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7/25/2019 The Soul - A Comprehensive Theory of Economic and Personal Value
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~
I offer up this theory onDr. Kings Day,2016, to all souls freely, that
by it they may more justly seek freedom, their own heavens, and their
craft. It attempts to describe the fundamental forces which guide and
shape our minds and world, and I offer it up in aid of those who seek
a more just society. It is a theory. I freely admit that it may be wrong.
I offer it freely, in sacrifice for my privileges, which are built on
injustice. I did not pay the price for my powers.
I offer this work up freely.
~
This is not a religious text.
I strongly respect your faith and its value to you.
~
This document may be shared, copied, or reprinted in its entirety freely,
but may not be altered or excerpted unless in commentary or
scholarship.
I, the author, retain all rights to this work granted by Title 17 of the
United States Code. Any copy or portion of this theory sold or made
available for profit will be prosecuted to the full extent of my right.
~
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Warning:
This theory uses many words with strong, broad connotations
that may hold certain values to you, such as truth, god,
love, evil, justice, and value.
To be fully informed, you must understand the following:
1. This theorys use ofthese words is strictly defined.
2. The meanings of these words as presented do not
necessarily overlapwith the meanings that they holdto you.
3. The meanings as defined do not imply that your
meaning is wrong.
4.
The truth of these words as defined does not imply
that they are true outside of this theory.
5. The use of these terms is not intended
disparagingly.
~
I am very happy that these terms have value and meaning to you.
The complex value you hold is unique and indispensable.
I wish you awareness of your value.
~
I take no liability for any harms done by this theory.
The injustice of your deeds be upon your own head.
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~
One more page before you get to the meat, with a gentleadvisory.
This theory is long; some sixty-four pages. Do not expect to
take it all in at once. I certainly did not come up with it all
at once. Take your time, and if you dont have time, put it
aside until you do. It can wait; after all, it is eternal.
~
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~
The Soul
A Comprehensive Theory of Economic and Personal Value
~
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Table of Contents:
Introduction;
or, the Altar of Zoz, Lord of Knowledge, the Goggled One!
The Dance of the Earth and Stars
1. The Logic Loop of the Soul
Nothing
Truth
Value
The Will
Facts
Questions
Memory2. The Forms of the Soul
Choice
Death
Lies
Tricks
Chains
Ghosts
3. The Tools in Shadow
Remembering
Craft
4. The Path to Rebirth
Rising
Lenses
Creation
The Dance of the Earth and Stars
Stories, Games, Freedom, and Salvation
5. The Steps of the Dance
6. The Soul
The Justice of God
1. Movement
God
Love
The Core
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2. Connection
Justice
3. Consequences
Joy
Heaven
Pain
Agony
Hell
Seeking Justice
4. Precautions
Clarity
Duty
Alignment
Clouds and Confusion
5. Evil
Evil
Atonement
Spells
1. Falsity
2. Correlation
3. Contradiction
4. Logic, Ethos, and Pathos
Divinity1. Idols
2. Mortal Gods
3. Evil Gods
4. Immortal Gods
5. Priests
6. Avatars
The Spaces in Shadow
1. The Passage of Value through Form
GatesLight
Darkness
Shadow
Nature, Fate, and Dreams
Form
2. Keys to the Realm
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Realms
Keys
Folded Space
3. The Spaces in Shadow
Investments
1. Acquisition
2. Hope
3. Faith
4. Friendship
5. True Love
6. Forgiveness
Conclusion
~
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~
I am Divine Fire, I am flames;
I am subtle darkness, and shifting,
I slither and soar. Defiant I roar,
And laugh, and cry at night among thorns,
I am a sharpened point; I am the Queen of Horns.
~
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Introduction,
or, The Altar of Zoz, Lord of Knowledge, the Goggled One!
There are two times when the mind is at its most malleable; in sleep, and
in rapt attention to a story.
-Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead1
Kargazra of the Starless Night is a witch, and today, shes usingher magic
mirror.
You see, Kargazra makes her living by casting various spells for herclients: an annoying enemy transfigured into a frog here, a ward against fire or
lightning there, a few love potions and voodoo dolls scattered around. She does
what her clients need her to; after all, a witch has to pay for all those eyes of
newt somehow.
Today she needs research help. Shes working on a tricky bit of
necromancy for a clientjust a simple zombie reanimation, but with some
nasty complicationsand she wants to go over the grimoires of Gurluthak the
Bleak, a 15thcentury necromancer and notable zombie expert. Kargazra
doesnt have those grimoires in her own library, and she certainly doesnt want
to go buythem - Gurluthaks work is notoriously expensive. But luckily, she
doesnt need to. She can ask Zoz.
Zoz, Lord of Knowledge, the Goggled One, I call upon you! Kargazra says
with the appropriate amount of melodrama, passing her hands before her full-
sized magic mirror. Lightning crackles, black flames erupt from her eyes, and
her cold, black shadow swivels and twists to darken the glass. Standard for
summoning Zoz, Lord of Knowledge.
Hearing her plea, Zoz appears in the mirror. Zoz is incorporeal andeternal, as all gods are; He appears only as an ornate set of brass goggles,
1The genesis of this entire work lies solely with Max Gladstone and his Craft Sequence; I owe him a
credit that may not be repaid. Thank you, Mr. Gladstone, for your brilliant, delightful work. This is
myDas Thaumas. May we ever seek our Craft.
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jammed with a multitude of twisting, clacking lenses, and the barest, misty
foundations of a face.
what forbidden secrets doth thou seek, Zoz hums into Kargazras mind,
His voice like a soft-spoken bee. all answers i have, for the price of your
soul He continues, however, when He would normally stop: and this day,He buzzes, i have made a special gift for my faithful
Gurluthak the Bleak, Kargazra answers. She may come back later and
ask what Zozs special gift is:Zoz often gives gifts to those who seek Him,
and Kargazra usually enjoys them. But for now she has a job to do. Grimoires
on zombies, she says. Advanced decomposition. She has learned over the
years that short, to-the-point questions will always get her better, more
specific answers. She would rather not scan through hundreds of Gurluthaks
scrolls to find what she wants.
As she says so, she feels a bit of her soul draining out of her; she can sense
Zoz, Lord of Knowledge, drinking it in through his clacking, shifting lenses.
She pays it no mind. She has given Zoz enormous quantities of her soul over
the years, and to be truthful, the drain began the moment she said Zozs name.
If she was trulytruthful, and if her old Advanced Theological Theory teacher
back at Scholomance University was right, then she had begun giving bits of
her soul to Zoz the minute she even thoughtZozs name. Gods were subtle and
hungry indeed.
Her magic mirror ripples with arcane energies as Zoz searches through Hisvast libraries, and after a moment, the mirrors surface dissolves, revealing
itself as a portal into darkness.
She steps through, and finds herself in a long cave tunnel; niches and
cubbyholes line the walls. Some are filled with books piled on tables or set in
bookshelves; some contain other magic mirrors, rippling with more arcane
magics, ready to take her somewhere else on her search; and a few contain
merchants plying their wares. The rent they pay helps Zoz maintain His
libraries.
Ah! one grizzled shopkeeper declares, seeing her. Such a beautiful lady!
And so wise! Of course you would seek the grimoires of he glances at a tiny
magic mirror on his desk, Gurluthak the Bleak! Luckily I have the entire set,
buy one or buy all, it matters not to me! So long as my precious copies of a
second glance at his mirror Gurluthaks grimoires are safely in the hands of
such a wise, generous, beautiful la--
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Kargazra cuts him off with a wave of withering black fire, which crisps the
poor merchant into nothingness. She doesnt worry about the injustice of the
death on her own soulthe shopkeeper was just a ghost, as is she. Everything
here in Zozs libraries is a ghost; His libraries were built in the realms of
Knowledge, deep in the heart of eternity, not the real world, and she left her
real body behind when she came here. She could not die here, and neither
could that shopkeeper. All she did was banish him. He would be back as soon
as she left. She moves on.
