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When you cannot see something its ontological status is unknown.

This is the most reasonable formula for the phenomenology of the fantasy that our perceiving things may be in some way altering them. Magickal understanding, at least in a pneuminous (or chaos magickal sense) means that we have to treat this seriously. This kind of ontology entails that the concepts are altering the umbratic restraint -the stuff. Does this mean perception itself is altering it or is it simply the conceptualisation of it that does the altering? The concepts are originally formed out of perceiving the physical vector field.

The idea that creates the idea of perceptual creation is the lack of metaphysical certainty that the non-perceived is ontologically identical to the perceived. In this place seems to be a bifurcation related to the necessary magickal epistemology. To repeat: is it the perception or the idea that is doing the altering (insofar as we can separate these)?

The notion that magick affects at a distance would seem to indicate that pneuminous powers can do the altering regardless of immediate presence. This means that the notion of perceptual creation is separate from the notion of magickal manipulation. Ironically direct perception seems to be the solidifying force. The irony being that the implication seems so powerfully enticingly magickal -that perception itself is altering the stuff. But this alteration is one that renders it largely stable, it is a negative entropic force upon the chaos. This is magickal because it is so stabilising, yet the thing  we call magickal is the power of conceptual alteration (pneuminous interference).

One of the features of static spatial zones is often that human perception scarcely falls upon them with the crucial addition that it used to. This is the dereliction effect. It is related to Fisher’s description of the eerie. For Fisher, the eerie is related to the absence of obvious agency to a particular local and yet the hint that there is still some kind of agency involved -maybe they have gone, maybe they are hidden.

This helps us differentiate the zone from the unplace. Unplaces have old human pneuma attached to them. They were occupied by people and now are only haunted by conceptual ghosts from our sphere. The natural world has come to reclaim the place. The eeriness in Fisher’s term is purely due to the absence of a known agent -the human. They were here and now they are not. Relatively banal paranormality may be present in the form of residual neurotic accretions unshackled from fleshy bonds (ghosts). Equally there may be just the suggestion of human previous presence with possible hints of transient occupation (trash etc.)

Zones go beyond unplaces in levels of eeriness since they become infested with agents that, though likely purely pneuminous, were not ever human. There is a tension. The residual human conceptual layer is there but this is a passive fading power. Behind or alongside it hides the actual zonal power. Zonal powers are more active. They are watching. Like Keelian ultraterrestrials, their actions are unfathomable. It is speculated that the receding human pneuma is somehow attractive to these forces, which is why unplaces are so susceptible to zonal infestation. The lack of human perception is key though. Human perceptual fields keep vector regions relatively safe -it is hard to break through all that hard conceptual reality- but when these powers are not exerted often the conceptual restraint fails.

To repeat: When you cannot see something its ontological status is unknown. 

We cannot know what kind of pneuminous restraints emit from the plants and animals that visit these places when we are not there. For that matter we do not know even if it is cogent to talk about such beings as discrete things outside of the immediate pneuminous field -for they may be just part of an interconnected flux (which of course they are anyway, but we mean by that a more severe metaphysical one in which their individuation at all is just our pure Kantian curse). Even accepting their status as perceiving agents, their conceptual imprinting powers will be radically different from ours. They may well be no ally of ours in keeping such places solid and indeed may in some circumstances contribute to destabilising the area and allowing zonal infestation.

