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The three Mandragora Autumnalis roots awoke around Samhain as usual to produce green shoots, so now after their repotting they reside on a window ledge soaking up the faint autumn sunshine. Perhaps the largest one will flower and produce some seeds this year; they certainly seem to take their time about it.
We serious British pagans don’t do Halloween, that awful American tradition of teaching children to extort with menaces and mock at Death. We do Samhain respectfully on the closest Sunday evening.
Bonfire night passed with a splendid conflagration which did not include an effigy of the Pope this year, as for the first time in centuries we seem to have a decent bloke in the post.
Meanwhile a life size statue of Hercules takes shape in the garage using the old clothing mannequin and Jemsonite trick. He will eventually stand with Flora, the pair flanking an old rustic doorway in the walled garden. He will have a spade and a chainsaw as a modern touch. Pic to follow eventually.
And now to some “Unknown Knowns”. Stuff we don't realise that we already know. This Apophenic concept takes its inspiration from the missing part of Rumsfeld’s Theory of Known knowns, Known unknowns, and Unknown unknowns. (His excuse for the screw up in Iraq.)
We probably already have more than enough of data and theories from which we could distil a much more accurate and useful description of the universe. However the trick lies in intuiting what to select from it all, and how to interpret the bits which apparently don’t fit in a way that they might.
Why do this? Why write The Octavo? What the heck has magic and esoterics got to do with cosmology and quantum physics?
Perhaps everything: - The Natural Philosophers and Wizards of old did not shy away from science in terror of the mathematics, rather in pursuit of a philosophy of nature in its entirety they sought to leave nothing out. Hermes Trismegistus (who may have consisted of a committee), John Dee, Giordano Bruno, Paracelsus, Isaac Newton and all the rest of them, took a keen interest in the workings of the material world and only the most myopic of contemporary quantum and cosmological physicists fail to muse and speculate upon the metaphysical implications of their disciplines.
A Speculation: - Hypersphere Cosmology depends on spacetime curvature. The hypothesis of Three Dimensional Time depends on torsion (spin). Einstein-Cartan theory includes both curvature and torsion. EC theory remains unfalsified and in play, though few theorists reference it today, except perhaps to remove the nonsensical spacetime singularities that arise in the conventional big bang theory and in the black holes that straight general relativity predicts. Instead EC theory proposes that mater particles have a minimum size rather than a point like nature and that they resist compression beyond this, so instead of a big bang singularity we may have a universe which bounces back and forth between a very small and a rather large size, yet the theory does not usually get used to eliminate ‘ordinary’ black holes, although it does eliminate possible pesky little black holes of less than 1016kg, the mass of a substantial asteroid.
In EC theory, particles have a spin or torsion component which gives them a minimum spatial displacement, the Cartan Length lCA.
Where lCA3 = Gh2/mc4 where h = Planck’s constant.
Interestingly, we can decompose the Cartan ‘volume’ lCA3 above into: -
Cartan volume = Planck area (Gh/c3) x Compton length (h/mc)
And/or/or possibly both…….
Cartan volume = Compton area (h/mc)2 x Hypersphere length (Gm/c2)
(Note that hypersphere length lH differs from hypersphere external radius r,( lH = pi r)
These components may in some way correspond to the wave/particle duality and can confirm that particles do indeed have some kind of hypersphere properties.
Another Speculation: - Hypersphere Cosmology seems capable of explaining quite a lot of the structure and behaviour of the universe using rather different assumptions and interpretations of the data than the popular standard Lambda Cold Dark Matter Big bang theory uses. Both approaches still have their problems and require further modifications before we can tell which seems the least wrong.
Hypersphere Cosmology has taken flak over the issues of Metallicity and Black Hole build-up.
Basically cosmologists refer to all the chemical elements heavier than hydrogen (and sometimes helium as well) as ‘metals’ as most of them have metallic qualities. These elements get formed in stars by nuclear fusion (although according to BB theory a lot of the helium got made at the BB.) Now if stars continually fuse hydrogen to heavier elements and no mechanism to break those heavier elements back down exists, then the Perfect Cosmological Principle implied by a finite and unbounded universe hyperspherical in space and time that should appear pretty much the same on the large scale at all points in space and time, seems violated.
