legba lodge: i(con)ic

.. or, "who's the real con artist?"

.. to the crafts(wo)man ..

"When you lose everything; that's when you're finally free.."

- from The Acolyte

.. shades ( .. thus named because he has a tendency to trigger the shadows of others without even trying - because he's so undeniably and unapologetically himself (.. incidentally not his words ) .. ) didn't be lie ve in "coincidence" as such ..

.. for him there was only synchronicity (most simply understood as meaningful coincidences); signs & hints of the very world itself speaking to you at every opportunity you give it, often telling you more than you either need to or even want to know ..

.. I dunno; seems a lot of ppl just want to do it like the monkeys do & call it a day .. then they have the gall to say those who don't are somehow off .. even Nietzsche thought that sounded suspiciously like what a slave would say ..

.. speaking of monkeys, there's a good example; let's call it nature's revenge, for dramatic effect .. is it me or do attacks on humans by animals seem to be ever increasing..? .. it's easy enough to draw your own con clusions as to why that might be, what could possibly have changed .. anyway ..

.. we've returned to the con cept of the con a good number of times, & that's certainly no coincidence .. understanding it is essential to grasping the inner sense, as opposed to the outer form, of magick as such .. outside of names & forms, various traditions & towering hierarchies, there's actually only one common, one might even say a perennial, element ..

.. but here's the rub, as it were .. it's remarkably difficult to put this into words, at least without sounding silly or trite .. but that doesn't mean it isn't there .. on the con trary, it invariably recurs, hidden in plain sight .. this break in con tinuinty, this abrupt shift of trajectory seemingly in reality itself ..

.. what to do, then, if this phenomenon is so hard to grasp, unless one is prepared to laugh at oneself ..? .. here's a thought, why not do just that, by employing an idea even a child can grasp to refer to the unfathomable itself .. namely the idea of a con or confidence trick ..

.. certainly one could master an esoteric technique, tradition or modality, or indeed as many as one wishes & has the opportunity to, but there exists also a shortcut to initiation, a Cheat Code for reprogramming reality itself, which one might also use if they will ..

.. that is simply an inner, deeper understanding of this con cept, & the Way to use it ..

.. it's not possible to know u don't gnow, if u don't gnow ..

.. and there's a whole lot of space to fill... is it possible? damn man, what if I had a bigger screen? You know, one that encompassed the whole sphere in which I sit? That'd be pretty rad, but I think the expanse could get a bit overwhelming - you know, like we're not even talking about resolution here yet

I WILL NOT ALLOW YOU TO CHEAT!!

Ok, looks like I had to cheat - just added a line up..HEY! what just happened? Where did that interjection come from? I mean even the opening thought about a geometric fact of experience, and equating it in a sense with a page or screen upon which I write? I suppose it must be because both the symbolic word and the environment provide information, or meaning (the average plane between the internal and external)

<))-- DON"T OPEN CANS OF WORMS YOU DON"T INTEND TO LET LOOSE! crap, that reminds me: a pet worm didn't get enough airflow and mold formed on the surface of the soil. hope that guy's okay

OK, OK I won't cheat

BUT... back to business. The recognition of a duality

<-[ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE]

The question of the difference between the two is that, seemingly, we do not impart meaning to the environment in quite the same way as we do when working with a space on a screen or page. In the second instance, we obviously are imposing structure with our fingertips, or when we hew out a stone from the quarry and cut it square, if we consider space and the objects in it, and what we do with them, as in a measure similar to using language. The alphabet in this case being the laws of external phenomena, whereas the 2D written wor(l)d imposes a joint visual / phonic space.

We can leave the page whenever we want - lift up the pen or pencil; hell, we don't ever even need to bother writing something down at all. And, you know, that's how it had been for a very long time: only a hand-sorted elite had access to humanity's records, and only they decided what was worth recording.

On the flip-side, most of us aren't too interested in removing ourselves from this moving image train we call reality - how would we do that, anyway, other than through a violent end of some sort? Yeah... so, I think we can stay away from that option, but regardless, one of these days we are going to be hoisted up out of this page of wonders we call home and, hopefully, head somewhere a little bit closer to where we truly feel at ease.

