the taxonomy of the codex
The Tree of Semantic Embodiment
Every idea is placed by four questions. What kind of thing is it, in each of four old trees of ideas (its kinds)? Which bodily pattern does its logic follow (its phylum)? Which organ could it not lose (its class)? How does it feed (its niche, a trait of its ecology rather than a rank)? Beside these run its level, the scale of the idea, and its life stage. Each tree also shapes a part of the body; every view below follows the tree you choose.
A thesaurus is a classification of ideas: Roget set every idea English has a word for under six classes, so that a writer could go from the idea to the word. Its classes give a being its palette, its sections its matter.
Wilkins sorted all that can be named under forty genera, so that each word of his philosophical language would show, in its letters, what kind of thing it names. Its predicaments give a being its symmetry, its genera its outline.
The twenty-five files in which WordNet's makers entered every sense of every English noun: a flat list, with no tree above it. Its categories give a being its gesture and the way it grew.
A ladder of being, from God down to the instruments, through which Llull's Art meant to reason about everything that is. Its subjects choose the book of a being's first draw, which gives its body, its hand and the forms of its organs. Its later draws roam among the other books.
I The tree
From the tree’s first division down to every being, through its kinds, then phylum and class. A branch thickens with the beings it carries. Hover over a branch to read it, or click to keep it open; a leaf opens its plate.Tap a branch to walk down it, and tap the path above to go back up. A being opens its plate.
Roget's Thesaurus
A thesaurus is a classification of ideas: Roget set every idea English has a word for under six classes, so that a writer could go from the idea to the word. After Peter Mark Roget, Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, 1852.
Its classes give a being its palette, its sections its matter. Its kinds were given to the beings by blind readers. Then come the codex’s own ranks: the bodily pattern its logic follows (its phylum) and the organ it cannot lose (its class). Choose any branch to read it.
Abstract Relations class
Its beings keep its palette: ink, sepia, bone, quartz, bismuth.
Holds, among the codex’s beings, Relation, Quantity, Order, Time, Change, Causation.
Relation section, in Abstract Relations
Likeness and difference, kinship of things, copy and model, agreement.
Its beings keep its matter: silk, hyphal felt, membrane.
beings Entanglement, Mimesis, Reflection
Link phylum, in Relation
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Entanglement, Mimesis
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Entanglement
Entanglement Inseparable Stone, Synlithus inseparabilis
Some pairs share one state and have none of their own, so the pair is more real than either part.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Mimesis
Mimesis Returning Moth, Similimorpha reddens
Making a likeness is a way of knowing and of becoming, and also the oldest way of being deceived.
Balance phylum, in Relation
Is its logic an equilibrium between opposites or weights?
Its body is organized as a balance, its weights held in equilibrium around an axis.
beings Reflection
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Reflection
Reflection Returned Light, Anaclasia revertens
A smooth surface sends light back at the angle it came, giving an image of the world, and a mind can turn back the same way on its own thinking.
Quantity section, in Abstract Relations
How much: degree, greatness and smallness, increase and decrease, whole and part.
Its beings keep its matter: sand, coral, calcite, spore dust.
beings Emergence
Part and whole phylum, in Quantity
Is its logic parts that make a whole, units fitted together?
Its body is organized as parts making a whole, each part distinct and fitted to the others.
beings Emergence
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Emergence
Emergence Rising Cluster, Holobotrys oriens
When many parts interact, the whole can do what no part can, and that new behaviour needs its own description.
Order section, in Abstract Relations
Arrangement, sequence, class and kind, rule and its exceptions, order and disorder.
Its beings keep its matter: crystal, silica glass, woven fibre.
beings Self-Ending Order
Force phylum, in Order
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
beings Self-Ending Order
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Self-Ending Order
Self-Ending Order Slope Eater, Clinophagus evanescens
Order appears where a difference is steep because ordered flow levels it faster than chance, so every such pattern is entropy's shortcut and works toward its own end.
Time section, in Abstract Relations
Duration and its parts, period and instant, earliness and lateness, seasons and recurrence.
Its beings keep its matter: calcite, amber, bark.
beings Equinox, Eternity, Spring, Winter, Foresilence, Tide of Days
Container phylum, in Time
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
beings Winter
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Winter
Winter Keeping Sleep, Hiemaria condens
Winter is the cold season when growth stops, and life outlasts it by withdrawing, sleeping and living on its stores, its seed kept for the year to come.
Force phylum, in Time
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
beings Spring
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Spring
Spring Sudden Green, Vernaria erumpens
Spring is the season when life stored through the cold breaks open all at once, set off by lengthening days and returning warmth, and it spends in weeks what was saved for months.
Balance phylum, in Time
Is its logic an equilibrium between opposites or weights?
