I went in thinking it was a book about novel interface design, and ended up with a new perspective on the nature of reality.

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Liber Indigo: The Affordances of Magic

Book by Justin C. Kirkwood. Get it here! https://www.justinckirkwood.net/liber-indigo
Accompanying YouTube content! https://youtu.be/pGpBQgZ5IsI?si=KzvPyv_j5lf8m0bP

SAGE MOON - Acceptance (green water) + Revelation (indigo spirit) - Contemplation, Meditation, Reflection, Rumination

Takeaway

There's more to existence and reality than we can physically perceive. Rather, it's more fun to a live a life believing this than it is to limit yourself only to materialist rationalism (all things are explained by physical processes and interactions). Why rationalize away coincidences when you can play with and link them together?

Things to look into

• Metaphors We Live By
• Microsoft Bob
• Zooming User Interface of Pad++
• Canon Cat with "Leap Key" navigation

Notes

Interface

Rotating the Cube

Kirkwood asks us to begin to "rotate the cube" of how we typically perceive the world around us. View things from a different angle.

Affordances - things environments and objects provide that let us do things

• [thing] affords [action]
• [metaphors] afford [understandings]

Look into Metaphors We Live By

• Metaphors shape how we perceive concepts and consequently, the actions we take
  • ex. Team-building as "building a bridge" (emphasizes structure) vs "cultivating a garden" (emphasizes collaborative growth)

The Vital Remainder

"Hierarchy is the official metaphysic of the computer world. Today's hierarchical computer tools impose hierarchy where it may not exist; they can model the hierarchical aspects of the world but not the vital remainder. They teach beginners that it's the necessary structure of computers and the universe" - Ted Nelson (Kirkwood 8-9)

Kirkwood asks us to consider and remember "the vital remainder": the aspects of things that are hidden and not accounted for within the equations of our most common interfaces, affordances, and metaphors.

WIMP - Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointers

• The design that have entrenched itself in computer interfaces
  Non-WIMP examples to look into
• Microsoft Bob
• Zooming User Interface of Pad++
• Canon Cat with "Leap Key" navigation

Ambient Assumptions

• Kirkwood highlights the perceptions of the world that we take for granted; our "ambient assumptions"
• Ontological materialism - Physical objects and matter constitute all of reality and the processes in it. Matter creates consciousness.
• Ontological idealism - Reality emerges and manifests from consciousness. Consciousness creates matter.
• "The operating system of materialism is not required to run the application of science. Science can operate on any platform with a coherent codebase" (Kirkwood 12)
  • The physical laws of energy and matter (which we have measured through scientific processes) do not care where they originate from. They just are.
• Donald Hoffman's Multimodal User Interface (MUI) Theory (from his "Do we see reality as it is?" TED Talk)
  • Every species has a "user interface" to the operating system of reality. Akin to how the desktop interface hides aspects of the operating system of the computer from us, our user interfaces hide aspects of reality from us.
  • Just imagine what fascinating aspects of reality are hidden from us...
• Occult - concealed, hidden
• Neoplatonism - reality emanates from a single point of consciousness, the Monad
  • Kirkwood compares the concentrically expanding layers of Neoplatonism with the classical operating system structure
    • Kernel (Monad/Source) -> Background processes (Nous/Divine intellect) -> API (World Soul; we are here)
    • Tucked within each layer are more hidden and complex processes of operating systems/Neoplatonism
• "...All digital reality emanates from the billions of polarity reversals within the semiconductors. As above (software), so below (hardware)" (Kirkwood 15)
  • The processes and structure of computer software mimic/parallel the processes and structure of computer hardware
  • The patterns we see on smaller scales mimic those on larger scales and vice versa
  • This is the core of "Hermeticism," which Kirkwood will discuss more about