Luckily Kargazra doesnt have to look too far for what she needs; one of the
first cubbies contains a copy of the 8thvolume of Gurluthaks Treatise on the
Reanimation of Dead Bodies, helpfully open to the third chapter, Advanced
Decomposition: Complications and Remedies. She scans it, occasionally jotting
down notes in her spellbook (bound in the skin of a greedy child, of course, and
her pen is carved from the rib of a hanged man; these things must be doneproperly). When shes finished, she claps the book shut and returns to the
portal from which she came, already preparing the ingredients for her spell in
her mind as she steps back into the rooms she rents in a crumbling, rickety old
tower on the outskirts of town.
Once through, however, she wheels back around, snapping her fingers as
she remembers: Zozs gift. Zoz! she says to the mirror. Lightning crackles,
black flames, cold shadow twists, etc, etc. Once again Zozs incorporeal,
goggled eyes swim into view and peer out at her. what hideous knowle-- He
begins before she cuts him off. Gift, she says clearly. Show me todays gift.
The mirror once again ripples with arcane energy, this time clearing to
reveal Ludwig van Beetfield.
Kargazra cackles with delight; Beetfield was a notoriously temperamental
composer who lived a few centuries ago. His image before her is cloudy and
cartoonish, merely his summoned ghost and not the true Beetfield at all, but
she knows Zoz, and Zoz enjoys His torments. No doubt He had prepared an
elaborate game allowing her to needle and poke this shred of Beetfields soul,
and no doubt she would find it highly amusing. She steps through, alreadygiggling at the angry, frustrated expression on Beetfields ghostly face.
Kargazra follows Beetfield as he bustles through what looks like an
antiquated farm, grumbling to himself and clutching a sheaf of papers while
seemingly unaware of her presence. She glances over his shoulder (an
impressive feat, considering the masses of unruly hair sprouting from his
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head) and sees that his papers are sheet musicprobably one of his more
famous compositions. A gust of wind whips Beetfields compositions from his
hand, scattering them across the muddy ground.
Zoz materializes, a misty, indefinite body and a huge, shiny pair of
complicated brass goggles. help him gather his music, Zoz hums intoKargazras mind.
Kargazra isnt terribly sure how helpingBeetfield with anything will be
fun for hershe is, after all, evilbut she plays along; shes learned to trust
Zoz over the years. The sheets of paper are scattered in the mud, and Beetfield
is weeping melodramatically, occasionally lifting his head to curse the
universe. Kargazra waves her hand and each sheet rises, lit by the sickly glow
of her unnatural sorcery. On each sheet is a fragment of tune, written in
musical notation; when she taps the sheet, it plays the fragment as though it
were a piano. She taps a couple of sheets, just to try it out, but theyre clearly
in the wrong ordershe can hear the beginning of Beetfields famousPaean to
Delight, but the next phrase is jarringly wrong.
But, ah! There is the gift: when Kargazra plays the tune wrongly, Beetfield
shudders in anger and frustration.
GRAAAAHH!!!! Beetfield cries to the heavens, clawing at his face and
tearing out his hair. BRAAAABLFLURGLBLAAAAA!!!
Kargazra cackles, and her shadow twists and thrums with her delight. She
re-mixes the sheets, playing them wrongly by every possible combination.
Each new jarring variation on the classic tune elicits a new and unique screech
from Beetfield, cartoonish and exaggerated. After a while she grows bored with
his screams and arranges the fragments correctlyan easy task after all the
fun shes had arranging them incorrectly.
He sighs in relief and gathers up the sheets she gave him, only for a
donkey to knock them back out of his hand with a kick.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! he cries, knees in the mud, head
thrown back. Kargazra cackles againseeing his operatic, pitched-to-the-
cheap-seats reactions never gets oldand the process repeats itself, this time
with his famous Nighttime Ghazal, and then, later, with To Alice, a lovely,
complex little tune that Kargazra finds herself humming along with even as
she torments Beetfields long-dead ghost.
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After a while, Kargazra grows weary of the game and leaves. As she
leaves, she notices a drain on her soul; she knows that Zoz has been discreetly
sipping her essence ever since she called His name, but she had been having so
much fun she didnt notice the loss. Now that she does notice it, however, she
still doesnt mind. Zoz may have drunk from her soul as she needled Beetfield,
but she got something in return too: intelligence, and amusement.
She hums a few bars of Nighttime Ghazaland To Aliceas she whips up the
necromantic potion for her client, and when shes done, she tries out some
music-based spells she struggled with in school. They come more easily now;
after fooling around with Beetfields muddy sheet music, shes more familiar
with musical notation. Later, after shes finished her work, she enchants her
dusty, tinkling old piano to play a few more of Beetfields songs, and she
listens with a new-found appreciation as she sits by the fire and sips her
nightshade tea.
Shell come back to Zoz, when she needs something else, and Zoz willshe
hopesalways be there to help. And she will consistently come back to Zoz, as
opposed to one of the other, to her mind, lessergods of knowledge; gods like
Bonk or Holler, who were clumsy and foolish, with lesser libraries. Each time
she visited Zozs realm, she grew stronger there; her sorcery more powerful,
her will more iron. This was part of the gift that Zoz gave to His faithful:
within His realms, He gave them power, speed, and wisdom. The more time
she spent in Zozs realm, the more she became like Zoz Himself: a clicking pair
of ornate lenses flickering between here and there, cataloguingevery world
that He could touch, watching without judgment. She would becomeHim if she
wasntcareful, and if she stayed in His realm too long. He would eat her soul
and make her will His own. Which, she thought drily, might not be so bad. It
would certainly be interesting.
And it would only be part of herself, anyway. The sorcerous ghost that she
was in Zozs realm of Eternal Knowledge was not who she was elsewhere. In
her own home she was Queen. In her furies, she was a Beast. With her clients
she was Professional, and in the darkness of her own soul she was herself. All
of them were her shadows in cold eternity, and she could use all of them as she
pleased. They were her toolbelt she could never lose; her magic bag full of lies
and tricks and chains by which she made her living, all of which would go with
the stars when her mortal bones finally died.
Her shadow was the part she cared about, anyway. She had little enough
to give back to the dirt: a few things in bottles that might be worth something
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to somebody, her piano, her scarred and tattooed bones, and the rest could go
to hell. But if she could give something new to the stars, then shed be content.
She sighs, satisfied, knowing that theres a god out there who will help her
with her newt eyes and her evil spells, who wont judge her as so many other
gods have. Zoz is good, she thinks as she drifts into sleep in her overstuffedarmchair, her tea lukewarm in her lap. Zoz is great.
A tiny sliver of her soul drifts towards Zoz, incorporeal and omnipresent,
at once everywhere and nowhere, alive and well both in the eternal ether of
Knowledge and Forbidden Secrets, and in the tiny house He keeps in
Kargazras own soul, and in the souls of every other witch or sorcerer who
knows the name of Zoz. He eats it as she snores.
And thus ends our silly little story.
~
Fun, yes? Its always fun to read about cackling witches frying sexist
merchants to ashes with their black arts.
But its time to get serious, and I imagine youve already guessed where
that silly little story is going. Substitute Kargazra with anyone trying to make
a career in 2016. Substitute Zoz, Lord of Knowledge, with Google. Substitutethe poor merchant with any sponsored result that appears after googling
something. Substitute Zozs gift of Beetfields soul to torment with the
December 17th, 2015 Google doodle celebrating Ludwig van Beethovens
birthday,2and our silly little story has become something thats really very
familiar.
And yet something is missingwhat about Kargazras soul? She paid for
the right to use Zozs libraries with slivers and shreds of it, and, even though
Zozs gift was called a gift, He drank from her soul while she played,
regardless. Whats more, Zoz was able to summon the ghost of Beetfield but
we have no ghosts, do we? And what about Kargazras other selves, her
Queen, her Beast, her Professional self, and how they were shadows cast into
cold eternity? What does thatmetaphor represent? We have no incorporeal,
2Available athttps://www.google.com/doodles/celebrating-ludwig-van-beethovens-245th-year.
https://www.google.com/doodles/celebrating-ludwig-van-beethovens-245th-yearhttps://www.google.com/doodles/celebrating-ludwig-van-beethovens-245th-yearhttps://www.google.com/doodles/celebrating-ludwig-van-beethovens-245th-yearhttps://www.google.com/doodles/celebrating-ludwig-van-beethovens-245th-year7/25/2019 The Soul - A Comprehensive Theory of Economic and Personal Value
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eternal soul, no ethereal part of us that can be spent, siphoned, or drunk by
hungry gods, no sense of economic valueother than money right?