The Perfect Cosmological Principle also becomes violated if all the matter in the universe will eventually become sucked into black holes from which it can never escape.
Several observed and hypothesised phenomena may solve the metallicity and black hole problems.
Neutron stars almost certainly exist. Metallic elements falling into neutron stars will get broken back down into neutrons. Neutrons which escape into space rapidly undergo beta decay creating electrons and protons which recombine eventually to form hydrogen. But can they escape?
Pair-Instability Supernovae may well occur. In these events the gravitational collapse of a sufficiently heavy star results in a very powerful gamma ray flux in the core. The gamma rays interact with matter particles initiating electron-positron pair production; this causes the pressure to drop in the core and further collapse to occur. This initiates electron-positron (matter-antimatter) annihilation which explodes the star completely into space leaving no remnant core. Astronomers have observed several possible examples of such an event.
Neutrons may act as Marjorama rather than as Dirac fermions under extreme conditions. In other words they may act as their own antiparticles and annihilate to gamma rays under conditions of extreme compression and temperature.
We do not know what mechanism creates Gamma Ray Bursts, but about once a day one goes off somewhere in the universe. These titanic GRB explosions appear to liberate the energy equivalent of the masses of entire planets or entire stars in brief moments.
Massive and very dense objects of multiple solar masses seem to exist in the universe and most galaxies appear to contain objects of thousands or millions of solar masses at very high densities in their cores. Whether any of these objects have actually formed black holes remains undecided. The maths breaks down at black holes and we cannot directly observe them.
Black holes may not actually exist at all if some mechanism like the above or perhaps some other mechanism limits their maximum density and consigns them to eventually explode, recycling the matter of the universe.
Lastly: - Whilst musing upon ‘Theory of Mind’ it occurred that perhaps Autistic people would not suffer from The God Delusion.
If the god delusion arises from the application of Theory of Mind to find agency or mind or essence not just in people but also in inappropriate phenomena or basically everywhere; and if Autistic people don’t make much use of Theory of Mind, then one would expect Atheism of them. A quick googling of the topic confirmed this hypothesis in general terms.
Perhaps we Chaoist-Neo-Pagan-Pantheists have a surfeit of theory of mind, we tend to see multiple sources of agency even within ourself(s)!
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Into the Darkness.
The last late Dragonfly of the season took to the air above the pond at Chateaux Chaos a week ago. She hovered around planting her eggs in the moss and weeds. In three years’ time her children will emerge having gorged themselves on the toadpoles in the depths.
As the evenings draw in, and the nights become chill and clear, it seems time to prepare poetry for the Samhain Eisteddfod, to invoke the Elder Gods, and to return again to cosmological questions.
Standard conventional Big Bang Cosmology depends on the idea of an expanding universe, and the fairly recently observed mismatch between the redshifts and the luminosities of type 1A supernovae has led to the further twist that the hypothesised expansion of the universe has apparently progressively speeded up during the last half of its expansion to date.
Despite the manifold problems with all versions of the Big Bang theory, and its general metaphysical distastefulness, it seems difficult to find papers on cosmology that do not automatically assume that we inhabit an expanding universe and which try to interpret all observational data accordingly.
However an interesting exception occurs here http://arxiv.org/pdf/1002.0525v1.pdf
The ‘Angular Size’ of structures in the cosmos may give some indication of the geometry and topology of the universe in space and time. Many models based on expansion predict that structures at very great distances in space (and therefore time), should appear magnified because of the subsequent expansion.
Hypersphere Cosmology also predicts the magnification of very distant structures, but for a different reason. In Hypersphere Cosmology the small positive spacetime curvature of a non-expanding (vorticitation stabilised) cosmic hypersphere will exert a lensing effect which will not only magnify very distant structures but which will also diminish closer structures. This diminution of closer structures will create the optical illusion of a universe which appears to have undergone an accelerating expansion during the last half of its expansion to date, if observers wrongly assume that they look out over a gravitationally ‘flat’ universe.
In the graph below the horizontal axis, (shown marked with 1 billion light year divisions) stretches from the observer at the origin to the limit of observation which corresponds to the hyperspherical antipode distance in Hypersphere Cosmology. We have used the figure of 13.8 billion light years here. The actual distance may differ slightly from this; we await a more precise measurement of the Anderson deceleration or the undistorted Hubble distance.