Mapping Polarity

• Carl G. Jung's Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle
  • Events connected by some meaning are attracted to each other acausally through space and time. Coincidences become meaningful.
• Ramsey Dukes' description of divination as leveraging "stochastic resonance"
  • Using random noise to amplify and reveal signals in reality
• Personification as a useful affordance for understanding complex ideas
• Don't confuse the map (metaphor) for the territory (the actual concept/thing)!
  • Alfred Korzybski
  • Every metaphor has its own strengths and weakness that help to shape your understanding of a concept. Actively try to use/consider multiple metaphors to round out your understanding.
• Conjecture and hypothesis are just as important as "proven facts." They can help to reveal truths or provide novel perspectives to help solve a problem.
• Ivan Sutherland's 1963 Sketchpad - A very novel computer interface, all the way back in 1963! It inspires me to come up with novel interface ideas of my own. If Sutherland can do it, so can I!
  • Do not constrain your ideas to established modalities
• In Mapping Polarity, Kirkwood highlights ideas and examples from Carl Jung, Ramsey Dukes, Alan Turing, and Ivan Sutherland to discuss how "scientific" and "unscientific" conjecture both lead us toward a greater understanding of the world around us.
  • Metaphors and comparisons to help us map out encoded information ("polarities") in reality

Dream-Logic

• Dreams don't come with fully formed ideas; Dreams give us new perspectives on information and ideas we already have brewing within us.
  • Think of dreams as "modality shifts". It is a wholly new way (and experience!) to view the same information.
  • Dreams can really only make sense to the dreamer
• Dmitri Mendeleev's dream inspired Period Table of Elements
• David Lynch's films and book
• Artisitic mediums (drawings, poems, film, etc) all convey information and ideas in their own unique ways that language alone cannot.
• Kirkwood introduces his interpretation of dreams in order to discuss them in more detail later

Protanopia

• Color is a simple example that highlights how perceived reality can be different despite shared physical reality
  • In Kirkwood's case, he has Protanopia
• Kirkwood's preschool dream of meeting two friends before actually meeting them. Coincidence? Premonition? Synchronicity? Does it matter?
  • It happened to Kirkwood, and it is up to Kirkwood to imbue it with meaning.
• Kirkwood uses his personal anecdotes of having protanopia and a childhood dream to set the stage for how his lived experience has shaped his understanding of the world.

The Enchanted World

• "There's an implicit societal pressure to write these experiences off as coincidences and quickly feed them to the mental shredder, lest we poison our capacity for rational though and pollute our minds with woo-woo claptrap" (Kirkwood 32-33)
  • A hilarious quote
• "Only by lending attention and value to our lived experience do we build an enchanted world" (Kirkwood 33)
• How do we make sense of coincidences and these strange, lived experiences? We can choose to interpret everything through rational materialism, or we can choose a different path that can help to explain this "vital remainder" - concepts not captured in the dominant worldview.
  • "You either justify all of the metaphysical premises on which your episteme rests, or entertain some new possibilities, making epistemological modifications and seeing how they feel when lived in. The mystical perspective considers the felt nature of direct experience a viable affordance of understanding" (Kirkwood 35)
    • You don't need to always rationalize everything away in the current model. Consider the situation with a different model...
  • Epistemology - how you justify beliefs you consider true
• J.W. Dunne's An Experiment with Time
  • Dunne attempts to reason out his precognitive dreams as his brain confusing the linear perception of time.
• The Indigo - Kirkwood's name for his half-dream state, where is isn't quite fully awake but still "has ready access to dream-logic"
• Kirkwood's deck of cards experiments are almost unbelievable!
  • It gives the same kind of awe as Roald Dahl's "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar"
• Through his own personal experiences, Kirkwood has built his own "enchanted world" and introduces mysticism as a valid interpretation of the world

Corroborations

• Upton Sinclair's Mental Radio, with a foreword by Albert Einstein
  • Sinclair conducts telepathy experiments with his wife
• Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung's dream analysis collaboration
  • "A few years into their correspondence, Pauli conceded that some aspects of reality wee beyond the grasp of the quantifiable, writing: 'After careful and critical appraisal of the many experiences and arguments, I have come to accept the existence of deeper spiritual layers that cannot be adequately defined by the conventional concept of time." (Kirkwood 41)
• Newton's writings on Alchemy -> Later compiled and expanded by Carl Jung in Psychology and Alchemy
• Pauli, Newton, Jung -- all great scientists in their field that held mystical beliefs
  • No "intellectual corruption" by mysticism, rather, it may have provided them with novel approaches to solve the hard problems that now shape the foundation of modern physics.
• To give the mystical worldview more credibility, Kirkwood shows that many great scientists held mystical beliefs, yet it did not stop them from conducting and discovering widely respected scientific work. If anything, it helped lend them new perspectives that led to scientific discoveries