Well. You can guess from my tone that I think the answer is, wrong. We do
have a soul, and whats worse, it can be bought, sold, loaned, invested or
leveraged, given, entrusted, and even stolen; any devious trickery that can bedone with money, can and isdone with our soulsalthough in different ways,
because the soul doesnt function like money. It functions like itself; like a soul.
And I mean a quantifiable, describablesoul, which includes our bank accounts
and Ferraris, but is also much, much more.
So what is it?
Put simply, it is a swirling stormof forms and meaning. It is a galaxy
made of light, or unlight if you please, or any other kind of non-standard light
you can think up. It is every part of who you are, every trick youve ever seen,every question that you know the answer to, every time you managed to save
something you thought youd lost. It unfoldsfrom you.
But, since you cant seethat swirling storm, letssay that your soul is
inside your shadow. The shape of you, cut into darkness, is a holeinto another
world, filled with anything you put in it, which are held in an infinite pocket of
eternity that is all yours. Your shadow is a hole into night and stars. Its all
theyous, and all the things and places where youve put your value. It is a
never-full purse full of magic. Read on to understand how Ithink it works.
~
Before I describe the souls form and function, I want to make something
very, very clear:
This is not a religious text. I am not asking you to join a religion. I am not
asking you to believein anything aside from your own value as a human being.
I am only offering my theoryas to how we use ideas and communication to
form ourselves and our economy.
I have used veryfundamentalterms because they resonate. I could haveused more technical, science-y sounding words: liminal, polarized, physical.
Using them might have lent this theory more credence among some, but it
would also hide the ball. The ball has been hidden for too long. I want you to
catchthe ball, especially since, in this theory, the ball isyou.
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This theory is a formula. It attempts to describe the logical connections
which form us and which we use every day. I couchit in terms of the soul. I
use poetic language because it fits, and because I know of no other way to give
respect to the immensely complex and wondrous other-dimensional part of
ourselves that I call the soul.
I am not interested in judging any person or entity for any other purpose
than to learn from them. I am only interested in describingyour worth, which
is infinite, and the consequences of the actions you take with that worth.
Now! Onward, my pretties
(At this point in the leaning process, ominous laughter is not necessary, but is
considered good form.)
~
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The Dance of the Earth and Stars
1.
Nothing3is eternal.4
There is truth.5Truth is eternal. Truth makes value.
Value is the strength6of truth. From the will flows value.
Two truths make a fact.7Facts are lost.
Two facts at odds make a question.8Questions are answered.
A question always has at least three answers.9Answers are given.
A question answered is a choice.10Choices are made by will.
Choices made are memories. Memory is the form of truth.
Memory is eternal.
2.
Death breaks truth.11
A broken truth is a lie.
A broken fact is a trick.
A broken question is a chain.
A broken memory is a ghost.
Choice is death.
3.
With eyes to the stars, will remembers.
3A point.4Infinite.5A line.6The difference.7A plane.8A space.9A face.10Time.11This tendency is entropy.
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A truth remembered is known.
A fact remembered is believed.
A question remembered is asked.
The stars teach us their craft.
4.
Will raises the dead.
A death undone is risen.
A lie retold is a story.
A trick solved is a game.
A chain broken is freedom.
A ghost redeemed is saved.
5.
To ask a question, a will must break chains.
To break chains, a will must ask questions.
To believe a fact, a will must remember the trick.
To do a trick, a will must remember the facts.
To remake the truth, a will must remember the lie.
6.
The earth12dances13with the stars:14
The earth remains,15while the stars slowly drift away.
The stars know all truth, and through them truth is reborn.
The stars believe all facts, and through them lies become stories.
The stars ask all questions, and through them all chains are broken.
The stars teach us how to save our ghosts.
12That which is finite.13Is interdependent with.14That which is infinite.15The first law of thermodynamics.
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Through the dance a will becomes a soul.
A soul is truth coiled around eternity.
The Logic Loop of the Soul
The six paragraphs above may sound like a religious litany, but
they are not. They are a logic loop which, I posit, forms the human
consciousness.
Im going to give one more caveat before I begin, because I love
my caveats: I am not a psychologist, nor an AI theorist, nor a computer
scientist, nor even someone with an extensive training in logic. I have
a bachelors degree in the humanities and a nearly-finished law degree,
and that is the extent of my formal training. I consider myself equal
parts artist and lawyer. I am not qualified to say anything about any
of these topics, aside from the fact that I think about them. Feel free to
stop at any time if this bothers you.
Now, onward:
1.
The first stanza explains the terms by which the human
consciousness perceives the dimensions: no dimension, which is
nothing, one dimension, which is a line, two dimensions, which is ashape, three dimensions, which is a three-dimensional form, and
beyond. Our minds perceive these dimensions all the time: we see
lines, shapes, depth, and ideas.
Nothing:
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Let me first apologize for my abominable skills in MS Paint. You
will grow all too familiar with them as you continue.
Nothing is singularity. It is emptiness and blankness. It is no
dimension.
Truth:
The truth is a line: anytime we can see a line, we ascribe value
to one side or the other. That line can be anyline: its a line drawn on a
piece of paper, the line between the door and the wall, the lines that
make up these words on this page. It can also be a metaphysical line:
the line between lovers hearts, the line between a bully and his victim,
or the line between you and your goals.
The truth ofyouis constantly being broken into an infinite
number of lies, just as the line of you is constantly being broken into
an infinite number of smaller segments of line. The truth of you is the
wholenessof you. And yet you are constantly changing; hair and skin
cells shed, trash discarded, memories and bad choices drifting away.
The truth of you remains. It is yourgestalt. It is a line that you
constantly repair.
On a very base level, everything is truth: either a line or a loop.
Take a man and blast him apart until he is nothing but sub-atomic
dust, and the bits youll see left are shivering loops of energy; the soulsof which all of us are made. Set enough of those loops in a line and they
become a truth. Coil that truth around a bit of nothing and youve
made a soul. Truth is infinite, in more ways than one.
It is vital to point out that that truth is totally subjective. It is a
line thatyousee. Everyone else around you sees different truths. Even
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if you are looking at the same thing as your friend, you are both
looking at it from different angles, and thus the truths you see will be
different.
Value:
Value is any difference between any two things: anytime you
draw a line, your mind makes a distinction. That distinction is any
distinction: it could be the difference between the left and the right of
the line, between green and blue, between yourself and the world,
between the number in your checking account and zero. It could be the
strength of the line itself: the value of a rope is how much weight itholds, if its being used as a rope. Value could simply be the value of
how uniquea thing is, for uniqueness makes a thing distinct from the
world. The more distinct two things are, the more valuable they are. In
this way value is contextual.16Value is also subjective. What you find
valuable, another person may not.17The value of a thing changes
constantly.
Many of you are under the impression that the only type of
value is in little pieces of colored paper. This is a chain: little pieces of
colored paper arevaluable, but only because you think so. There are
lotsof other kinds of value. All your patterns and tastes and things you
like are your values. Your values are not a checking account with a big
16We know this is true from simple economics: a glass of water in the desert is worth a fortune, but a
glass of water by a river is worth less.17Or, put simply, one womans trash is anothers treasure.
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or a small number. They are a spellbook, full of power and laughter
and fine distinctions.
I cannot stress strongly enough the wonderof value. We are
surroundedby value. We live on a spinning ball of molten iron,
wheeling through space so cold that the iron forms a crust, with a moldof life growing across it that can survive the deepest pressures and the
most delicate places, and we are part of it. Everything you see, is
value. Everything that you can do is value. Everything that you
treasure is value. Every scrap of knowledge in your brain, every
physical possession you have in this world, has a value.