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“The akashic perpetual store of all information is not a necessary reality.” I informed P “You are wrong” he said back without batting an eyelid “It is the most necessary concept that is, it is true even if J is nothing but a figment of my mind.” “And how do you reason this?” “Simple. All I need is the continuity of all things. If everything exists in a continuum then past is no less present than future and present no more to be privileged than past or future.” “Why does this serve as guarantee? Why can I not simply have a present in which moves towards a not yet existent future and moves away from a past that disappears into nothing?” “If that were so then how precognition be possible?” “P, you infuriate me. It is precisely one of the contentious issues that notions like precognition are not possible.” “Yet you would concede the appearance of precognition is possible?” “I can scarcely deny it since I understand the term when you use it.” “Then implicitly you understand the ontology behind it, or minimally you allow it and since something akin to the akashic records is implied in the concept it follows that you understand its necessity.” “But this is not the same as its necessity.” “Is it not? Given your understanding of the concept of precognition, did you not find that the necessity of something like the akashic record?” “But precognition is not necessarily true.” “Yet its possibility is. Is that not all we can ask for of anything? That its possibility is true?” I rolled my eyes “What is J’s  number?” P began matter of factly “The number was obtained through a pack of playing cards. I shuffled the cards. Asked for the number to be revealed and then dealt out a number of cards. When I deemed the correct amount had been dealt out I stopped. I then added the number of the cards together, counting 11 for Jacks, 12 for Queens and so on.” “And what was the number?” “I obtained a number of course, however like a good scientist I felt the need to check my results so I performed the experiment again.” “And did you get the same result?” “Yes, or at least mostly yes. I believe I conducted it about 5 times in total with about 4 of these bringing about the same result.” “And what was the number?!” “The number was 47.” “Oh” I said, somehow disappointed, for I had believed that the number would be somehow significant sounding but this number sounded rather dull. “What do you mean ‘oh’?” said P, sounding almost hurt. “I don’t know, I don’t know what I was expecting, I suppose I imagined the number would be more…” “More what?” P looked irritated “More special sounding maybe? I don’t know, I don’t know what I thought.” “Your fantasy of let down is just the failure of the number to be 666, but not all spirits are the devil itself -if indeed that number even means that. 47 is a discovery. We do not know what the correspondences of spirit to number means. We only know -from the various texts- that it exists. Presumably my having J’s number will give me some kind of leverage over it.” I thought P’s usage of the term fantasy interesting, given he was engaging in some kind of fantasy of power of spirits but I did not say this. His face lit up and he continued “But this number is just the start. I have not been idle. It is but a clue that reveals a world of hidden connections. It is possibly the clue that enables us as a species to understand the necessary connection between the symbol and the symbolised.”

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P leaned back in his chair and swiveled his eyes towards me. “How many Gods do you suppose there are?” This seemed like a ridiculous question and I told him so. “But why do you suppose it is so ridiculous?” came the reply. I did not feel, given P’s intelligence, that I really had to answer this question, however since he had asked it with a degree of sincerity I decided to answer. “It is ridiculous because firstly the idea of a God is totally incoherent and secondly even if we allow some sort of definition we will then have no actual way of answering the question. The only instance in which we can answer it is a kind of historical review of all the known religions and their Gods, though this too might prove tricky as there may be translation errors in some of the texts which will result in some entities which we might classify as minor spirits being classified as Gods and vice versa.” “You are right of course” said P “and yet when one has talked to the spirits themselves, do you not think that one is in a better position to answer this problem?” I cringed at his tone, which he had been effecting since he had been talking to J -a disembodied being of some kind. “I am not sure we can trust J’s pronouncements upon the matter any more than Jesus’ frankly” I replied somewhat curtly.

