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Herewith some further and rather more metaphysical thoughts on the previous paper.
Local Indefiniteness
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Wave Real ************************* Omnality
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Non-Locality
The ‘Bell Axis’ of Local Indefiniteness – Non-Locality formed the theoretical basis of basic Chaos magic theory which adopted a best of both worlds approach and assumed that local events had a degree of inherent randomness about them and that some form of what Einstein disparagingly referred to as ‘spooky action at a distance’ remained possible as well.
However it did contain a weakness, the spooky action at a distance should have remained restricted to phenomena previously entangled by physical contact, thus restricting it to what you might call the Principle of Contagion in classical magical terminology and rendering any magical link dependant on this mechanism subject to quantum decoherence. The adoption of Cramer’s transactional interpretation of entanglement did however permit some exciting developments in the technology of retroactive enchantment.
The adoption of this paradigm on the basis of circumstantial magical evidence, the Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen paradox, and Bell’s resulting theorem even before its experimental confirmation in the Clauser and Aspect experiments now seems justified.
Pusey’s theorem awaits experimental confirmation, yet several lines of positive conjectural evidence seem to converge upon it. Some form of ‘Omnalistic’ communication between all quantum states, whether entangled or not, could supply the constraints necessary to eliminate the embarrassing hypotheses of Multiple Universes and the Multiverse. These arise because we have as yet discovered no mechanism to limit the wave functions of individual quanta and the wave functions of the universe to the single forms of manifestation that we observe. Thus some theorists have assumed that all possible manifestations must actually occur, despite that we cannot observe them. An Omnality mechanism could rid us of the nonsense of 10^500 or more unobservable universes existing in parallel to the one that we observe. It would also eliminate the horizon problem in the unlikely event that we inhabit an expanding universe, for it would impose a bias in favour of local physical laws applying everywhere, as seems apparent at the limits of observation.
The pragmatic magical Principle of Similitude (Like Affects Like) also lends support to the idea of Quantum Omnality, as does its more modern manifestation in Morphic Field theory. However an acceptance of a quantum-omnalistic interpretation of the principle of similitude by magicians would lead to a considerable tightening of the meaning of ‘similar’, LEADING PERHAPS, WHERE POSSIBLE, TO A PREFERENCE FOR MATERIAL MANIPULATIONS RATHER THAN SYMBOLIC OR MENTAL ONES, for simple results magic.
Now the Heisenberg style uncertainties/indeterminacies stem ultimately from the principle of Complementarity, in which the quanta can manifest as either particles or waves and it makes no sense to say that a quanta ‘is’ one or the other, rather the more a quanta manifests in one form the less it manifests in the other, dependent on context or experimental set up. Thus we can view the Pusey Axis of Wave Reality – Omnality as indicative of the effects of quanta in various circumstances.
Much of the excitement in the physics community about Pusey’s theorem currently centers on the idea that it could prove that quantum wave functions have some sort of reality in themselves rather than just some sort of epistemological reality which makes them merely strange mathematical tricks of description that just happen to give useful predictions. Many physicists have adopted this position simply because the apparent alternative of Omnality, non-local communication even between non-entangled states, seems an even more crazy idea.
However a Heisenbergian/Complementarist perspective of an inverse proportionality to the expression of these properties would seem to imply a universe where both forms of such apparent craziness can manifest.
From a magical perspective ‘real’ wave functions would correspond to something that we have given the name Aether (and various other names over the centuries). A realm of shadowy possibilities of what might and what might not occur, and what might have and might not have occurred.
From a physics perspective the ascription of some form of physical reality to wave functions would demand the reality of some sort of realm to accommodate them. Three-Dimensional Time would do nicely, and largely pass unobserved as a kind of pseudo-space of unobservable stochastic hidden variables which we can to some extent model with so called imaginary numbers.
It seems suggestive that the Pauli Spin Matrices (used to model quantum spins) resemble Hamilton’s quaternion algebra. This uses the imaginary numbers i, j, and k as variants on the basic imaginary number ‘i’ used sucessfully for the time dimension in the 4D Minkowski spacetime metric of 3D space and 1D time.
Thus if wave functions have a physical reality then 3 time dimensions of i, j, and k can perhaps accommodate them. These extra dimensions would not require the compactification required to explain the un-observervability of extra spatial dimensions. They would have exactly the same ‘size’ as ‘ordinary’ time. Indeed the phenomena we call ordinary time would merely consist of a remembered or expected line of particle events picked out and lined up by us in the solid matrix of 3D wavefunction time.