Correspondences

• Alchemy and alchemical terms are embedded in the english language
  • Days of the week, elements, gender, etc
• Principle of correspondences - everything in the material world is linked to a higher (spiritual) counterpart
  • More generally, every concept and object and be linked to a higher and lower expression of it
• Hermeticism - "as above, so below"
  • The principle of correspondences is central to this school of thought
  • The implication is that by learning and observing processes in the seen universe (below), we can learn about how the unseen, corresponding universe (above) works
  • Alchemy is considered as the application of Hermetic principles
    • Alchemy leverages "transformations," which hinges on processes being parallelly interconnected
• Rod of Asclepius vs. Caduceus of Hermes
  • The former (1 snake) symbolizes healing while the latter (2 snakes + wings) symbolizes wisdom. The two look similar and are often confused.
• Kirkwood discusses the alchemical origin of common symbols and words we encounter in order to introduce the core idea of Hermeticism: correspondences

Exoterica and Esoterica

• Giordano Bruno
• Descartes, Pythagoras, Newton all had mystical experiences that inspired new perspectives that eventually led to scientific discoveries
  • Do not discredit the experiences you have!
• Religion - mystical experiences "filtered over time... calcifying... into dogma" (Kirkwood 49-50
• Exoteric - mainstream beliefs, religion
• Esoteric - the more fringe offshoots of religion
  • ex. Christianity (exoteric) and Pentecostalism (esoteric)
• "Modern esoterica" - a global, haphazard blend of mystic beliefs and practices
  • Kirkwood claims this reckless weaving of practices can sometimes create "a new metaphysics that's less than the sum of its parts" (Kirkwood 51). Ha!
• "The mystic's path is narrow, with cliffs of folly at every turn" (Kirkwood 52)
  • It's easy to get wrapped up in the mumbo jumbo of every other new-age grifter. Use your own personal experiences, indulge in your own subjectivities, and formulate your own understandings of the universe.
• Subjectivity vs. Objectivity
  • Subjectivity - highlights personal experience and interpretation
  • Objectivity - highlights observable, empirical phenomena
    • Good for science, not so good for interpreting our feelings
  • Discussed in Lakoff and Johnson's Metaphors We Live By
• "... the universe teems with metaphorical echoes, recursive motifs, and thematic rhymes... Just as the experience of love opens the human heart to deeper dimensionalities of experience, mysticism opens the whole being to additional dimensions of perception." (Kirkwood 53)
  • So indulge in your subjective experience! Only you can have your own experiences!
• "The mystic and the scientist both search for truth" (Kirkwood 53)
• Up to this point in the book, Kirkwood has eased readers in a world dominated by material rationalism into the concepts of mysticism and the importance of subjective and lived experience in inspiring, interpreting, and navigating the world we live in.

Annuli

If "Interface" was a light introduction to mysticism, then "Annuli" is the full discussion and application of mystical ideas.

Music of the Spheres

• Newton divided the rainbow into ROYGBIV in order to align it with the 7 notes of the western musical scale. Newton wanted to express the harmony in the universe by connecting the ideas of color and music.
• Annulus - Literally, the space between two concentric circles. Kirkwood will borrow this term to describe circular, wheel-like diagrams of relationships.
  • You could easily represent the same data in a table, but the circle better highlights the interconnectedness and balance between every concept in the annulus
  • ex. Western Zodiac, Chinese Zodiac, etc
• Annulus could be deconstructed into linear sine waves that oscillate between high and low
  • This emphasizes the peaks and troughs, but de-emphasizes the balance, transition, and equality of each element in an annulus
• Annuli (plural annulus) are all about framing concepts as interconnected
  • Are fall and spring the liminal inbetweens of summer and winter, oscillating in a linear trajectory? Or are they distinct elements of transition in an annulus of the seasons? Framing matters!
  • The emphasis on interconnectedness is what lends annulus their popularity as a framing device in mysticism
• Kirkwood introduces the idea of the Annulus--circular diagrams that depicts individual concepts as interconnected and in balance with each other.