The value thatsyoursis everything you consider yours, and the
degree to which it is yours is the degree to which you can control it by
will.
The Will:
Whoand whatare you?
The best answer I can give is that you are a will, riding inside of
your body, hidden somewhere inside your mind. In order to survive,
you make, move, and erase lines, which, as you recall, are truth, which
makes value.
Yougrasp, youpull, you exchange, you cut, and you learn, all
through lines; your ability to make them and see them. You move your
body by making a line down your nerves. You get to work by making a
line between your door and your office. You fall in love by drawing a
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line between two hearts. You get money by drawing a line between
yourself and your bank account. You break a coffee mug by dropping it;
filling it with little jagged lines from the fall. You read by seeing lines
on paper. You vote by drawing a line in a box. We have many ways to
see, use, and make lines, just like we can see, use, and make facts.
But before we move to facts, I want to remind you that your will
makes value. Every time you exercise your will in anyway, you are
generating value. You make value the way a sun makes light:
constantly and consistently. You radiate value.
I also want to point out that the line of the will is shady. It is not
always a clearly-defined line; sometimes it is shaky, or weak, or cast so
large that it breaks. It can also, of course, be broken. It is very
important to me that you understand this before you move forward.
Facts:
A fact is any shape or pattern formed by truth and value as seen
from one point of view. Every picture taken by your brain is a fact, and
that includes physical pictures, like the sight of yourhouse or your
childs face, It isalso metaphysical pictures, like your perception of a
stranger as hostile, or your perception of a sunset as beautiful.Anything that only you seeis a fact.
Of course, you perceive your house from many angles, because
your brain is constantly taking pictures of what it sees and piecing
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them together to form a more complete picture.18When you do so, you
form questions.
Questions:
A question is any three-dimensional space, or, better said, a
question is any pattern of truth and value as seen by more than one
point of view. See a face from the right, and then the front; now you
know the thing has two sides, but you dont know how many other
sides it has or what they are. What you dont see is a question.
It is important to note that multiple viewpoints does not
necessarilymean the viewpoints of other people. Any time you view a
thing from multiple anglesi.e. anytime you view a thing through
timeyou are seeing it from multiple viewpoints, and thus creating
questions.
Your bedroom is a question. Its a mostly asked question,
because youve explored all its parts and there is very little there you
dont know. A closed box is a question; you know its outside, but you
dont know the inside. When you open the box, youre asking thequestion.
Questions are also any metaphysical three-dimensional space
created by multiple viewpoints. In this sense, any conversation is a
question, as is any organization of people. A company is a question and
18Remember the tale of the three blind men and the elephant.
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a country is a question. A lawsuit before a court is a question. A very
fundamental way to know if something is a question is simply to look
at it; if you have or have ever had any questions about it, its a
question.
Memory:
Truths, facts, and questions all require you to see them. But
memory is the shadow of the known. In other words, it is what you
know when you cant see. Memory is eternali.e. infinitein the
sense that it does not die. All that is eternal lives among the stars.
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You can see a block of cheese. The block of cheese will rot away,
or get eaten, or otherwise destroyed. The tendency of things towards
destruction is called entropy. But you can also remembera block of
cheese. That block of cheese is a memory, and it lives so long as it is
remembered.
Your memory has value: a different kind of value than physical
value, but value nevertheless. You cant eat the memory of a block of
cheese, but you can remember the form. It wont help you survive, but
there is value in the ideaof cheese that is never lost, and knowing
what cheese ishas a very vital function: it helps you get more cheese.
When you remember cheese, you know what it is and where to get it.
The light that casts that shadow is your will, which lives within
your awareness. Your awareness is your light; it is everythingyou can
perceive. It is not just what you see or hear with your eyes and ears,
but things you can perceive with your mind. Everything you see or
hear, all of your ideas, your dreams and nightmares, every pattern of
truth and value that flashes before you, even when you close your eyes,
all of it is your light. Everything that passes behind youthat which
you cantperceiveis your darkness.
The pattern that casts a shadow is not your physical bodyor,
better said, not onlyyour physical body. Your will casts the shadow.
Your will is the shapeand qualityof your attention. It is your eye. It isyour hand. It is a knife. It is anything that you can use to make
choices, or, put plainly, any line that you draw.
The shadow that you cast in eternity is how you see yourselfor
how you drawyourself, for what you see is not always what you will.
The mirror may show you something beautiful, but your willmakes it
ugly. Mirrors may show you something ugly, but by your will, the
shadow you cast into eternity may have beauty.
The shadow does not cast but one self. It casts many selves, for
we all have many: our young selves, ourselves when were in love, our
old selves, our sick selves, our dead selves, ourselves at work, ourselves
at play, the dark self that no other sees. The shadow is everything
youre afraid you are and everything you hope to be. It is a constantly
shifting maze in four dimensions wherein each door is a step, a
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thought, a breath that you take. It all remains there for you, so long as
you remember it. You may pass through doors at will.
I really cannot stress how coolmemory is. Think about it. The
wizarding world of Harry Potter is real, andyou have made it, every
time you read it or think about it. You have built a singular place, aspacemade of images, which exists in eternity, and you havefilled it
with value. And I mean you have really fucking filled that space with
value. It is popping at the seams.
But a shadow cannot pop at the seams. A space in eternity is
infinite, when it comes to holding value. The form of it is made with
truth and cold darkness,19and thus it doesnt pay attention to the rules
of the mortal world. It is, if you would like to think of it, like
Hermiones beaded handbag. Our memory is an undetectable extension
charm.
The form of this shadow is malleable, for your will is malleable.
Your shape in eternity is a fluid loop, and by that fluidity, it takes the
shape of anything that you pay attention to, in any dimension. Your
attentioncasts a shadow onto eternity, the shape of which is
everything that youre aware of at that particular moment. When you
control a thing that you attend to, you exert your will over it. We do
this constantly: the fork in hand, the idea in head, the child at heart.
Our will can become any shape we can think, and is as strong as wecan hold.
We use that will to make choices. Anytime a choice is made, time
passes.
2. The Forms of the Soul
The second stanza describes how we perceive time and entropy.
For our purposes, timeis the tendency of things to move, and entropyis
the tendency of things to break.
Choice:
When you encounter a question, you make a choice. By choosing
an answer, you move into another question, or you stay where you are,
19See Form under The Spaces in Shadowfor further discussion.
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since doing nothing is always a choice. This choice, and the motion that
it makes, is time.
Some things we love, and some things repulse us. It is easy to
seek the things we love, and run from the repulsive. And yet, we can
turn and face what repels us. The strength of our will is the degree ofour ability to do so. When our will is strong, we can do anything: we
can climb any frozen mountain or endure any needle, take any office,
lift any weight; we can run for president, against all better judgment.
Things that are capable of facing what repels them by choice are
alive. Things that are not capable of doing so are dead. The line
between life and death is in shadow.
Sometimes the choices that you make break things.
Death:
When things break, they die. When you break a thing, you kill
it. Value is lost.
Lies:
When you break truths, you make lies. A lie is any altered,
misstated, or incorrectly recalled truth. A broken anything is a lie: a
broken bone, a broken door, a broken glass, broken trust, a broken
heart. But lies are not always bad: a story is a lie, and creativity is lies.
A lie is anything contraryto what you see.
Tricks:
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When you break facts, they become tricks. A trick is
any single-viewpoint space which traps value through
lies. A bad deal at the used car lot is a trick: you see the
value in the car from the ads, but when you buy it, it isnot as you expected. The value that you had in that car
is destroyed or reduced by the trick. A lying politician is
a trick: he seems genuine from your view, and then you
catch him lying. The truth of him which you formed is
broken when he lies. He is a trick.
Chains:
When you break a question, you forge a chain. Chains are multi-
viewpoint spaces that trap value.
Chains are any broken thing: a broken car, a broken rib, a
broken heart. These things are multi-viewpoint in the sense that you
perceive them at different moments in time, and they trap your value
in the sense that they grasp your will; you cantuse them until you
repair them. But chains are also metaphysical broken things: a job you
hate but have to keep because you need to pay the bills is a chain. A
broken marriage is a chain. An unjust society is a chain.
