..

z

h

Part II: Prisca Virtualis Astrologicis,

or to be moved by the horizon of things.

Now that we've set the scene by framing the universe in a self-centered geo-centricity, we see certain celestial bodies move for us, around us in their eccentric ergodic orbits (besides the moon), hinting at an inner chaos striating the void—passing us from cosmos to chaosmos. But what of the spindle of Necessity which swings the planets in a pure circular motion around the Earth, and the musica universalis that resounds from the harmonies of the celestial bodies? In other words, are the bodies voiceless, saying nothing (doing nothing to us) and are they unparticipatory in the geometric circular forms elevated as ideal, those said to live in wait behind the scenes? Once again the question of a body's voice or what it does is asked, our echoing poetic refrain—it does not search for utility or value for us (the two of which need not be identified, and are both too often conflated with the existence of something), but rather searches for relations, powers of affecting and being affected by the world, i.e. by what appears in appearance as essence from the particular 'subjective' view of that body, or a cause that appears from the effect of one on another (mediated by the reflection and transmission of rays). These moving stars differ, are dynamic bodies unlike the cold indifference of the apparently orbiting constellations that only do so by our own spinning framing of the world (the movement of Chronos or Aion?); a framing that moves us in two directions simultaneously: spiraling into the delirious depths of the frame that resonates with a obscure criminal laughter, and the ironic distance of the heights whose disinterested gaze beams down blindingly bright divine rays.

Before moving on in search of the movement of the stars above, we'll need to sharpen our eyes on the earth below—on the art of geodesy. She spins in the geocentric void, moved by a dynamic genesis long ago, participating in the harmonies of the universe. But before harmonic interrelations, we move to intrarelations—do her movements affect herself as a pure affect? Undoubtedly she hears her own melody internally when expressed externally, an auto-affection. But more importantly for now, is the whirling pirouette that appears to us caused by necessary preparatory movements (which appears as such by effect of said whirling)—or the movements of Necessity. But Necessity (Ananke) appears from a fluctuation in the void with her opposite utterly contingently. In other words, the necessity of the dynamic genesis of the Earth appears by chance from the utter chaos of the primordial waters. (Nothing makes God create anything—but then why not pure nothingness? Why move across the waters? If God is not the agent of creation that is plainly audible, singular saying this and that, but rather the pluralistic split, the gap between his representation who he speaks through and necessity, a gap utterly filled with the pure unchanging movement that is becoming, then he is a pure unchanging oneness that everything participates in.) In any case, the primordial embryonic movements of Necessity (spinning heated soups of particulates), that are necessary for life etc., constrict the the Earth to her spin, throwing herself outward to the form of an ellipsoid of a certain eccentricity (evidently, affecting oneself means differing from oneself—that is, in net one is annihilated and created in the process of auto-affection.) Thus we find the proper place of the spindle of Necessity for the spin of the Earth, not for the interrelations with other celestial objects, but the intrarelation of affecting itself.

We thus find the more ideal celestial form not in n-spheres (nor any noospheres) which includes spheres and circles, but in ellipsoids of one or two dimensions and peculiar eccentricities. We find their form above and below as the ideal geometric form of planetary and orbital geometry in place of the harmony of the spheres (who would destroy a concept without putting it back on proper footing?) What becomes the primordial form from which the world emerges, by the movements of Necessity, is the elliptical ovoid (the cosmic egg hatches by contingent necessity.) Beyond the planetary and orbital forms, the celestial bodies powers to affect and be affected by means of gravitational interrelations, seen from eyes of higher fidelity, are duely encapsulated in ellipsoidal harmonics. The actual musica universalis resounds not from orbital motions—the sirens call sitting on the orbital path with the planets themselves. The hidden harmonies that transmit signs, actually affecting distant bodies from afar by subtle curvatures and fields, are found by looking into the laughing depths of the physical. From these depths we arrive at a virtual musica universalis in the affect of their luminous rays on our movements, by taking the concept of the physical and actual all the way.

Virtuality as a concept has little to do with the digital (or binary), as in 'virtual reality' (this is only one instance)—rather, it deals with the problem of the reality of what effectively exists due to its effects on actuality but isn't necessarily uniquely determined as such. Senses of things (in both senses of sense, as in the physical reception of data and "to make sense of") already always were virtual insofar that experiential input (or observation) need not determine the actual circumstances uniquely by virtue of margins of error and the problem of induction—but to doubt actual reality is an uninteresting line of thought that does nothing (and our concern remains, "what does it do?" which has remained a productive and useful stance in terms of actually getting things done). However, the reality of the virtual complicates things more radically for all who hold there to be an actual reality beyond one's senses. How one or another makes sense of something determines actual movements (even if one is moved to make sense of things in a particular way from outside oneself), and in turn, one's actual movements affect the current state of the world. For instance, one man sees the stars as emitting signs that speak of certain implications for a life, and accordingly he changes his behavior. Of course one may say he has simply constructed and projected—but nonetheless through his resulting movements, such signs are effectively real and must be dealt with in actuality. This is the power of the reality of the virtual, the utter opening to the New that's utterly indifferent to good or bad or evil, since it operates on a domain which precedes these notions, i.e. sense. How do we then not fall into a pure relativism? The effective reality of a sense, even to outside observers who don't share said sense but must deal with its actual effects, does not imply utility or value of said sense. That is, sense is made from and with actual conditions upon an encounter (observation and cognition, say), and thus is intrinsically linked with said conditions (the arrival of necessary sense-making being utterly contingent), evolving as one is affected here and then, and as one remembers and forgets (memory contains in it already the power to forget—as, for instance, stories are stretched to preserve the truth of a particular intensity of a relation as one changes.) Plato, for instance, encounters the material simulacra of the statues of his gods which generates the duality of the ideal form and the less so—his making sense of things, that appears as a necessary intervention, contingently arrives on the scene to determine whole new worlds of thought. Nonetheless, at the highest and perhaps most general level, a shared sense exists by fact that all sense-making participates in the chaosmos of an actual reality, be it being, becoming, the becoming of being or the being of becoming. This immense and fanged mixing of necessarily contingent pains and pleasures, flurries of whirling bits of actuality and virtuality, or the unsensible depths of a pure chaosmos, is the primordial perspective of the infant (seeing everything as strange foreign objects appearing and disappearing, with no sense of the grand symbolic structures nor the virtual notions that move those of the heights—there's only pure arbitrariness.) The contorsions they suffer move them to escape and forget, to develop a sensible world. Here one finds the contingent necessity of framing reality—precisely escaping seemingly arbitrary contingency by founding an arbitrary frame, that nonetheless appears necessary in solving an immanent problem.

A