a founder of the codex

Prophecy

Mantipolypus praesens·the Foreseeing Polyp

From Greek mantis, a seer, and polypous, many-footed, and Latin praesens, present, for a seer that reads what is coming in what is here.

Level: Conceptorganism
Phylum: Pathimage schema
Class: Intakeits augury
Niche: Extremophileabsence
Mode: Religionhow it keeps existing
Stage: Matureindividuated
Status: Living
Habitat: Ritual

Its kinds · Roget, 1852: Formation of Ideas · Wilkins, 1668: Discourse · WordNet, 1990: Communication · Llull, 1308: E · Man

Foreseeing Polyp, the whole specimen — Plate XLVI. Mantipolypus praesens, the whole specimen.

A prophecy claims to know the future, yet every prophecy is made from signs read closely in the present, and once spoken it can change the future it names.

The future is read in the present, by whoever attends closely to what is here.

behavior Sits still with its tentacles spread, tasting every current, and now and then lifts one bright stalk toward what is coming.

provocation

What in this present moment already shows what tomorrow will bring?

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

Kernel of Prophecy — Fig. 1. Kernel
Second sight
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
Some part of the future can be known before it arrives, and spoken aloud by one who sees it.²
drawn as: second sight · view: pinned

Boundary of Prophecy — Fig. 2. Boundary
Sealed scroll
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It is defined against hindsight, which explains what happened after the fact. Once an outcome is known people judge they saw it coming, so a true prophecy stands on record before the event.⁵
drawn as: sealed scroll · view: pinned

Intake of Prophecy — Fig. 3. Intake
Augury
❦ dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It feeds on signs met in the present, the flight of birds, the entrails of a sacrifice, dreams and comets, so each prophecy begins as close attention to what is here now.²
drawn as: augury · view: at work

Mechanism of Prophecy — Fig. 4. Mechanism
Extrapolation
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It reads a pattern in the signs and carries it forward, by analogy, by rule or by inspired seeing, and an oracle's answer is often worded to fit more than one outcome.^{2, 1}
drawn as: extrapolation · view: detached

Output of Prophecy — Fig. 5. Output
Oracle
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It gives a statement of what will happen, which lets its hearers prepare, flee or wait, and it can bring itself about once they act on it, as a rumour of failure empties a sound bank.³
drawn as: oracle · view: series

Dispersal of Prophecy — Fig. 6. Dispersal
Grapevine
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It travels by word of mouth from the shrine to the city, and each retelling sharpens or bends it until it reaches people far from the first voice.¹
drawn as: grapevine · view: series

Decay of Prophecy — Fig. 7. Decay
Great Disappointment
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It fails when the foretold day comes and passes unchanged. Its believers then often reread it and preach it harder, and it leaves behind a habit of waiting for the next date.⁴
drawn as: Great Disappointment · 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 Roget Apophenia, Dream, Faith, Memory, Oblivion, Placebo, Presence, Knowing Trust, Afterlistening, Commemorative Revision, Simultaneous Remembering, Hesychology, Subtractive Phenomenology

same kind in Wilkins Echolalia, Glossolalia, Syllable, Symbol, Babelhum, Tongue Horizon, Poetry

same kind in WordNet Chiaroscuro, Echolalia, Glossolalia, Lullaby, Music, Syllable, Symbol, Babelhum, Poetry

same kind in Llull Echolalia, Glossolalia, Love, Memory, Nostalgia, Oblivion, Placebo, Possession, Presence, Solitude, Threshold, Trance, Volition, Knowing Trust, Rushmaker, Tongue Horizon, Witnessed Relief, Gazeroot (second reading), Commemorative Revision, The Shared Cell, Simultaneous Remembering, Hesychology

same phylum Entelechy, Memory, Music, Nostalgia, Ritual, River, Threshold, Wind, Tongue Horizon, Afterlistening

same dominant organ Clay, Faith, Fear, Lake, Patience, Resonance (second reading), Silence, Tinnitus, Trance

Genome

foresight
omen also in Cloud, Rain
attention also in Afterlistening, Presence, Silence, Solitude, Tinnitus
prediction
belief also in Faith, Placebo

III In the world

Echoes

the oracle at Delphi
a weather forecast
a bank run set off by a rumour
a doomsday date that comes and goes

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	humores
symmetry	fractal
organization	chained
silhouette	filiform
scale	hand
proportion	even latent
growth	budding
articulation	seamless latent
openness	solid latent
skeleton	spicules latent
locomotion	walking latent
pattern	gradient
coloration	cryptic latent
substance	mesoglea
surface	veined
palette	oilslick
luminosity	none
transparency	clouded latent
gesture	dissolves
unity	integral latent
modality	possible latent
causation	unmarked latent
determinacy	dissolving
fusion	replaced
anomaly	larger inside
graft	none
technique	hatching
viewpoint	motion
value	flat latent
balance	grounded latent
density	intricate
rhythm	clustered latent
saturation	accent latent
appendages	bladders, cilia
anchor (body)	a volvox, a hollow sphere of green cells with daughter spheres inside
anchor (detail)	a Purkinje neuron, a flat fan of densely branching dendrites

Sources

Herodotus, Histories (5th century BCE), book 1, on the oracles given to Croesus
Cicero, De Divinatione (44 BCE)
Robert K. Merton, The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy (The Antioch Review, 1948)
Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken and Stanley Schachter, When Prophecy Fails (1956)
Baruch Fischhoff, Hindsight ≠ Foresight (Journal of Experimental Psychology, Human Perception and Performance, 1975)

❦