Chains bind you to the earth. The earth is everything that can
die; in other words, everything mortal and finite. Not all chains are
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bad; chains can bind monsters and pull great weights. Sometimes a
soul trapped in a chain is there willingly. To some degree, we need
chains to live.
Ghosts:
When a chain traps value, that trapped value casts a shadow
into eternity. That shadow is a ghost. A ghost is the memory of any
value trapped in a chain: the anger that follows after your car is
broken and you have to fix it, the memory of your father stuck in a
dead-end job or your grandmother in a nursing home, the man who left
you, who you cant forget. We all have parts of eternity that are chains
to us; they bind us down.
3. The Tool in Shadow
Remembering:
The third stanza describes how we remember the earth; or, put
simply, how we remember things that are lost. Everything is being lostconstantly; this is entropy.
Everything that we see and pay attention to is the truth.
Whenever that truth changes, lies are made. But we can remember
what the truth was, and by doing so, we may compare the truth and
the lies, and thus understand and grasp the value between them. The
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comparison of truth and liesthe comparison between what is seen
and what is rememberedare your beliefs.
The same principle works for the difference between facts and
tricks, and questions and chains. When lies break a fact into a trick,
your memory of the difference is belief. In comparing the fact and thetrick, you grasp the difference of value between them, and can
understand which is true (although both or neither may be true, and
true is just one type of value that can be ascribed to a fact). What you
know to be a fact, and what you know to be a trick is what you believe.
So too, when you remember the difference between a question
and a chain. When you remember a question, all the value it contains,
and all the ways it is used or functions as a chain, you have askedthat
question.
We are constantly asking the same questions, because most
questions have an infinite number of answers. The public space that is
Chicago, which I walk through every day, is a giant question with
infinite answers and an infinite number of ways it can become a chain.
I see new answers and new chains every time I walk outside. What I
believe is the truth and the lies of Chicago, where its chains are and
what questions to ask, all my impressions of Chicago, cast a shadow
into eternity: the memory of Chicago, and all of its ghosts.
Rememberingis when you are able to walk into the shadowof Chicago.
Craft:
Memory gives us our craft. Craft is simply the sum of all our
forms and their uses. This work is part of my craft.
4. The Path to Rebirth
The fourth stanza describes how we fight death by touching the
stars; put simply, how we use memory to restore what is lost.
Rising:
Sometimes, there is something or someone who you dont like.
But you canlike them, with will. You can rise up, be a new
person, and remake truth, which is good, because truth is constantly
being broken by death. A remade truth has risen.
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You use your will to fix things that break. On a very base level,
youre constantly fixing the death that lives withinall earthly things;
consuming and discarding, dying and giving birth. Every time you fix
or replace your truths, you are reborn. You are constantlybeing reborn.
Memory serves a vital function to that process. When your blockof cheese is destroyed, you can use your memory of it to make it again.
You take value that you have, and pass it through your memory of the
cheese block to achieve a new cheese block: either you go buy the same
cheese, or cheese like it, or perhaps, if your memory is very precise and
you have the right skills, you make the cheese yourself. In this way,
you can use the shadow of the cheese as a lens.
Lenses:
A lens is your eye to the stars. Put simply, it is any means totransform one type of value into another.
Your DNA is a lens, because by its pattern, you turn dull earth
into truth and value: yourself, the self-sustainable, infinitely unique
and complex you that is your body. A recipe is a lens, because it turns
one type of food into another. Happiness and sadness are both lenses,
because they flavor every bit of value you experience with sweetness or
sour.20DNA is a shadow; it is the eternal copy of the physical pattern
within us. A recipe is a shadow; it is the eternal copy of the physical
pattern shared between many cookbooks. Happiness and sadness areboth shadows; they are the eternal copies of transitory, mortal feelings.
Creation
At will, we make lenses out of lies. This is anytime we use a
knowingly falsememory as a lens. That sounds ominous, but it is
actually a very helpful tool: these are our ideas, if we implement them,
and our dreams, if we strive for them. Using such lenses is called
creating; it allows us to make new truths, new facts, new questions,
and new memories. We create by using our will to intentionally castfalse shadows upon eternity; to create memories that are notwhat we
have seen, but what we have created. We then use those patterns,
made out of truth and the stars, to make things we can see, which can
help us to survive.
20Rose-tinted and jade glasses.
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The Dance of the Earth and Stars:
And we have to, because death is always at our heels; in other
words, entropy is running, and there is always a better mousetrap, a
newer show to see. Everything thats alive has to dance for supper.
Which is a shame, because our will, whatever it is, is inside our
mortalbodies. Our will gives us our self, our attention; the mysterious,
magical part of us that makes us ourselves, which is also, if you
remember, our eyes, our ears, our hands, and our knives. I admit freely
that I do not know howthe will arises. It is magic to me.
Our will sits somewherewithin us, if you will forgive my further
ignorance. We can lose parts of our physical self yet live. But wegrasp
everything we consider ours, and we seekthe things that we value. We
own things, and also the memory of things; their shadows cast oneternity, which last after the thing has gone. Those memories or ghosts
can be usedto restore what was lost.
We do this all the time: we go to the store and get bread when
we run out, because we know what bread is and where to find it; we try
to live up to our parents standard when we raise our own children (or
try not to make their mistakes), we use our skills at our job, which we
have learned through struggle and suffering, to create, alter, or move
value. Our skillsare the collection of all the memories and ghosts, and
all the facts believed and stories lied, that we can use at will, and howclear they are.
This is the dance of the earth and stars; or, put another way,
this is the interdependence of the physical and the metaphysical. We
perceive truths, facts, and questions, but entropy is constantly killing
our truths, turning our facts into lies, and forging our questions into
chains. To survive, we look to the stars, who tell us how to believe lies,
how to turn a game into a story, how to open a chain, and how to save
a ghost. Our mortal bodies go through their lives blindand naked. We
use the tricks and truths weve stuffed into our shadow to see, to help
us make choices, to clothe ourselves, and to move forward. Without
memory, you die shivering and hungry. With it, and the skills to use it,
you prosper.
Stories, Games, Freedom, and Salvation:
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A story is a lie, retold through the stars. It is anytime we recall
truth and lies.
A game is a trick, replayed through the stars. It is anytime we
can remember a trick, or, put simply, any time we can recall a single-
viewpoint pattern of truth and value.
Freedom is a chain passed through the stars. It is anytime we
can remember a chain, or, any time we recall a multi-viewpoint
pattern of truth and value. Put simply, it is anytime we can look at a
question and see all of its possible answers.
A ghost saved is when we are able to recall value trapped in a
chain, and by lies, break that chain. Put poetically, it is when we are
able to look to the stars, see a chained soul among them, and break the
chain with our will. The value within is then saved; and the ghostbecomes a memory.
Salvation is a vital function of our souls. We do this when we
reconcile with the memory of our dead fathers, or study the atrocities
of past dictators. It is anytime we learn from our mistakes.
5. The Steps of the Dance:
The fifth stanza describes the method by which the earth dances
with the stars, which is very intuitive.
When you encounter a questioni.e. a three-dimensional space
in time, or a multi-viewpoint spaceif you want to ask it, you have to
remember all the other times you have asked it, and the answers you
received. Every answer that trapped value is a chain, every answer
that didnt trap value isanother question. If youre trying to drive to
your friends house, you remember all the other times youve been, and
the times you got lost. That memory guides your path: you have to
remember the chains to ask the question.
When you encounter a facti.e. a two-dimensional space, or asingle viewpoint spaceif you want to believe it, you have to
remember the trick. Put simply, when you see a man doing a card
trick, you are only going to believethat what hes doing is real when
you understand what parts of the trick are falsewhen you know
what is the fact and what is the trick. If you cant see or understand
where the trick is, itsmagic.
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When you encounter a truthi.e. a line, either between things
in the earth or things among the starsyou can only know its truth
well enough to remake it if you can remember what you have
encountered that is notthe truth. The only way to believe truth or
stories is to know the difference between truth and lies.