The Materialist Annulus

• Kirkwood demonstrates how one might apply an Annulus by constructing one for materialist rationalism
  • Outer rings of the core principles, inner rings of more specific tenets and examples of each principle
    • Hermeticism's "as above, so below" built right in (principle of correspondences)! Expand and shrink each ring of the annulus to find parallel examples at different conceptual layers
  • While the same ideas could be conveyed in a hierarchical table, a table loses the interconnectedness (and emphasizes hierarchy?)
• Kirkwood acknowledges that his materialist annulus is far from perfect, and that one could easily expand, reposition, and modify the annulus to account for all kinds of objects and ideas.
  • But, he emphasizes that getting it perfect is not the point of his annulus. Rather, it is to provide a starting point for us to interact and ask questions about each concept and its relation to the other concepts.
• I'm just going to quote this whole section verbatim, because it really captures the entire point of this chapter:
  • "Behind the principle of correspondences lies the idea that these lines of affinity extend infinitely across all existence. In theory, we could trace the six fundamentals of materialism from first principles to types of dessert, articles of clothing, swear words, power tools, or poisonous plants. Deeper thinkers might improve upon this rudimentary annulus by adding additional first principles , removing conceptual overlap, or repositioning objects so that their spatial relationships within the circle provide extra layers of meaning and insight. But you get the idea. The intention behind a prototype isn't to implement it as a permanent fixture, but to use its affordances to tease out answers and solutions to the questions and problems that arise when people begin interacting with it. The flaws are the rungs of the ladder of discovery and discussion, Anyway, it's ideal that a model isn't seen as too perfect, lest it lead us to confuse the map for the territory." (Kirkwood 73)

The Spectral Annulus

Kirkwood constructs "The Spectral Annulus", a mapping of color to the principles of the universe. Similar to the previous chapter's Annulus (The Materialist Annulus) it's Kirkwood's personal take on constructing an Annulus for the mystical and magical. In doing so, Kirkwood also begins to lead us through a magical framing for the world.

• It's certainly a lot more fun than the materialist Annulus, but core idea of leveraging an Annulus to frame connected concepts is the same
• "The engine of the universe... is powered by the tension between opposing forces - a dynamic equilibrium ensuring that the cosmos remains a living, evolving, entity" (Kirkwood 77)
  • This is what Kirkwood is trying to express in The Spectral Annulus
• The Annulus is constructed and expanded ring by ring -- "We can expand its correspondences to map other principles, phenomena, objects....Its ontological resolution can be upscaled or downscaled dependending on... the situation" (Kirkwood 83)
• You can map anything to anything, and yield insight and fun from it
  • Annuli are Neoplatonically inspired. All emanating from one. Moving outward increases materialism and decreases divinity.
• The Indigo - One slice of The Spectral Annulus containing "Revelation" and "Mystery" as its fundamental elements, and where Kirkwood derives the name of the book from
• The act of creation as the act of manifesting the metaphysical into physical matter. I like that.
• Sophia and Logos
• Alchemy and distillation