“I know what you mean” P began again “I just think, this time we have a better case to sort it out, I think I have the necessary proof, this side of the coin and the other so to speak.” I became confused “P you are confusing me today. This is not an unusual occurrence so I am not surprised by it however its regularity does not make it any less confusing. Presuming the two faces of the coin are somehow this reality and the one that J inhabits, what is the proof that you refer to?” “Who mentioned proof?” “You mentioned proof, you often mention proof, it is like a talismanic word to you.” “You misunderstand me, I did not ask the question of you, I was merely recalling a conversation with J in which he uttered those words.” “Go on…” “I was speaking to J about the problem, musing to myself almost upon the topic of proof when it said enigmatically ‘who mentioned proof?’ I said that I was thinking about proof, so probably I did. To this it remarked that proof shall be mine.” “And..?” “The presence left.” “So what was the proof?” “I didn’t understand its nature at first, indeed there would be some -I suppose you would count amongst them- who would say I still don’t understand it. Nevertheless the proof begins like this: Later on in the day I felt I should like to know the number of J.” “The number of J?” “Yes, you will be aware of the tradition of entities having numbers. I wished to know the number of J.” “And did you obtain it?” “I did.” “And what was this number?” “Before I tell you the number I must tell you how I obtained it.” “Then do so please, for I am eager to hear the number of J.” “I was not actually talking to J on this occasion, rather I chose to find this number out by a divinatory method. The reason for this is that the spirits can be mendacious and hence it is wise to sometimes bypass direct contact with them and employ a more truthful method of revelation. Divinatory methods are one such.” I felt a rising sense of rage and flabbergastation at this “P, have you not on previous occasions argued for how we should trust the spirits for function largely as just another consciousness, which -as your argument ran- we usually trust? Yet now you seek to bypass the mode of direct contact as untrustworthy!” “Am I to apply one rule to all situations? What foolishness do you speak? If I wish to obtain your bank details am I going to ask you for them? No I must use subterfuge and modern technological methods.” I raised an eyebrow. “Divination, bypasses the direct word of these entities and plugs straight into akashic data, which if checked suitably can on occasion be extremely reliable.”

 

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Notes

The essential problem with the zone pertains to its ontology. In science fiction the zone may be unambiguously real -in Roadside Picnic it is clear that humans seem in no doubt that aliens have been (and gone) and the artifacts they left are recoverable and repetitively useable. Tarkovsky’s interpretation leaves things hanging a little more ambiguously, though the reality of at least some anomalous interference is rendered clear by the telekinetic glass movement by the mutant child at the end. The aporia in both though is the same -the uncertainty of golden-sphere/room’s ability to grant wishes.

The zone in this world has no such ontological clarification. NARPs reflect the fact that even if Kant is not actually right, his thesis hovers exactly on the borderland of anomaly. The question as to whether Kant is correct or not is unanswerable in a similar kind of manner. The Kantian limitation in this sense is applied to the epistemological status of his own transcendental idealism – it is simply one more metaphysic that, like God, we should bracket off as unknowable. What he does do though is highlight this ontological manifestation like it had never been highlighted before: the possibility of the subject’s being intertwined in the production of spatio-temporal reality.

We cannot properly know whether transcendental idealism or transcendental realism obtain. They remain in perpetual war in conceptual territory being fought for by agents (scientists, philosophers and thinkers who would consider themselves neither). They occupy an agnostic disjunctive status.

The wood becomes so tangled in an instant, I can almost not make out where to go. The zone itself is split in its interpretation. Does it obtain or is it psychological? This is almost pointless as a distinction. ‘Does it obtain?’ has two options: Is it real in the sense of ‘built into a reality external to NARPs’ or does it somehow ’emanate from them’ and yet still affect the seeming externality? ‘Is it psychological?’ is intended to restrict the domain to hallucination, though one could argue that a Jungian psychological take would mean this was the same as the ’emanates from us’ thesis. Usually though it is intended to cover those interpretations in which phenomena are perceived as anomalous, though in fact fall under the understanding of reality as already given. Psychological in this sense implies that no anomaly obtains as such. This is different from the umbratic possibility which affirms the reality of the phenomena as external from the conceptual being. Concepts being merely understanding of the phenomena from the  NARP perspective.

Proliferating paths can dimly be sketched by noting the ontology of various anomalies under either pneuminous, umbratic  or psychological schemas (these mean in a sense transcendentally ideal anomaly, transcendentally real anomaly or anomaly as hallucination to a transcendentally real world).

Reviewing various anomalies under these heuristics may be helpful.

Zonal Anomalies

Ghosts

Pneuminously ghosts are pure accretive formations; they are formed either by neurotic accretions freed from regional processors that have not dissolved, or by accretions formed by other NARPs that project the presence onto the relevant zone.