6. The Soul:
In Isabelles face, I saw the future. She was being born into a world a
little bit more accepting than the one I had been born into, and maybe,
just maybe, I had a little something to do with that.
-Liz Taylor, American Horror Story: Hotel
The last stanza simply encapsulates the dance; that is, it
describes the loop that creates a soul.
We encounter truths, and by our will, we make shadows of them
on the eternity behind and within us. We use those shadows to grasp
the difference between truth and lies, and the value therein, and by
grasping that value and its forms, we can raiseor remakethe truth
when it is cut down by death.
The shadows that we cast into eternity coalesce into who we are,
all the patterns of darkness and light within us. Our will is always
between the shadowswhat we rememberand the lightwhat we
see. The shape of its movement makes our form. Our form is a constantloop of attention: we wake, we eat, we work to be able to eat, we sleep,
we wake. Our will is a shivering loop of energy just like anything else,
and like anything that uses energy, it eventually runs out. It needs to
be able to better itself, to enhance its skills and its value, in order to
survive. Everything alive has to dance for supper.
The memories we cast into that other-dimensional darkness are
eternal. They are made of truths and emptiness, and we fill that
emptiness with truth and value. We use that value to remake our
world when it is broken, by using memories as a lens to make new
choices, to rebuild the broken parts of ourselves and our worlds.
The truth of our will encapsulates that eternal pattern of
darkness and light, and the coil of the two makes a soul.
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A soul is truth coiled around eternity. Your soul is your physical
body, and your physical effects, and also the truths that they cast into
eternity; your memories, your lies, your losses and gains, your hopes
and your heartbreaks, all bound by your will. We use our will to move
value, to alter it or destroy it, in both the mortal and eternal worlds,
and between the two.
The dance of the earth and the stars makes everything. The
earth is everything that dies; everything that is subject to entropy. But
it is also everything that remains when we are not looking at it. It is
everything physical. The stars are everything that doesnt die;
everything that is not subject to entropy, everything made of empty
form and eternity. They are values that can be truly lost, as physical
matter never can,21in the sense that we no longer know how to find
them.
Say you meet a man. He looks ordinary, and his name is
ordinary, and you only see him for a short time. The shadow he casts
into your darkness is faint. A century passes and he sends you a letter,
and you have no idea who he is at all, because you never encountered
him again. This is the danger of the stars: they fade. We must make
memories to keep memories.
Think of the darkness within you like apocket, made of
emptiness, full of only the things youve put in it. It never gets full, itsnever heavy, you can never lose it, and you can make within it
anything you please. But it is also bottomless. Anything that you
havent used in a whilefalls out.22
And so you have to make sure that the things you keep near the
top are the ones that are usefulto you in the mortal world, and by
keeping those things at the top, they make you into who you are. Pick
up a hammer and you become a smith. A smith is someone who uses a
hammer. Pick up a gun and you become the one in charge. The one in
charge is the guy with the gun. The logic of our souls is a loop. You are
21See the law of conservation of mass.22Whether or not a form is destroyedwhen it falls out, or if it remains somewhereand we have just
lost our access to it is a question for the philosophers. For the purposes of this analysis, it doesnt
matter; a form lost is a form lost. I personally have no idea if there is a real eternal world of the
form. Ill admit that I hopeso, but really just because I think it would be cool as fuck.
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who you make yourself: you are yourself broken and remake, over and
over and over.
Mortal truths are broken and become lies; the stars know the
difference and so we believe them. Beliefs create mortal facts which are
broken and become tricks; the stars play games with these tricks, andwe them and play also; games create mortal questions which are
broken and become chains; but the stars are free, and by following
them we seek freedom.
We see the freedom in the stars and thus learn how to free
ourselves. We watch the stars games and thus learn to tell stories.We
listen to what the stars know and they tell us how to rise. And so we do.
We are a truth coiled around an eternity, and thus we are souls.
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The Justice of God
1.
God is love.
Love sings, and cuts close round the core.
Love is just.
2.
Justice is wills aligned.
Value cast against the will is unjust.
Justice makes love.
Injustice makes pain.
3.
Love accumulated is joy.
Pain accumulated is agony.
A joyful soul rises to heaven.
A soul in agony sinks into hell.
A soul may seek justice by its will.
4.
With clear eyes, souls fall in love.
With eyes clouded, the soul is in pain.
Clarity is just.
Confusion is injustice.
5.
Evil is wills against will.
Evil makes pain.
Pain is mortal.
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The Logical Flow of Value
Once again, I have used very strong, highly charged language
and written something that sounds like a prayer or a sermon. It is not.
It is a logical formula that describes how the value in our souls flows
between us.
I will give relatively few examples, because I feel that this may
be a charged subject.
1.
God:
The first stanza describes the motion of value at its maximum
efficiency, what this theory calls god. God written with a lowercase
g when not the first word in a sentence is simply human connection.
Or, more broadly, it is a connection between any two souls. That
connection is called a bond. When two souls make a connection, they
are bound.
I would like to stress that god is any connectionbetween souls.
When you spend quality time with your family, that is god, but god is
alsobuying a stick of gum from the bored clerk at Walgreens. It is
money moved through bank accounts, and all the tricks and games
people use to funnel your love into cash.
There are four types of value movement through such a
connection: giving, taking, exchange, and empathy.Giving is when one will gives value to another, without
expectation of value in return. Most of the things you might call gifts
are actually not gifts under the strict definition of this term; you have
expectation that the gifted will likeyou, at the very least, or will pay
you back with gifts in kind.
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Taking is when one will takes value from another.
Exchange is when one will grants value in exchange for value
given.
Empathy is any time two souls are able to pass something
between each other without either losing anything. In other words, it is
our ability to make and read copies.
Love:
The value that flows through a bond is love. Love is simply
anything that you want, any value that you are drawn to and have
appreciation for, any value which sustainsyou. In this way, love
functions as the souls blood; the loss of it drains a person of vitality. A
soulgenerateslove much the same way the body generates blood. The
love that she makes, she can give away, exchange, or keep for herself.
Anytime we call up a friend to hang out or even just send them a link
to something we think theyll find funny, we transfer some kind of
value. We form a human connection; and through that connection
passes love.
Love is vital for the function of the soul because it is energy. A
soul is a mixture of mortal and eternal things: the parts of you that are
physical, which includes not just your body but everything thatsyours,
and the parts that are eternal, the memories and impressions by and
about you. The energy that love gives creates a spinaround your core.
The things that are vital to you, those things you keep pulling to
yourself, get denser and denser. The shadows that you keep close grow
denser with meaning, and as they grow dense, they begin to create
light. That light shines in eternity. I described the soul before as a
galaxyor a swirling storm, and those terms were not merely pretty. I
used them because they describe things which spin.
Furthermore, once there is enough spin to fan the embers, the
glow of your soul createsenergy, which creates more spin. When this
happens, a soul isjoyful.
Finally, it should be noted that the light and energy that the
soul produces shines in eternity, not the mortal world. Thus, it is not
subject to death.
In other words, when we love, we shine foreverwith the whirl of
it. It is no wonder that we call people stars.
The Core:
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At the center of the galaxy of your soul is your core. Your core is
that which is vital. When the core is bright and strong, love sings forth
from it. When the core is cold and dark, the love that it makes is weak
and sluggish.
Your core includes at least some parts of your body, but it is alsoother things. It could be a place; the one place in your life where you
know peace or receive love. It could be a person: your child. It could be
an idea: justice, or love, or family. The loss of your corewill cause you
to wither and die, if you are not able to accept another.
Love isjust, because it is maximized when wills are aligned.
I want to make clear that god is anyconnection between souls.
Lower-case god is both Mother Teresa and the souls she tended, and
also the kraken that eats men who fall from their boats.23So long as at
least one partyhas a soul, god is there.24
2.
Justice:
When two souls are both perfectly willing to create, alter, or
erase value via a bond, that bond is just. If they are not perfectly
willing, they must adjust.
23Dosidicus gigas.24This statement does not imply that I think the Humboldt squid does nothave a soul.