The apparent material (particle) universe then appears as an interference pattern that both subtends and coalesces out of a very much larger aetheric (wave) universe.
Thus, if you like mysticism, it constitutes a huge illusion, but the only one we can have.
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Review. Imaginal Reality, Voidcraft, volumes 1 and 2. Aaron B. Daniels. Aeon Books.
Over 400 pages of tight print, plus illustrations by Laura M. Daniels.
When this curious bundle of surprises arrived I felt thricely intrigued to note that I had apparently already written a back cover pump for it, as had an IOT Pact Magus who pronounced it ‘the finest book on contemporary existential magic he had ever read’.
I do recall that Professor Daniels had sometime ago emailed me a draft of it and that I had opined that it looked like ‘a full cerebral download’ and that as such, it probably needed to appear as two books, which it now does. However he does seem to have extensively re-written it as well.
Nevertheless my comment of ‘Full Cerebral Download’ still stands. Here we have in these two volumes, a huge rambling tome that seemingly touches on just about everything remotely connected to the Professor’s thoughts on philosophy, psychology, biography, magic, imagination, and occulture. Expect an uneven and challenging read, as this opus lurches wildly across a whole spectrum of disciplines, you may also need a dictionary to hand.
After a bit of a struggle with volume one, I found a reading method that suited. I treated these books as a ‘Late Night Philosophy Rant with a Friend’. I think you need to read a bit, stop, marshal your objections, and argue back for a while, and then read some more, rather than just plough through it doggedly.
Except where they have the temerity to assert and defend some sort of positive position on ethics, ontology, or metaphysics, most philosophers have become the askers of awkward questions and the keepers of useful sarcasms. They tend to wield the razor of destructive analysis more than they use the trowel of construction. Daniels comes pretty close to cutting himself with the razor of existentialism and he has some pretty cutting things to say about the pretensions, evasions, and delusions of magic and spirituality and the whole occult, esoteric, and new-age scene.
The whole meaningless-meaningful duality seems to vex him mightily. Existentialism can wield the razor of over-mighty intellect with enough sullen violence to nihilisticaly extirpate the meaning from anything, and he presents us with visions of void-ness and emptiness. He quips that his students call him Dr. Downer.
However he offers his own antidote; in the absence of given meanings we need to become the meaning makers ourselves. We also need to experience the moment of the here and now, (presumably, temporarily without the encumbrance of the mighty analytical intellect or the second-hand meaning structures that our commercialised cultures offer). The ideas and symbols and glamour of magic provide a language in which we can construct our own meanings and identities, (except where commercially provided of course).
All this comes pretty close to the Chaos Magic perspective of treating belief as a tool rather than as an end in itself, and indeed the whole corpus of Voidcraft makes numerous references to Chaos Magic.
If philosophers have become the keepers of useful sarcasms then perhaps we can liken psychologists to people trying to map a very cluttered and complicated building in pitch darkness by daubing faintly luminous coloured paints around. It all looks superficially convincing but that merely shows that the impossibly complex mind will tend to reflect any structure or model you care to impose on it.
The Imaginal Psychology that Daniels advocates, teaches and practices clinically seems to incorporate this perspective; it appears to have grown out of the Jungian approach towards a more sort of ‘multimind’ position or polycentric view of the self(s). That all sounds like good Chaoism to me.
I got two thirds of the way through the second volume to find that the last third of it consisted of a vast glossary. Despite that I’d found it hard going I had a feeling of aw, shucks, its finished, just as I’d felt myself(s) getting engrossed in the process of argument and agreement with it. However even the glossary, (itself larger than some books of mine), provided a great deal to chew on.
Pete Carroll.
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I note with satisfaction that the UK courts have just ruled that the Diocese of Plymouth cannot claim that its priests acted as self-employed consultants and thus itself escape the legal consequences of their despicable actions over the last 60 years at least.
When the whole vast topic of child abuse began to surface within the catholic church I felt a certain satisfaction that the truth had finally come to light and that the myth of occultist abuse of children, started by fundamentalists in the USA, has finally become discredited as a baseless excuse for a literal 'witchunt'.
I went to a vaguely church of england school and to a vaguely church of england affilliated scout group, most of the weddings and funerals I have attended seemed vaguely church of england too. Vague seems the operative word here, it all seemed rather silly and harmless and its practitioners defended its mumbo-jumbo in vague and evasive terms, generally preferring to emphasise its ethics instead.