Umbratically ghosts are literal spirits of the dead that persist in this reality and have not moved on to wherever they should do. Such an ontology presupposes something like actual souls that exist independently of the body and have an existence external to it.

Psychologically ghosts are pure hallucination due to various neurological occurence. They have no existence in a real external world that persists in our absence.

UFOs

Pneuminously UFOs are accretive entities that take conceptual forms either of an autonomous or imposed nature. They can behave as ‘real’ in many ways, but can disappear as quickly as a dream fades -as they are just pneuma interfering with umbra and the interference may stop abruptly.

Umbratically UFOs are either ultra or extra terrestrial entities that exist autonomously in some other sense, yet for what ever reason manifest in our reality periodically.

Psychologically UFO’s are a mix up of meteorological phenomena, hallucination, satellites and airplanes. No such aerial anomaly is real outside of these explanations.

Synchronicity

Pneuminous synchronicity is interference in (our) reality from accretions of pneuma. Conceptual entities manifest poignantly to NARPs, though their may not actually be any particular message, only a pneuminous connection.

Umbratic synchronicity is potentially preordained harmony. This retains the reality of the metaphysical connection and decentres it from the NARPs influence. Another version would be the reality of certain powers that sought to convey messages that were of import to the NARP in question (see umbratic spirits).

Psychological synchronicity is purely statistical probability, confirmation bias and apohenia. No external reality altered in relation to the subject.

Cryptids

Pneuminous cryptids would be similar to Keelian Ultraterrestrials. Pure conceptual powers that have ruptured umbratic restraint and manifest with potent solidity, even capable of leaving traces, yet equally ontologically are created by NARP like powers of accretion. Their autonomy could still be real but not necessarily in the sense of living a life somewhere else.

Umbratic cryptids would be actual alien, terrestrial or ultra terrestrial entities capable of appearing in this reality. They would have a coherent existence, not contingent upon NARP conceptuality.

Psychological cryptids are hallucinations or mistaken actual animals.

Spirits (Angels, Demons etc)

Pneuminous spirits are pure pneuminous constructs. Though created by NARPs they may have a high level of autonomy. Magick/religion creates these entities. Such beings may be visible and capable of bringing out reality altering effects (Magick).

Umbratic spirits would suggest that such beings are real outside of human conceptuality e.g. as if Wierus orders of demons or the Lemegeton  were just a correct descriptions of how these beings were structured. Such a structure might easily involved ontologically real good and evil. Such beings would likewise be potentially visible at leas in certain states, and capable of altering reality (as we perceive it) under certain conditions.

Psychologically such spirits are just hallucination. They may the products of unhinged minds and in this sense dangerous, however never actually existent in the externality.

Telepathy

Pneuminous telepathy is just the tapping into another NARPs accretions and accessing them as if they were ones own.

Umbratic telepathy is entails something similar, though the mechanism would be discoverable as some kind of psi like substance -this is not possible for pneuma.

Psychological telepathy is just knowing someone well enough that thoughts coincide on occasion. Selection bias determine the importance of certain instances.

Telekinesis

Pneuminous telekinesis is the manipulation of a vector that would not ordinarily move without physical help. The accretion ‘moving’ is successfully applied to it in accordance with the will of the telekinetic NARP. The umbratic is ruptured in this way.

Umbratic telekinesis entails that a real force exists (like psi) manipulable in some instances such that physical object may be moved by certain NARPs.

Psychological telepathy does not occur, all instances of it are only apparent.

Poltergeist

Pneuminous poltergeist activity is likely autonomous accretive powers exerting umbratic warping. Little else can be said about it.

Umbratic poltergeist activity may be an actual spirit or ghost. Potentially also it could be the kind of energy discharge theory often touted. It could involve a potentially detectable force like psi.