(GM/L^2 = A, where G = Gravitational constant, M = Mass of universe, L = Antipode distance which corresponds to Hubble distance, A = Anderson deceleration which corresponds to the spacetime curvature.)
The vertical axis for a number of factors runs from zero to three, marked in divisions of 0.5 with the unity line highlighted in purple for clarity.
The red line shows redshift Z, where Z = (c/(c-(dA)^0.5)-1 where d = astronomical distance.
Note that a redshift of 1 at about 7 billion light years denotes the halfway point to the antipode distance. Redshift climbs exponentially towards infinity at the antipode; observations become increasingly difficult up to redshift 10 and then virtually impossible beyond.
The yellow line represents schematically the hyperspherical geodesic from the observer to the observer’s antipode; the curved path that light actually takes in the cosmic hypersphere.
The blue line represents schematically the observer’s assumed sight line for flat space.
The green line represents schematically the difference between the actual and the assumed sight line, and thus the degree of Hyperspherical Lensing LH, that light becomes subject to at various distances. Note that in this revised version of the model, the line has the inverse configuration to previous models on this site and the equation governing it has the form
LH = 1/(1+((d-d^2)^0.5))-d) where here, d = astronomical distance/antipode distance.
The negative lensing at distances below 7 billion light years explains the anomalously low luminosity of type 1A supernovae without recourse to the hypothesis of an accelerating expansion driven by some mysterious dark energy.
The positive lensing at distances greater than 7 billion light years explains the increase in angular size of very distant structures without recourse to the hypothesis of an expanding universe at all. 
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34377434
http://www.specularium.org/blog/item/181-global-psi-attack-on-shell-arctic-drilling
My thanks to all participating Knights, Dames and Squires of the KoC, and to all participating allied magical support. Thank you for your conjurations.
Herewith our next target:- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_United_Nations_Climate_Change_Conference
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Having returned from Cyberpurdah in deepest Wales I notice that Comrade Corbyn got elected as labour leader. Splendid, the labour party can now return to doing what it does best, providing opposition and nurturing grievances and introducing young people to the extremities of ideological debate. Hopefully we shall not see it in government exercising its customary economic mismanagement for some long while yet. Now that the UK conservative party has adopted social liberalism, the labour party has only fiscal fecklessness left to offer.
Anyway, to the more significant questions of Esoteric and Magical Theory.
Some people seem to think that they basically know everything about magic now so they have nothing left to research or to teach.
I get mad at this and assert that we still don’t know a fraction of it, and so herewith a few of the things that remain unanswered or unasked.
I should point out that I consider that the whole universe runs on magic but the bits of magic that work fairly reliably we now call science; so I’ll try to confine myself to the bits of magic that work rather unreliably and which we still call magic.
The World
The Tree of Life gives a map of the solar system, so one up to the wizards for anticipating the planets beyond Saturn, but our kabala doesn’t look big enough now.
What about the geometry and topology of the whole cosmic caboodle?
Do we have room enough for the other worlds of Giordano Bruno?
Or the Mad Indifferent Demon Gods of HP Lovecraft?
Do we treat the Space Gods as incarnate, discarnate, or imaginary?
Can we communicate with them by quantum telepathy or whatever, can we specify?
The Future
Do we divine the future states of reality directly, or do we divine our future experiences of them? (We could devise tests for this.)
Should we enchant for direct effects on reality or should we enchant to enhance our mundane abilities to get those effects?
The Past
In what form does the past persist? In memory, in records, and in physical traces obviously.
But what about in the aether, in the astral, in morphic fields, in the akashic records or whatever wizards call the stuff?
What do we actually get when we try out antique gods, ancestors, and necromancy?
The Pasts Plural
The future seems to open like a garden of forking paths of various probabilities.
Does delayed choice quantum erasure and retroactive enchantment suggest many paths behind us also?
A garden has a width as well as a length. Does time have a sideways as well?
The Presents
Do we exist in and as an interference pattern between all the possible pasts and futures?
Does consciousness consist of a superposition of several states at once?
I find myselves in two minds about this.
Emergence
Stuff plainly develops properties and behaviours which don’t seem inherent in its component parts.
The Universe exhibits Imagination.