Spectral Magic

• Kirkwood chooses to begin with a quote from Pauli and another one from Planck
  • Both pointing out the liminal reality between consciousness and the physical world
• Planck attributes atomic forces to the existence of something behind it all
• Non-local consciousness - The brain as a filter or receiver to a global, unified consciousness.
  • Huxley's The Doors of Perception discussed this idea
  • Imagine that consciousness is the sun, and our brain is a window letting the light through. The window can change how the light is received, but it cannot change the source, then sun, consciousness.
• The manifestation of consciousness in our physical brains does not necessarily mean that consciousness emanates from the physical processes in our brains!
  • What we see in our physical brains may just be a side effect of how consciousness flows down to us. Like a 3D cube passing through a 2D plane.
• Kirkwood emphasizes that through a "consciousness-first" perspective, we can begin to "transcend the limitations of materiality and causality"
  • If we assume consciousness works outside of our physical realm, then we have a location where "magic" and magical processes can exist without running into the processes and logic of the physical world.
• Kirkwood provides the affordances of Einsteinian spacetime, mass, and gravity as parallel concepts for consciousness, meaning, and synchronicity.
  • As above, so below
  • By warping consciousness (spacetime) with more meaning (mass), we can create the conditions for synchronicity (gravity) to occur.
  • Synchronicity - Events with similar meaning occurring at the same time; coincidences. Term coined by Jung.
• With this model, "magic" doesn't seem so out of place. Warping consciousness creates the conditions for meaningful events to align
  • Kirkwood doesn't state this directly, but I think you can reason about this unmagically too -- you end up seeing what you want to see by looking for it. It's like when you see a random number always appearing in everyday life. You gave it more meaning (increased mass), so you have attracted its occurrence to you (increased gravity, thus warping spacetime).
  • But think about it this way. What's more fun? Convincing yourself everything is illusion and coincidence, or that there's a great plane of consciousness moving events to each other? That's what I thought.
  • This is a fun and useful model, but we should remember not to confuse the territory for the map. We will never know how consciousness truly works. But that doesn't make the map any less useful!
• Thus, magic is all about amplifying meaning and intention
  • Through frameworks, sigils, etc
• Chaos magic - belief itself is the magic. Combine all actions that increase meaning and intention, without regard for particular frameworks like astrology, alchemy, etc
• Basic magical ritual framework - separate the sacred and profane spaces
  • Through separation, you can amplify the meaning of ritual acts by NOT blending it all together as chaos magic might do
• Sanctification
  • Space - Separate non-magic and magic spaces
    • ex. draw a simple circle to form a separation. Magic occurs within the circle and mundane outside of it
  • Objects - Pick meaningful objects dedicated to magic
    • ex. Pen dedicated to drawing sigils, and NOTHING ELSE
    • ex. Gift from an old friend, never used, exposed to the full moon, buried for a year in a special location, etc... Not used for ANYTHING ELSE.
      • Exposing the object to meaningful events is a "hack" to increase the meaning of an object in your mind. "Meaningful events" -> events meaningful to YOU. It might mean the event is rare, or you have to put concerted effort into something, etc.
    • The point is to have an object associated solely for magical purposes that holds a special place/meaning in your mind
  • Language - Use a dedicated language for magic
    • Separate everyday language from magical language to amplify meaning
    • ex. Use esperanto because you never use it for anything else
  • Numinosity - To be in an "awe-inspiring mystery"
    • Create an awe-inspiring aesthetic for the ritual.
    • You have to bring you mind into a state of awe and wonder, thus separating the the ritual from everyday life
    • ex. Occult paraphenalia and curios. It's meant to inspire your mind to be in a different place than everyday life
  • Layering - Invoke hermetic correspondences in the design of the ritual
    • Add layers of meaning to your ritual by designing your ritual as such
    • ex. Four directions to four objects to four actions, etc
    • Again, the point is to amplify meaning and intention
• Through the act of sanctification, you amplify the meaning you can give to an action
  • Through amplified meaning, you increase synchronicity. Synchronicity only draws together things with a similar meaning.
  • Nonmagically, coincidences are only coincidences because of their shared meaning. In a sense, you can "manufacture" more coincidences by looking for more connections/more meanings.
• Chaos magic is more pragmatic and flexible than the frameworks of old
  • "Chaos magic democratizes the practice of magic, making it accessible to anyone willing to engage their imagination and willpower" (Kirkwood 106)
• "The universe will answer our call to dance with it, but it will always lead the dance, and we must do our best not to step on its toes." (Kirkwood 110)
  • Very "cosmic joker" esque