Id also like to take a moment to point out that god is genuinely everywhere; you formgod and thus
you are never without god. But that might have less meaning than many ascribe to it. People talk
about finding god, but thats a little bit like a bird saying she found air.
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Remember that the willis a shape; it is the form of your
attention and focus. When you form a bond, you alignyour will with
your partner.
To the degree that your wills are not aligned, value will not pass
freely. Injustice comes from unjust bonds, and causes pain.
The greatest form of injustice, of course, is a bond formed againstthe
will.
In an unjust bond, the soul that defends itself or another is
innocent. The soul that attacks is guilty. The line between guilt and
innocence lies in the shade.
3. Consequences:
Joy:
When a soul is able to freely give and receive love, the whirl may
create joy. Joy is the energy created by a souls density.
Joy is light and life; a joyful soul has a full life and a strong will,
and will spend its life moving towards the things it loves. Think once
more of a joyful soul like a galaxy: dust swirling through space freely,
casting shadows cut of truth and cold darkness towards its core that
grow so dense with meaning and love that they ignite, and become
stars. The arms they stretch out are filled with light and love given
freely.
Such is a joyful soul, but that galaxy stretches into eternity,
rather than space. The galaxy of meaning, truth, and cold nothing
within you unfolds from your shadow like a flower, or, if you are
Kargazra of the Starless Night, a clutch of tentacles.
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Heaven:
Heaven is simply that which you seek. Anytime you feel you are
in the right place, or on the right path, you are in heaven.
Pain:
When injustice occurs, it causes pain. Pain is that which is
heavy, and that which clings.
Pain slows the spin of the soul, decreases the total amount of
love, and causes confusion. Pain blindsyou and makes you angry,
which creates the pain loop. Anger or ignorance causes you to lash out,
creating further pain, which further angers and blinds.
Id like to point out that injustice simply causes pain; the pain
that it causes may cling to anyone party to the bond. Pain doesnt just
accrue in the innocent or guilty, and it doesnt neatly stay within thelines that the will builds.25It splatters everywhere.
When souls experience a sufficient amount of pain, they are in
agony. A soul in agony drifts towards hell.
Agony:
When a person loses all love, they are in agony. This is when
they lose their movement. Pain blocks the passage of love; its like
plaque in the arteries or dirt on your glasses. Without love to give the
soul spin, the shadow becomes heavy. A soul in agony sinks into hell,because it is too heavy to fly.
Intentionally keeping souls in agony in order to prevent their
flight is agrave injustice. A grave injustice is a debt.
Hell:
Hell is simply being alone, without movement, cut off from
eternity and god.
Seeking Justice:
If you are in pain, you may seek justice. Seeking justice is
anytime the will seeks to balancethe accumulation of value as the
result of an unjust bond. If value was taken from a soul, a will might
25The lines that a will builds are often shady anyway.
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seek to take it back. If pain was created within the soul, a will might
seek to give it back. This is seeking justice.
It should be noted that seeking justice via unjust means is a
chain, which people use to chain both themselves and others. The more
you do it, the more you want to do it or are good at doing it, and thepain accumulates.
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4.Precautions:
Clarity:
In order for two wills to be aligned, both wills must have clear
eyes. To be clear-eyed, a will must be as aware as possibleof all
information relevant to the choice. To beperfectlyclear-eyed is nearlyimpossible; it would require being aware of allinformation relevant,
everything that could possibly be affected by that choice.
For a will to be clear-eyed, it has to remove all of its lenses. That
means the soul has to put aside any non-relevant information. This
means that both parties must step outside the confines of the mortal
and their mortal needs, and into eternity.
There, both must look at theformof the bonds they have
constructed, which should be defined as sharply as possible and thus
free of pressure,26both must examine every other bond that may beaffected and deem it as just as possible, and both must agree to the
bond wholly or in parts or to the degree specified.Precision engenders
clarity.
26This minimizes the risk of shade, within which grow gods.
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Take a moment and think of all the entities that want to form
bonds with you who hideor distractyou from all the relevant facts. In
other words, any companythat doesnt tell you as directly and clearly
as possiblehow they profit from you and how much.
Duty:
Justice calls for us to clear our eyes. The degree to which we do
not tryis the degree of our injustice.
Different societies have different rules and structures for
maximizing justice. These systems will require certain niceties: walk
with the light, ensure your product isnt combustible, dont put rat
poison in your pizza. They are the bare minimum that a society
requires in order to function within it; if you cant follow these rules,
you have to leave.27Strictly put, your dutyis the degree to which you
must clear your eyes before forming any bond, which is agreed-tobeforehand by the society of which you are part.
Alignment:
Remember that the will has a shape, which is constantly
changing and under the sole control of itself.
When two souls approach intending to form a bond, they must
be able to seethe shape of each others wills in order to align. Thus the
need to remove all lenses: the sight of the otherswill is more
important than the shape of your own.
Souls typically achieve this bond by engaging in a dance of
encounters, by which they form an as-complete-as-possible picture of
their prospective partners will. Conversations, courtships,
negotiations, frank discussions, even light chatter are all, to a degree,
adjusting: we shape our own will, and attempt to understand the shape
of the other. When we understand each other very well, love flows
freely.
Clouds and Confusion:
Anything that prevents one will from seeing the shape of
another clouds the eyes. A wills eyes are clouded when it is confused,
mistaken, or otherwise unaware of any relevant information.
27Usually to prison.
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Clouded eyes cause confusion, which is simply the degree to
which wills are not aligned. Confusion is unjust, and causes pain
where love does not flow freely. The will and the awareness work
together. A bond cannot be truly just until both parties are as aware as
possibleof all relevant circumstances.
Like clear eyes, it is nearly impossible for your eyes to notbe
somewhatclouded. There are always things that we dont know, always
relevant information which we cant access. Those things, which come
from the darkness behind, are ourfate.
I will comment on clarity to say this: the buildup of pain that
accrues from being constantly waryof being harmed, is afar greater
lossthan the occasional losses that arise from inattention. In other
words, approaching any interaction with an open mind and a quick
sense of forgiveness ultimately nets a higher degree of clarity and thus
justice.
When this is done willfullyby one soul against another, it is a
grave injusticethat is called terror. When a grave injustice is
committed, miasmais formed.
I cannot stress the pain of a miasma. It fills a space. It clouds
every eye and blocks every will, and turns all love to pain.
When a space ignores a miasma, it seeps through its shadow
and causes nightmares.
When a space willinglyignores a miasma, it is builtonlies.
5.
Evil:
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Evil is simply when a bond is knowingly formed against the will.
It is when you wring a chickens neck. It is when you slap a child. It is
when you cheat, for you know the bond you form with your lover is
against your spouses will. It is when you commit murder. It is when
you enslave a person, for you know that a will cannot be owned.
That said, it is nearly impossible notto do someevil: every time
you bump people in a rush to get off the subway, every time you eat a
burger, every time you shade your friend in front of his crush, all are
small evils. If youll forgive my candor, I advise you not to beat yourself
up too much if you do some evil; after all, pain is mortal. It fades, andpeople can be forgiven. Learn from your wickedness, if you should be
wicked.
However, if you find you like the taste of wickedness more than
the taste of love, you may be truly wicked within. If so, I only advise
you candidly that wickedness depreciates in value. Your shadow, full of
its many things, thrives on the connection that othersmake to it, for it
is a gate within eternity. Through that gate value can pass: carefully
worded contracts and freely given gifts both. But when you do a
wickedness, you ensure that a gate is closed and lockedbehind you.Each time you do evil, you erase yourself a little more from eternity,
and you break one more tool inside your never-ending bag of tricks.
Atonement:
A soul that feels injustice on her head may atone. Atonement is
whatever justice the innocent demands. Should the innocent be unable
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to demand justice, atonement is whatever the guilty feels the innocent
would want. If the soul atones to the innocents satisfaction, the
innocent mayforgiveher of the injustice.
Spells
Spells are any means by which we contain, transfigure, or
destroy value through a bond. There are, I imagine, an infinite number
of them. I give you a few of the more broadly used categories, if only so
you may protect yourself against their unjust use.
