a founder of the codex

Aura

Nimbaria praenuntians·the Herald Glow

From Latin nimbus, the cloud of light around a sacred head, and praenuntians, announcing beforehand, a glow that comes before what it surrounds.

Level: Conceptorganism
Phylum: Centre and peripheryimage schema
Class: Boundaryits far horizon
Niche: Producerraw experience
Mode: Religionhow it keeps existing
Stage: Matureindividuated
Status: Living
Habitat: Archive

Its kinds · Roget, 1852: Space in General · Wilkins, 1668: Sensible Quality · WordNet, 1990: Attribute · Llull, 1308: G · Sensitive

Herald Glow, the whole specimen — Plate V. Nimbaria praenuntians, the whole specimen.

A being is often sensed past its own outline, in the halo of a sacred thing, the light that warns of a migraine, or the distance around an original. That surplus marks it as present and one of a kind.

What surrounds a being is felt as part of it, sensed at a distance and often before the being itself.

behavior It glows faintly around whatever it settles on, brightens under a reverent gaze and dims each time it is copied.

provocation

What do people sense around you before you speak?

Each draw is the being derived afresh by the current laws at another seed (laws §11); the chosen one leads (where they sit in the morphospace).

I Dissection

Each organ answers one question about the idea. The framed one, its boundary, is the dominant organ: the being's class, the one the idea could not lose and stay itself.

Kernel of Aura — Fig. 1. Kernel
Nimbus
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
A being can be sensed past its own outline, as a light or a presence that spreads from it into the space around and shows what it is.^{1, 2}
drawn as: nimbus · view: in situ

Boundary of Aura — Fig. 2. Boundary
Far horizon
❦ dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It keeps a distance however near one comes. Benjamin found it in a mountain range on a summer horizon, a presence that stays far while the eye rests on it.²
drawn as: far horizon · view: pinned

Intake of Aura — Fig. 3. Intake
Cult image
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It feeds on ritual and time. Benjamin traced the aura of an artwork to its first use in cult, as an image kept in one place and approached with reverence.²
drawn as: cult image · view: at work

Mechanism of Aura — Fig. 4. Mechanism
Spreading depression
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
Before a migraine a slow wave of excitation and then quiet creeps across the visual cortex, about three millimetres a minute, and its crest is seen as a shimmering arc.^{3, 4}
drawn as: spreading depression · view: magnified

Output of Aura — Fig. 5. Output
Fortification spectrum
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It makes the brain's own work visible. A zigzag arc of light, likened to the plan of a fortress, grows across sight for some twenty minutes and then fades.⁴
drawn as: fortification spectrum · view: pressed

Dispersal of Aura — Fig. 6. Dispersal
Sun disc
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It travels between faiths in paint. The rayed disc of the sun gods passed into Buddhist and Christian art as the gold ring behind a holy head.¹
drawn as: sun disc · view: transparent

Decay of Aura — Fig. 7. Decay
Postcard
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It withers in copies. Printed and filmed by the thousand, a work loses the presence of its one place, and its image hangs on every wall.^{2, 5}
drawn as: postcard · view: cross section

II Meaning associations

No relations recorded yet.

descent membership food web resemblance or friction

Lineage

A founder, dissected by hand.

Kin

same kind in Wilkins Chiaroscuro, Iridescence, Qualia

same kind in WordNet Innocence, Patience, Symmetry

same kind in Llull Awakening, Chimera, Fear, Qualia, Silence, Tinnitus, Vertigo, Babelhum, Shared Breath, The Swing Door

same phylum Eternity, Geomancy, Presence, Qualia

same dominant organ Amber, Cloud, Diamond, Equinox, Frost, Possession, Reflection, Solitude, Threshold, Tongue Horizon, The Shared Cell

Genome

glow
presence
warning
distance also in Pointillism
halo

III In the world

Echoes

the gold halo of an icon
the zigzag light before a migraine
a crowd before an original painting in a museum
a mountain range on a summer horizon

IV Record

How it was drawn

its draw 1, a point in the morphospace (laws §8), drawn by flux-2-klein-4b.safetensors.

axis	value
book	automata
symmetry	asymmetric
organization	solitary
silhouette	crown
scale	immense
proportion	elongated
growth	faceted
articulation	seamless latent
openness	spongy latent
skeleton	spicules latent
locomotion	sessile latent
pattern	reticulate latent
coloration	cryptic latent
substance	vapour
surface	spined
palette	frost
luminosity	points
transparency	opaque latent
gesture	hardens
unity	aggregate latent
modality	possible latent
causation	final
determinacy	fraying latent
fusion	becoming
anomaly	none
graft	stitches
technique	crayon
viewpoint	motion
value	unmarked latent
balance	top heavy latent
density	intricate latent
rhythm	unmarked latent
saturation	accent
appendages	antennae, spines
anchor (body)	sea sparkle, plankton flashing blue wherever the water is disturbed
anchor (detail)	a film of oil on water, bands of rainbow colour

Sources

Adolphe Napoléon Didron, Iconographie chrétienne. Histoire de Dieu (1843), on the nimbus and the aureole
Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936)
Karl S. Lashley, Patterns of Cerebral Integration Indicated by the Scotomas of Migraine (Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, 1941)
Oliver Sacks, Migraine (1970)
John Berger, Ways of Seeing (1972)

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