Alien Abduction

Pneuminous alien abduction is an interaction with the alien accretion and the long standing myth accretion of abduction (which exists in faerie too). The individual may well have genuinely disappeared into the pure pneuminous realm, but they have not gone to a cogent other world or dimension.

Umbratic alien abduction is the being actually abducted by alien beings of whatever kind. The abduction was ‘real’ in various senses of the world. The individual was actually gone and the beings involved abducted the individual with an agenda.

Psychological alien abduction means no such abduction took place. Dream, hallucination and sleep paralysis are likely features of the experience.

Astral projection

Pneuminous astral projection means that the neurotic accretion exited the regional processor and was capable of entering a more flexible pneuminous state. Instantaneous travel and umbratic manipulation is possible in this state.

Umbratic astral projection means that there is such an energy body as the ‘astral’ body or potentially soul. This can exit the body under certain circumstances. Such a entity is potentially measurable.

Psychological astral projection entails no such entity ever left the physical body and the experience is just construct and memory from the existing mind.

 

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Zonal forces potentially emanate from dereliction.  Fisher famously tried to define the eerie as related to the notion that in a given situation/phenomenon some agency could be inferred though not detected e.g. a place is eerie because its emptiness somehow suggests hidden agents or some feature of the world which should not have agency appears to have it. Zonal infestation of dereliction occurs quite easily but is by no means necessary. Frequently adventured in/relatively recent dereliction can become so inhabited that it acquires no mysterious air -its accretions are maintained albeit in an altered form. However at least slightly old, cordoned off or infrequently visited places of previous human work or habitation readily acquire an other worldly look. Sometimes called unplaces, such regions are ripe for zonal transformation.

Unplaces are a tiny aspect flip away from becoming zones. One may do this intentionally if one wishes, one may look upon an unplace as if it were now the seat of some permeable reality (an active form of zonal accretion) or it may happen of its own accord upon investigation (unknown origin -umbratic or pneuminous). Quite likely unplaces will stay as an unplaces even upon investigation and be interesting in the sense that history can be interesting.

Part (though not all) of the sensation of the strangeness of the unplace is the curious tension between its being so obviously created by humans (in particular as opposed to NARPs in general) and its now not containing any. The sustaining pneuminous and physical power that once emitted from the inhabitants is missing. The accretions are stagnant. No humans conceptually enliven this space. The lurking phantasy of incoherent idealisms suggest the possibility without this ‘being perceived’ the space is somehow unstable. The aged look of such places as Dionysus comes to reclaim them adds to the sense of alterity. It is not eerie in Fisher’s sense because it is precisely understood who the agents were and clear that they are no longer there. We feel imaginary accretions of such places, we invent the previous life.

The zonal aspect of the unplace is almost ironic apropos Fisher’s notion insofar as, though the spaces were designed by humans and gain their curious appearance due to the tension of their lack, the eerie presence felt may suggest itself as nothing remotely human (thus the agency involved is a second agency layered upon the agency that we know actually made the structures). Of course regular ghost like activity is possible and in this case the eerie sense is the presence of the agency of the remaining neurotic accretion fragments -regular Fisherian eerieness. However other zonal phenomena may be more alien/ultra-terrestrial/synchroncitous or just plain ambiguous between free floating neurotic accretions (ghosts) and other autonomous conscious accretive entities (poltergeist activity).

One of the suggested connections between unplace transformation into zone is that of the lack of human pneuminous force within the area. As the conceptual power of humans solidifies the vectors into the things we take them to be, so its absence loosens this grip. It may be there is an elastic tension created by the pneuminous bend upon the umbratic structure that, upon its release, bends back in an opposite manner. This opposite bend may create the reality thinning effect observed as highly imminent in unplaces. The being-in-the-umbra of such places creates the looseness -they are less close to strongly structured human reality. This release is attractive to such beings that wish to cross this thresh-hold (for a picnic). Of course this is a speculative manifestation, though it is no less interesting for it.