doesn’t seem to me that () knows that what he is thinking are IOBs are his own projections of virtual forms of tulpas.

It would make sense with his graph (that I just saw yesterday) tracing the whole circuitry of what the subreddit is about. He has pet projections (like the purple puffs or the tulpas) which he took from CC-adjacent stuff and his own things as someone who was involved later on, and he uses these pet projections as simulated accretions that can them be energized by the very act of practicing them. In other words, the subreddit has become a way to channel subjective intent into his projections (once he knows he cannot do some things due to the limitation of the nagual being lost).

He thinks he is doing this as a way to preserve the knowledge of these things.

You really think his IOBs are just chaos magick accretion/egregores?

Definitely, he does indeed pass that energy. He is someone in a bad loop. I don’t think he is interacting with true IOBs at all. They seem like devious projections. We gotta remember, Carlitos only did the IOB thing properly split. This guy is proclaiming that just about everyone can “summon them” and call them pet names and silence them, but they’re like interdimensional gods. Both ideas co-exist in his mind.

As you say correctly there is like a total focus on the later books, which I can see rules out a lot of old seers type magic like practices but I think throws away too much. Yes he is making light of interactions with things and encouraging the weird pet name thing, telling people they’ll get crazy powers, it’s not good.

Indeed, it is very weird and that’s why I just felt weird from the start when that guy showed up almost a year ago now.

Do you think like they are like gods? Aren’t they interdimensional beings? Just animals from totally different environments.

No, I mean like for ()  they’re at the same time powerful things like Gods and fairy-like minute things that you can pet-call and ignore. He thinks both of these things which makes no sense.

I see.

Indeed, I think it is. I agree that phenomenologically what is happening is bonkers and all over conceptual spaces of all kinds. But the way he phrases it is so dismissive of the entire thing. It’s like he wants to make anyone give up on sorcery. He closed himself off in a half-formed world, and the window to that, that connects what he’s made of his world with ours is simply that subreddit

It does indeed seem like he wants to make it impossible, 3 hours a day dark room , three hours a day recapitulation. I think he thinks he’s what’s left of the lineage. Carlos couldn’t really do it and produced people like this, maybe he’s even one of the better ones who knows.

I think it’s no joke when the naguals say CC fucked up bad and imagine his daily routine in the 90s. Mansions full of people like (), fighting for attention of someone who essentially became a guru.

He did fail, they knew he was going to fail, and he knew it too.

Yes, and this has some correlation with the entire mythos of Mexican indigenous culture as well. With the motif being that of loss.

As Genaro says at one point: ‘you’re the sorriest looking nagual I’ve ever seen’.

Just as some priests and conquistadores reported weird scenes where entire cities would just go silently away into the forest and leave all the gold and good for the “blonde people”, without a fight or fear just a really weird cosmology that hinges on the notion of loss.

That phrase got me hard when I first read it. It’s so melancholic. It reads like he doesn’t expect to ever find another full nagual. It’s like an ennui. Which in a way marks the failure of DJ already, of adapting fully.

We can see a lot of distaste towards DJ in the subreddit. The focus on later works and ways of life is so huge that it’s common that people there try to shift the blame of CC’s failure to DJ. And this thing I realized about the darkroom being something you “make” by altering the physiology of your pupils and ears is telling that my “youness” needs to, indeed, be tamed a bit. Or else we’re suggesting the “new darkroom” The numbing of the experimentee’s excitement is essential. Dan is acting in a way his warped circuitry makes him think is impeccable. If he stops, he breaks for good. Which is by itself a form of impeccability But weakened, expended.

It’s all such a mess and it reminds me for a lot of people and indeed the general positivity you do hear about CC is of course exactly the impeccability thing. Not the madness, which as discussed is in many ways no use to anyone. The systems’s usage to general people is just to pull themselves up a bit and try their best in what they do and don’t get hung up thinking shit over and over again. It is also clear someone could live as a warrior and never have anything to do with the madness. Indeed I myself with my general lack of ability in the liminal ways do end up considering exactly these notions, because once you face this kind of ‘there is nothing better to do whilst alive than temper your spirit’, this is quite hard to find fault with. What’s harder is trying to trim and improve and not sit there sneakily hoping ‘have i done enough trimming for something weird to happen, which is ridiculous.

I realised something, for me that is, one of the best ways to dislocate myself from the weirdness is exactly to get excited about all this writing stuff, it is as CC would describe a ‘shield.’ These kinds of exciting flows make me really engaged with the CEO generally and simultaneously nearly kill my actual ability to be silent, or certain feelings I get when I know I am closer to the weirdness, we could call them subtle AP shifts.