a founder of the codex

Miracle

Thaumatia signifera·the Breaking Sign

From Greek thauma, a wonder, and Latin signifer, bearing a sign, a wonder that is read as a sign.

Level: Conceptorganism
Phylum: Verticalityimage schema
Class: Dispersalits word of mouth
Niche: Extremophileabsence
Mode: Referencehow it keeps existing
Stage: Matureindividuated
Status: Living
Habitat: Ritual

Its kinds · Roget, 1852: Religious Affections · Wilkins, 1668: God · WordNet, 1990: Event · Llull, 1308: B · God

Breaking Sign, the whole specimen — Plate XXXVI. Thaumatia signifera, the whole specimen.

An event that seems to break the order of nature is read as a sign of a power beyond it, and it lives on through the witnesses who tell it.

An event that breaks the expected order is read as a message from beyond it.

behavior It appears rarely and all at once, then multiplies in every telling, growing larger the farther it travels.

provocation

Which event in your life do you keep unexplained, and what would you lose by explaining it?

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 dispersal, is the dominant organ: the being's class, the one the idea could not lose and stay itself.

Kernel of Miracle — Fig. 1. Kernel
Finger of God
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
An event can break the usual order of nature, and such a break is read as the act of a power beyond nature showing itself.^{1, 2}
drawn as: finger of God · view: detached

Boundary of Miracle — Fig. 2. Boundary
Devil's advocate
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It is set apart from a rare or lucky event by a judgement that only a power beyond nature could produce it. At Lourdes and in the making of saints, physicians and a devil's advocate test each claim, and few pass.^{5, 1}
drawn as: devil's advocate · view: pinned

Intake of Miracle — Fig. 3. Intake
Healing spring
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It feeds on suffering and prayer, on crowds who come in hope to shrines and springs, and on events whose causes are still unknown.^{5, 3}
drawn as: healing spring · view: at work

Mechanism of Miracle — Fig. 4. Mechanism
Relic
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
In the classic healing, a relic, a touch or water from a holy place is followed by a cure, and those present read the sequence as the act of a power beyond nature.^{3, 5}
drawn as: relic · view: cast

Output of Miracle — Fig. 5. Output
Abandoned crutches
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It makes the power it is credited to visible as a sign. It draws converts and pilgrims, makes saints, and leaves the crutches of the cured hanging in the grotto at Lourdes.⁵
drawn as: abandoned crutches · view: pressed

Dispersal of Miracle — Fig. 6. Dispersal
Word of mouth
❦ dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It travels by testimony, from witness to hearer to book, in lives of saints and collections of wonders, and each telling tends to enlarge it.¹
drawn as: word of mouth · view: in situ

Decay of Miracle — Fig. 7. Decay
Asylum of ignorance
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
Each natural cause found shrinks its ground, and Spinoza called the appeal to God's will for what is unexplained the asylum of ignorance. Exposed fraud leaves it a byword for credulity.⁴
drawn as: asylum of ignorance · view: series

II Meaning associations

No relations recorded yet.

descent membership food web resemblance or friction

Lineage

A founder, dissected by hand.

Kin

same kind in Roget Geomancy, Possession, Ritual, Trance

same kind in Llull Eternity

same phylum Awakening, Cloud, Erosion, Faith, Innocence, Rain, Vertigo, Weightlessness

same dominant organ Ash, Breath, Pointillism, River, Sand, Wind, Witnessed Relief

Genome

wonder also in Innocence
sign
testimony also in Witnessed Relief
rupture
healing also in Placebo

III In the world

Echoes

the crutches hung in the grotto at Lourdes
the parting of the Red Sea
water turned to wine at Cana
the miracles counted toward a saint's canonization

IV Record

How it was drawn

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

axis	value
book	uranographia
symmetry	fractal
organization	nested
silhouette	tree
scale	hand
proportion	graded
growth	regenerated
articulation	sutured latent
openness	lattice latent
skeleton	woody latent
locomotion	drifting latent
pattern	reticulate latent
coloration	countershaded latent
substance	smoke
surface	perforated
palette	dusk
luminosity	none
transparency	clouded latent
gesture	bursts
unity	integral latent
modality	contingent latent
causation	final latent
determinacy	dissolving latent
fusion	seam
anomaly	inverted
graft	scaffold
technique	watercolour
viewpoint	below
value	high key latent
balance	top heavy latent
density	graded detail
rhythm	clustered latent
saturation	vivid
appendages	tendrils, valves
anchor (body)	a sea lily, a cup of feathery arms on a long jointed stalk
anchor (detail)	a reaction-diffusion pattern of spots and labyrinthine stripes

Sources

David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), section 10, Of Miracles
Exodus 8:19
Augustine, The City of God (c. 426), book 22, chapter 8
Baruch Spinoza, Ethics (1677), part 1, appendix
Ruth Harris, Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age (1999)

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