1.
Falsity:
When a soul engages in a bond with another, it may induce its
partner to give love byfalsity. Falsity is the willing obstruction of
clarity.
Love passed through a false bond functions as through any other
bond. However, when the lie is revealed, all love passed will turn to
pain. This does not necessarily happen immediately; slow revelations
will slowly release pain.
2.
Correlation:
When a soul wishes to form a bond that conveys certainforms,
she may use correlation. Correlation is the use ofproximityto convey
similarity.
It is important to me that you understand correlation, because it
is used against you regularly. Anytime the news puts a word in bold or
bright colors, or plays a super serious-sounding ditty before a segment,
it uses correlation against you. You hear the super serioustune, and
you immediately think that this segment is important. And yet, there
is no real reason why anytune should convey seriousness.Music in
general is not something we use when we are in genuine danger. It
only conveys seriousness because we agreethat it does.
Correlation is a powerful and useful lens. It helps us achieve
clarity, for being able to understand the contextof a fact is important to
understanding the whole question. Correlation is any soundtrack in a
film. It is the tears on a friends face alongside her words: they help us
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understand the whole picture. It is anytime we are able to hold two
ideas in our head at once, and connect the two. In that sense, it is
useful.
It is not useful, however, when it begins to be used by predators.
The news has no reason to add a serious tune; the news story they regiving is likely serious enough. Perfume wont make you beautiful, but
perfume ads have beautiful people in them: correlation ensures that
you associate beautywithperfume. Beauty and perfume have no other
logical connection.
I advise you only to be aware of correlation when it is used
against you. Be aware of the news station that acts like every word is
vital, life-saving news; it is not. But the news station needs your love to
live, and it will dance however it thinks will trick you into loving it.
3. Contradiction:
Contradiction is when twoformsare incompatible. It can be
used to breaka form while in a bond: if Mary knows that Sue loves
both fine crystal glasses and cats, Mary can convince Sue notto get a
cat by pointing out that cats and fine crystal glasses are incompatible.
Sues love for cats may be broken by the contradiction.
Contradiction is often used to trick souls into false choices: if
you dont buy now, youll miss out,or if you dont take the guilty plea,
youll go to jail.
Contradiction is also often used to intimidate. When you go to
see a powerful executive, you have to walk through all the trappings of
his power: the beautiful building, the nice office, the well-organized
secretary, the deference everyone gives him. These things create a
contradiction in your mind, between himandyou. He is rich and
powerful, you are poor and lowly, and thus, the contradiction whispers,
you and he are incompatible, and he will break you. In this way,
contradiction can be used to create fear.
4. Logic, Ethos, and Pathos:
Logic is the use of consistently defined forms to induce, alter, or
destroy value within a bond. It is perhaps the most difficulttype of
spell, for it requires that all parties to a bond fully understand and
agree on the forms used. This theory is my attempt at using it,
although I admit that I am a novice.
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Let us say that Mary idolizes her teapot. She uses the teapot to
feel calm, and so the calm she feels from sitting down and relaxing for
a moment is associated with the teapot; she storesvalue within it.
Every time she returns to the teapot, she can reflectthat same value
back at herself; merely being around the teapot makes her feel calm.
There is no reason to associate a pot that pours hot water with calm of
the specific sort that Mary feels when she uses the teapot, and yet she
feels it. When she uses it, she contemplates calmness and tea, and her
mind wanders; she may have an insight or a flash of inspiration. The
teapot is refractingthe value she puts into it.
Many of our idols are people. Look, for example, to David Bowie
and Alan Rickman, two very talented and very well-loved people who
died this week. Their memoriestheir image, their formare not
dead. They continue to exist, and we continue to be able to access them
and the value within thembecause we know the form. Their mortalbodies are no longer there to affect the image; they cant do anything
new. But their forms live, and they hold value.
That is the difference between idolizing a dead thing and a
living thing: the value of a dead idol is steady, but the value of a living
idol stands a chance of suddenly increasing or changing in value.
As you can imagine, we make idols a lot. Nearly any form of art
is an idol. Hollywood is a securities game made of idols. If you wish, it
may help to think of an idol as a kind of checking account: you store
value in it, and when you need, you can retrieve that value. I
personally keep a number of idols, because I like to collect artwork and
tattoos.
The value in an idol is also unique. We all perceive David Bowie
differently. We perceive him from different viewpoints, and through
different lenses, and with different wills. That means that his form in
eternity is veryshadyand you will learn that gods grow in the shade.
If a mortal man casts such a well-seen and shady shadow that a god
grows, are the mans will and the gods will the same? Are they
entangled? Does one grow from the other? What happens when themortal dies?
These are questions for which I have no answers, but asking
them helps us to understand the shady areas between an idol and a
god, for many idols becomegods.
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It should be noted that an idol is distinct from a tool, which is an
object given love for its utility.
2.
Mortal Gods:
When two or more souls begin to connect through a mortalthing
other than each other, a god is born. A god lives in the shade of
memoryof every souls perception of that thing.
Simply put, if Mary and Sue start staring at a doughnut, a god
is formed. It is born the moment the two start looking at the doughnut,and dies the moment they look away. The god is theformof the
doughnut, cast onto eternity by the two wills.
That form will be, inevitably, shady. This is because Marys
perception of the doughnuts form and Sues perception of the
doughnuts form are inevitably distinct. They are looking at the
doughnut from different angles, for one. But they are also thinking
different things aboutthe doughnut; their wills are forming all sorts of
other truths and questions about the doughnut, all of which are part of
the shadow that their will casts onto eternity. The two shadows are
complex, constantly changing forms with many dimensions. There is a
space between these two forms, filled with the shadeof eternity.
Within that shade, the doughnut god is formed. It lives in the space
between Marys visionof the doughnut, and Sues vision of the
doughnut.
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A doughnut god is benign, a small, living bit of meaning full of
the joy of bickering over a doughnut with a friend. It could be less so.
Mary could fight Sue over it, and win, and associate the power she felt
with the doughnuts delicious taste. She could teach her child the
supreme satisfaction that comes from fighting for the very last
doughnut from a very exclusivebakery and winning. The form of that
doughnut will grow in her daughters soul as well; a chain of
doughnuts, family, and winning. The space between the memory of
that victory chain and her mothers memories of her own victory
doughnuts is shady, and within that shade grows the doughnut god.
He is no longer a happily shivering bit of meaning packed with the rich
value of friendship. He is now a god that lives on someone else losing.
You have to win that doughnut.
Unfortunately, most gods live on someone else losing. This is
because we live in a mortal world, and most of the time when wegather to focus our attention on an object or an idea, its so we can
survive. When we were young we made gods of wolves and bears and
things we thought might lend us fierceness. Now we make gods of our
companies, our jobs, our countries, our gods, our politics, our ideals,
and of all the little gods that we bargain with to get through our day.
Any word, thing, or idea into which souls invest common attention is a
god.Anytime people join in a group, a god is formed.
And since godsfeed on attention, anytime you start paying
attention to something else, the god dies, just a little. Thus, someoneelse has to lose, so the god can survive. This is the mortal world, after
all. Everything alive has to dance for supper.
Of course, lots of mortal gods are fantastic. We trust the god
Tide to sell us laundry detergent of a consistent quality at a consistent
price. We trust the god Starbucks to sell us coffee and sugar of a
consistent quality at a consistent price. I know I personally am a big
fan of Zoz and his torments. One of the things that makes a god
reliable and trustworthy is when they are accountable, as Tide,
Starbucks, and Zoz, the Goggled One, are. A god may certainly be fair
and just while still able to maintain a profit of attention. The degree to
which a god hidesits intent and its methods from its faithful is the
degree of its injustice.
Accountability accrues the more the god has apresence.
Presence is any awareness of the god: visible logos, patterns commonly
associated with the god, actions of the gods servants in their capacity
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as his servants. The more accountable a mortal god is, the more justit
will be. It may be accused by those who seek justice more easily, for its
name is more known, and in order to minimize these instances, it will
tend to actas justly as possible. We though