The Spectral Cross

• A fun divinatory expansion to The Spectral Annulus, much like the I Ching's combinations of primary "elements"
• Divination as a mechanism to induce synchronicity.
  • "Even when viewed through a disenchanted prism, divination can be a powerful facilitator of introspection and self-discovery" (Kirkwood 116)
  • Divination is what you make of it. Either way, it's a tool to pry at the mechanisms of the universe and our consciousness.
• https://www.justinckirkwood.net/spectral-cross

Conclusion: Wrath and Clarity

• "Wrath and Clarity"
  • Kirkwood is emphasizing a sort of "vicious levelheadedness" to which one should approach art and the world
  • The ferocity and energy of wrath in conjunction with the vision and calmness of clarity. With all of those elements combined, we can aim for change in this world
• Not only is there so much more to human-computer interfaces, there is so much more to human-world interfaces!
  • Much like how the classic WIMP desktop interface obscures the underlying operations of the OS, the human interface obscures the operating system of reality
• Remember that "intention", "meaning", "synchronicity" are still just frameworks/interfaces for magical thought. It's the map, not the territory.
• Marshall McLuhan's The Medium is the Message: An Inventory of Effects
• Art is the act of pulling an image from the mind and placing it into the world. Through art, we can scratch at our divine power of creation.
• There are so so many more modalities and perspectives to interact and view things, from computers to reality itself!! So don't lock yourself into one modality, whatever the situation/context is.

Afterword: Keys Blue Keys

It's a nice poem by Kirkwood that shows how language/poetry can be used to evoke numinosity. I think it's meant to capture Kirkwood's experience with magic in a linguistic format. It reminds me of Lewis Carroll's poems (like Jabberwocky).

Notes on the accompanying videos

• Metaphysical Prisoners of the Desktop
• The Background Hum of Default Reality
• Echoes of the Source
  • At this point, I went and bought the book
• Binary Elementals
  • One of the best explanations of binary I have seen
  • Ontological resolution - The extent to which a conceptual model (ontology) distinguishes entities (concepts, subclasses, taxonomies)
  • A deeper discussion into how the I Ching, The Book of Changes works
    • I can see why Kirkwood went and constructed his own Spectral Cross system now. It is reminiscent of the I Ching and its ability to map primary concepts and combinations of those concepts.
    • It is the book of changes. There is no beginning and end.
  • Jung, Plato, and archetypes/ideal forms -> Leads to Emanationism!
  • Emanationism - You start with a pure source, and every additional bit of detail adds more complexity
    • Gnosticism and the rings of reality
    • Neoplatonism, Hermeticism
• The Principle of Correspondence
  • CLIs and technical terms as “software occultism”. Fun way to put it!
  • Engineering is more fun if you frame it as casting magic spells and rituals
  • correspondences as affordances to manipulate/influence the corresponding concept
  • quinta essentia - the fifth element that makes up the other four, the final distillation, the spirit
  • alchemy - transforming the basic (lead) into something greater (gold)
• Gnosis of the Colorblind
  • annuli (circular diagram) better at portraying a concept as interconnected rather than hierarchical
  • you are the magician who makes the grass green
  • our tools shape us, so how do we want to shape our tools? how can we make tools that guide us towards what we want to be?
  • are the way things are because of deliberate intention, or arbitrary selection? is it because of a deadline that this product is the way it is?
• The Enchanted Interface
  • serendipity - newness and unplanned encounters broaden your mind
  • I gotta visit some used book stores
  • the medici in florence's brining together of all kinds of art and sciences in one place led to the renaissance
    • Which is to say, bringing together all kinds of ideas from many different facets will lead to awesome new innovations in your own mind
  • This video series is a lot more wrapped together with desktop interfaces than the book, which I appreciate
  • Kirkwood's desktop idea first principles
    • Annularity
    • Gravitation
    • Visual Scalability
    • Personalization
      • • why is F*ing the ONLY interface for everything computer???
  • Serendipity modes
  • We are holding ourselves back with a FAILURE OF IMAGINATION
    • limits of imagination =\= limits of reality
    • relates to you dont have to live with it
  • Ted Nelson
  • YO he made a discord
  • Directionless play! We need the spirit of PLAY!
    • Something about The 6 Shapes of God here and Lila and play
  • "Reenchantment is resistance" - Justin Kirkwood