For example: -
Hydrogen consists of a colourless odourless gas that slowly turns into people, - if you leave enough of it lying around for long enough.
Emergent phenomena seem to slip out between the interface of deterministic and random behaviour, from between order and chaos, and take on a life of their own, raising BIG magical questions: -
How much top down causation (or chaos) can emergent phenomena exert on their component phenomena?
Do we inhabit a Panpsychic Universe?
Can an apparently emergent vitalism or life force have real effects?
Does Chi or Vril or Prana or whatever you call it, meaningfully correspond with anything to do with ‘Energy’, or does it correspond more to something like ‘Intent’.
Does the apparently emergent ‘Self’ have real effects, or does our emergent free will remain largely subconscious?
How far can we take the idea of Magic as The Real Effects of Imaginary Phenomena? (Imaginary in the psychological sense, and Imaginary in the sense of orthogonal time vectors.)
Ars Notoria
Does this much maligned and frequently ignored magical art actually offer the possibility of inspiration to learn all sorts of knowledge in support of a magical quest?
Style and Technique
Psychedelic autognosis can reveal the self as a contingent construct, the subconscious as a well of creativity, and the belief system as somewhat reprogrammable. Yet these things should occasion the Buddhist or the magician no surprise. Psychedelics seem unsuitably imprecise and dangerous for work in psychotherapy or psychiatry. The idea that societies have generally banned them out of fear of mass enlightenment seems undone by the observation that massive illegal use has not had this effect.
Did a whole generation get taken in by the sixties myth and marketing hype that psychedelics could confer mystical and magical powers?
Does Apophenia serve as a more suitable goddess for magicians than Eris?
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Magical Research
What differentiates a top world class university from a bottom class university?
Intense competition and selection operate in a top university, both for the academics and for the students, both have to work very hard and many of the students compete to stay on and become doctors and professors themselves.
On the other hand in some crummy jumped up polytechnic none of these things applies. The mediocre students just muck about, the teachers just go through the motions teaching second-hand stuff, and they usually have to cover a lot of admin duties as well.
Basically RESEARCH differentiates between a top university and a bottom one.
Prestigious institutions do the difficult research and create knowledge, and intense competition exists to either work there and to help create it, or to go there and receive it first-hand. Mediocre institutions merely recycle it. Most academics teach in institutions less prestigious than the ones they qualified in. Only outstanding research keeps you at the top.
Research can look impossibly challenging and difficult, but basically you just have to look for unanswered questions, or even more challengingly, for unasked questions.
All of the above applies to magical traditions and orders.
The magical revival which began in the 1880s came from the massive research efforts which created the Golden Dawn corpus, a great synthesis forged mainly by Macgregor Mathers, and from it flowed most of the western esoterics of the 20th century.
However, fairly soon after it ceased to research and innovate the GD disintegrated and its alumni took its ideas and applied them elsewhere to create other traditions. Wicca, Neo-Paganism, Druidry, Thelema and most of the new age ideas derive directly from it. Aleister Crowley actually added surprisingly little to the theoretical magical paradigm he learnt in the GD but he added techniques of erotognosis and chemognosis and a dash of Islamic flavour in his creation of the OTO, but with basques replacing burqas for the ladies. Of the GD alumni perhaps only Austin Spare tried something radically different. We still find his theory impenetrable and obscure, (it seems to have some relationship to Freudian ideas of the unconscious and/or unconscious mind) but his stripped down practical techniques proved a remarkable innovation.
If everyone had settled for Mathers’ great GD synthesis as the final word on Magic the subject would have become moribund and capable only of preserving itself as a minor religion that no longer attracted the influential minds that it did in its early days.
Some groups seem to have developed the idea that Magic or Chaos Magic has become a closed art, and that we know it all now, so research and the attempt to develop new teachings have become pointless.
I believe that we have barely scratched the surface of Magic and that thousands of questions remain unanswered and unasked.
I consider it the duty of anyone aspiring to the rank of Magus, to Research, to Teach, and to promote the Great Work of Magic.
Research and Teaching drive each other.
Magi and Initiates should live in terror of each other, with the Magi forced to create to attract Initiates, and the Initiates eager to catch out their Magi and to eventually surpass them.
So do you have your own top ten list of unanswered or unasked questions in Magic?