Patterns of Reality

Self-secret language and patterns of reality

In Darwin's Pharmacy, the author points out the following: "I want to suggest that trip reports are fundamentally scripts, what I have called elsewhere rhetorical software: linguistic, visual, musical, and narrative sequences whose function resides less in their "meaning" than in their capacity to be repeated and help generate patterns of response. They are part of the psychonautic apparatus and not a supplement to it. They are compositions that suggest, but do not exhaust what one may very well become in contact with entheogens." There are three things that interest me about this quote. One of those things is the concept of self-secret language, which I've written about before. Self-secret language is the discourse of a given community and it is language that is only understood when you've had enough experiences that allow you to understand the various terminology being used, and enables you to contribute to the community you are seeking entrance to.

What stands out to me about the quote above is that another function of self-secret language and its various artifacts is that people do need to be able to repeat them and use them to generate responses. You see this in academia, where mastering the academic language is an initiation in its own right, with the expectation being that you'll be able to successfully replicate the language and use it to generate your own responses to other artifacts in the academic field you are in. Self-secret language, when used in this way, protects the discourse from the uninitiated, while also qualifying who is initiated. The downside of such an approach is that it can also cause stagnation. This is one of the reasons academia tends to be conservative in its approach. It's also why you see a similar conservative approach in a lot of occult traditions. The traditions are preserved and the uninitiated are kept out, but the tradition progresses slowly and views potential changes as a threat, and responds accordingly.

The second thing which interests me about the quote is the concept of generating patterns of response. I've explained that above, in terms of self-secret language, but lets consider as well that a pattern of response also leads to a pattern of reality. The response is the confirmation of a discourse, but it is also what is used to discover patterns of reality that support the discourse and may even be used to generate those patterns of reality. A pattern of response sets up an expectation for what will be manifested as reality and trains the people involved to look for that reality and/or manifest it through their own actions.

There is also an ontological element that interests me about the quote, specifically the use of the word become, which is an ontological shift from one state of being to another...in this case in reference to entheogens, but it can also be applied to magical work, or really any kind of work that involves some kind of identity shift. I'd argue that self-secret language, i.e. discourse is an example of an identity shift. A person must adopt the discourse of a given discipline, and that adoption includes a fundamental change in identity, a becoming of something new through the mastery of the discourse.

And what do I really mean by all the above...It's an example of self-secret language in and of itself, a discourse analysis provided by my own experiences in academia and tempered by my interests in ontological shifts and magical work.

Patterns of Reality

"Mind patterns could be 'woven' like cord patterns, and these mind patterns were what 'move' spells. Different coloured threads indicated different kinds of consciousness, and their physical arrangements had to be projected into equivalent Inner patterns of power" -- From Magical Ritual Methods (affiliate link) by William Gray I pulled this quote while doing a bit of research for Neuro Space/Time Magic. The concept is interesting, using different colored threads to represent specific patterns of thought and being. I was once part of a ritual where we used silver threads to create a tesseract matrix of time. The thread represented the journey to access temporal possibilities, but what I find interesting with this concept isn't even that, but rather how the mind can be organized into different states that can then be evoked using a simple prop such as a colored thread, and a pattern or shape to bring it forth.

This concept can be replicated with other methods as well, such as using an alphabet of desire to embody different states of consciousness and patterns of reality. The key, however, is to recognize how you will actually use a specific state of being to change a pattern of reality you are in. Lets say you are doing a habitual behavior that you want to change. You are aware of it, and you can name it, and provide a symbol/shape to embody it. Now you could take this embodied shape and destroy it, but would that really solve your problem?

An alternate approach would be to devise a symbol and/or shape that represented a desired state of mind/being that you could use to counteract the habitual behavior. Ideally, this symbol/shape could even be the same color of the initial symbol you developed to represent the habitual behavior. Thus when you started to do the habitual behavior, you could visualize the shape and letter of that state, and even vocalize it. Then you could change the shape and letter to the new state of being, even as you also changed the vocalization, imprinting the new behavior on the habit, in order to change it into the new behavior.

All of this I got from a quote by Gray. If you haven't read his books, give them a try. They offer a lot to any occultist lucky enough to find them.