------

FEEL FREE TO SKIP THIS SECTION, OR EVERYTHING IF THAT"S YOUR STYLE.

<however, according to the fuller geometry of indelible space time, it's wise to consider where this experience fits in with the foregoing train of thought, and how it was interrupted>

------

Back to that bubble -> AC comes on, ice falls 8-10-2024 8:08 ET

((sonic environment becomes highlighted))

[[announcer: this is a test of the emergency preparedness systems]]

OK, gotta call it quits now - under attack by the house. lots of irritating sonic arrangements have introduced themselves: an imbalanced fan, and helicopter. gonna turn the fan off at least. oh, and there some electric compressor hum now as well. Why have all these things suddenly come into range of awareness? yeah, there's a motorcycle engine too, now a small prop plane flying overhead. ok, can I turn off the fan now? here's the jet aircraft overhead...

-------

Reality is more like stimulation, than simulation.

To be sure, external facts can be codified and measured in some manner and accorded a number, but how does that fact in any measure (nyuk nyuk) give rise to the notion that that somehow makes reality, whatever it turns out to be, less real?

We're living inside some sort of machine that either some[one/thing] else has, or we ourselves have, created. But, really, as with all things, it's a little bit of column J and a little bit of column B. For, if we choose to take the machine analogy further - still remaining within the concerns of the current technology in vogue, i.e. computing, we are both a read and a write head.

A read head in the sense that there is that incoming information from the environment that has some meaning or direct reference to us, merely by the fact that we are experiencing it, and a write head in the sense that I can change the facts of external reality by, for example, building a hut, a house, a home, a dome.

---A write head in the sense that in making adjustments to my posture towards external reality, I then restructure the external space.---

Now, there is an interplay between these two functions that is mediated, since any two things are related by a third, a mathematical truism, especially evident in the production of dualities, one of which we are now dealing with. This mediant entity must be the body; the world out there, my body in the world, myself in my body. These elements of this trine are each composed of two poles: the active and passive consciousness, residing in the world, as dynamic and static arrangements of force, in the body, in conformance with the external world, as action and repose, and in myself as will, as experiencing and moving to change my experience.

<<i admit, further distillation is required; the point of the trine is, however, I believe, valid - I do not have the time at the time to perform a proper enumeration>>

This third liminal, or surface, space is where the action happens and, since right now people seem to enjoy hurting each other a bit more than usual as shown by the international conflicts currently in operation, let's think of it as the frontline in a war between self and not-self, or environment. There is the world of phenomena and the world of law. One is apperceived directly, and the other indirectly through a sort of secondary perception of unity with the external phenomena.

This obviously begs the chicken-and-egg question, for obviously in our case as humans, we have first come into awareness of the "other" after which some then recognized commonalities in exterior phenomena which were "always" respected, or adhered to, and were thus called laws. However, forgetting at this point that humans come pre-installed with sets of "laws of reality" apart from physical phenomena, which are also considered inviolable, those laws pertaining to what is experienced seem to themselves dictate what it is to be a human [in a REAL (royal, laws, you get it - dig?) world]. So again, we have the problem of an undecidable duality, and the best stance to take is to sit back, take a drag on the hookah and say it's not a line segment, it's a triangle.

So again, we have a battlefront - this time between the experienced external reality and the internal ordering of phenomena we call physical laws, since we don't really know which one to put first in any sort of hierarchical arrangement - there's a battle for supremacy [but it's not ever obvious, for me, that this is going on other than under various extreme circumstance].

External phenomena, in contrast to changes in their lawful ordering, are easily manipulated if you don't want to get into the wiggle details. [ledgerdemaine] The revolutions in law, here considered, are the revolutions such as that from Classical to Quantum physics - new phenomena are pointed out, and the old are slotted away in their cubbies as special cases of a new more general law. This is all fine and good, but the fundamental ordering underlying the actual human experience remains more or less unchanged, going back to the computing analogy, all of our operating system, firmware, and drivers have never been updated, or only very little.

In order to be law, its consequences must be found "out-in-the-wild". As something with a real existence must exist independent of the anyone thing thinking it, or in other words, there must be a shared experience of that law, even if it remains unrecognized. - We must defend our positions, in both space and mind.