I had no experience of catholicism untill I spent a couple of terms teaching in a catholic school circum 1980. I had assumed it resembled anglicanism but with more bells and smells. I actually found it rather nasty, the whole school seemed to run on physical violence and metaphysical fears and threats. Since then I've travelled more widely in catholic countries and formed an even lower opinion of it.
I can now well appreciate Richard Dawkins classification of catholicism as the world's second worst religion. The current pope spent a decade as the head of the inquisition to his predecessor. It beggars belief that he did not take a leading role in the child abuse cover up.
When you look at the iconography and the behaviour of catholics the underlying emotive dualities of that faith become all too apparent. Its emotive appeal depends on a mixture of the dualities of 'sentimentality and cruelty', 'guilt and self-righteousness', plus 'sexual inhibition and sexual machismo'.
Just look at all those sickly sentimental virgin and child images juxtaposed with the pornographically cruel depictions of the crucifixtion. The whole catholic guilt trip goes hand in hand with self-righteousness. Self righteousness (rather than innocence) provides the actual emotive duality with guilt.
Combine cruelty with self righteousness and you explain the horrors of the Inquisition. Combine cruelty with guilt and you explain their fascination with mortification of the flesh. Combine guilt with sentimentality and you explain their self-pity. Combine sentimentality with self-righteousness and you explain their false piety. Then when you start adding in the sexual inhibition-machismo vector as well you get even nastier combinations. They do say that catholics make the 'best' whores and nuns and rapists, and their priests make the 'best' child abusers. Ugh.
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The EU Synarchy, conceived with malignant intent and in economic ignorance, by elements of the european political class, now looks headed for precisely the disaster that UKIP, half the UK Conservative party, and other weird eccentrics predicted for it.
All conceivable short term futures for europe look pretty bad now, but the sooner countries extricate themselves from this nonsensical project the less they will suffer.
Some time ago I transferred the liquid assets of all my companies to a non-eurozone bank.
On a lighter note I attended the late samhain meet of a certain magical order for an invigorating weekend of rituals varying from the deadly serious to the intriguingly surreal. How satisfying to see it all still going strong some thirty years down the line.
Semester 2 of Arcanorium College's 6th glorious year officially begins today, www.arcanoriumcollege.com
I'm now working with the new lightweight style ash wood pocket wands, the metal ones were making holes in my clothing.
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The Greek government's threat to offer its people a referendum on the euro-bailout package before the finalisation of that package may yet lead to another glorious Thermopylae moment. If they say NO to the empire they will take heavy casualties but secure their freedom, and probably bring the whole empire down eventually.
On a lighter note I present my Samhain Eisteddfod poem here publicly, as its on a secular rather than an internal metaphysical topic. So celebrate this halloween with a poem about the most comprehensively dead person of my knowledge, an ancestor from some 34,000 years ago.
Paviland Man, some thoughts upon Europe’s oldest tomb.
Pavilander, what took you in your prime
Those thirty thousand years ago?
Was that mighty mammoth skull
Laid to rest with you by friends
Some token of your final fearsome prey?
So how on earth did you bring to ground
Eleven tons of muscle and tusk
With flint headed spears?
Or did you heave great boulders down
From the top of the cliffs
Or stampede them over it
With blazing fire torches
Whatever, it must have took cunning and guts.
For such a fine send off
You must have had love or respect
Precious grave goods and offerings of ochre
And what was that for, that blood of the earth
For strength in the next world
Or a token of honour in this one?
I’d guess you would have had children
By your age in those ancient times.
Though over a thousand lifetimes
Separates you from us currently here
You may live in our blood and our genes
But your language we can never know
Yet your tools and your ornaments and tomb
Say to us plainly and clearly
That you must have had thoughts just like ours.
Your friends they gave you the best plot
A high vaulted cave of a million years, facing the sun
Proud and bleak it stands in the bare cliff face
It has seen the seas draw back and turn into plains
And watched the seas return again
Though dolmens and barrows may crumble
Or be stripped of their turf and their stones
That cave survived the glaciers the floods and the storms
The invention of farming left it untouched
Kingdoms came and went, unnoticed
Our feeble buildings do not last like caves do
Our empires rise and fall again to dust,
Let us hope our last archaeologist
Returns you to your resting place
When this fragile civilisation crumbles - like the rest.