Rudy Rucker, Infinity And The Mind: The Science And Philosophy Of The Infinite

Galdrakver (‘Little Book Of Magic’) The ‘Little Book Of Magic’ is a seventeenth-century Icelandic manuscript, written on animal skin and containing magical staves, sigils, prayers, charms and related texts.

It is known to have once been owned by Icelandic Bishop Hannes Finnson who was alive from 1739 until 1796 and known for having a vast library containing many volumes of magic related texts and manuscripts. Full manuscript here.

Varied states of consciousness

The Atomic Ladder of Life, from solid to liquid to gaseous to etheric to spirit.  From The Gate Beautiful by John Ward Stimson, 1903.

Emmanuel Swedenborg, the Swedish scientist and mystic, held that the soul of a man was a 'spiritual fluid' diffused throughout the body, and that the medium for its diffusion was the blood, which was thus imbued with power from the divine source. On the other hand the French occultist Eliphas Levi spoke of blood as 'the astral light made manifest in matter', the astral light in this context being the vital principle of the etheric world.

Blood was regarded by all peoples throughout history as a magic substance of tremendous psychic potency and was therefore universally hedged in by taboos. It was the sign of supreme sacrifice; it sealed covenants; it betokened both maidenly virtue and the magic power of virgins. If split on the earth blood cried aloud for vengeance...'There is scarcely any natural object with so profoundly emotional an effect as blood'.

Benjamin Walker, Beyond the Body: The Human Double and the Astral Planes

journal entry - june 5 2024

When the boundaries between the inner and the outer dissipate, the ego returns home, back into its original unity. In imagination—phantasy—the thin line between the inner and the outer begins to fade: the I of the abyss is the silent dialogue the soul has with itself. The same is true for the dreaming soul, asleep within its original lost unity, recovered, reconstituted—even if only for a moment—a confluence between the inner and outer is subsumed within the underworld. In imagination—the artist of the dream—there is a contraction of the ego back into its interior, bringing the wealth of its experiences to bear upon the soul.

Jon Mills,  The Unconscious Abyss: Hegel’s Anticipation of Psychoanalysis

In classical empiricist approaches, we could say that our ways of talking depend upon the world; to the extent that our talk is rooted, or grounded in what the facts of the world will permit or allow us to say, our talk is about what we ‘find’ to be there. 

On the other hand, in line with hermeneutical or interpretive views, it is equally true to say that what we take to be the nature of the world depends upon our ways of talking about it; thus, to the extent that it is they that ‘give’ or ‘lend’ it intelligible (and legitimate) structure and significance, it is as we ‘make’ it to be.

—John Shotter, Social Individuality Versus Possessive Individualism

Petitot 1771