Its body is organized as a balance, its weights held in equilibrium around an axis.
beings Equinox, Foresilence
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Equinox
Equinox Hinge of the Year, Isohemera bifrons
Day and night are equal only at the instant the year passes from one side to the other, so a balance can be a crossing that no one can stay in.
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Foresilence
Foresilence Jointing Pause, Pausiphonia articulans
Silence shapes music; a pause sets how long the listener waits, so what is withheld decides how the next sound is heard.
Cycle phylum, in Time
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings Tide of Days
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Tide of Days
Tide of Days Ring of Feasts, Fastocyclus communis
A calendar is a system in which the sky gives fixed points, rites give them forms and memory gives them meaning, so a group keeps returning together to the same days and the same past.
Centre and periphery phylum, in Time
Is its logic a core and what surrounds it, near to or far from a centre?
Its body is organized around a centre, its parts thinning and fading toward the edge.
beings Eternity
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Eternity
Eternity Slowest Rhythm, Aeviaria lentissima
Eternity is time without end, or the whole of time held at once, and a turning thing comes nearer to it the slower its rhythm runs.
Change section, in Abstract Relations
Change and permanence, revolution and conversion, stability and its loss.
Its beings keep its matter: wax, vapour, smoke.
beings Awakening, Entropy, Metamorphosis, Petrification, Threshold, Tongue Horizon
Path phylum, in Change
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
beings Threshold, Tongue Horizon
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Threshold, Tongue Horizon
Threshold Crossing Sill, Liminaria transitoria
Between two states runs a line that one small step crosses, and many crossings hold a margin of waiting, where a being has left the old state and has yet to enter the new.
Tongue Horizon Parting Tongue, Glossorizon divergens
Two peoples drifting apart one syllable at a time reach a moment after which they no longer understand each other; no one notices it being crossed, and it cannot be crossed back.
Cycle phylum, in Change
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings Metamorphosis
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Metamorphosis
Metamorphosis Rebuilding Chrysalis, Histolysa reformans
One life can pass through bodies of wholly different form by dissolving the old one and building the next from its matter, so a being stays itself through a complete change of shape.
Part and whole phylum, in Change
Is its logic parts that make a whole, units fitted together?
Its body is organized as parts making a whole, each part distinct and fitted to the others.
beings Petrification
Decay class, the dominant organ
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It holds how it fails, and its residue.
beings Petrification
Petrification Faithful Stone, Lithomorpha fidelis
Petrification replaces a living body with stone, grain by grain, so its form outlasts its matter and stays exact and rigid until it shatters.
Scale phylum, in Change
Is its logic more and less, a gradient, an amount that rises or falls?
Its body is organized as a scale, its parts graded from small to large.
beings Entropy
Decay class, the dominant organ
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It holds how it fails, and its residue.
beings Entropy
Entropy Evening Rot, Aequalis dissolvens
Left to itself every difference evens out, and that evening out is what gives time its direction.
Verticality phylum, in Change
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
beings Awakening
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Awakening
Awakening Dawning Eye, Egersia matutina
Each morning the brain switches from sleep to waking and the senses open to the world, and the same passage names the wider change from a closed view into an open one.
Causation section, in Abstract Relations
Cause and effect, power and influence, chance and tendency.
Its beings keep its matter: metal, obsidian, water.
beings Rushmaker
Force phylum, in Causation
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
beings Rushmaker
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Rushmaker
Rushmaker Rush Breaker, Pancursor ruptor
Where everyone's safety depends on everyone staying calm, one sign of threat can set off a rush that makes the threat real.
Space class
Its beings keep its palette: lapis, frost, storm, indigo.
Holds, among the codex’s beings, Space in General, Form, Motion.
Space in General section, in Space
Place and room, presence and absence, situation and location.
Its beings keep its matter: water, vapour, porcelain.
beings Aura
Centre and periphery phylum, in Space in General
Is its logic a core and what surrounds it, near to or far from a centre?
Its body is organized around a centre, its parts thinning and fading toward the edge.
beings Aura
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Aura
Aura Herald Glow, Nimbaria praenuntians
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.
Form section, in Space
Shape and figure, symmetry and distortion, structure, texture, straightness and curvature.
Its beings keep its matter: crystal, nacre, porcelain.
beings Symmetry
Balance phylum, in Form
Is its logic an equilibrium between opposites or weights?
Its body is organized as a balance, its weights held in equilibrium around an axis.
beings Symmetry
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Symmetry
Symmetry Mirror Spar, Invariantia gemella
What stays the same when something is turned, mirrored or moved tells you what that thing really is.
Motion section, in Space
Movement and rest, speed, travel and journey, impulse and force, going and coming.
Its beings keep its matter: feather, water, silk.
beings Resonance, Resonance (second reading)
Link phylum, in Motion
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Resonance (second reading)
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Resonance (second reading)
Resonance (second reading) Listening Bell, Auscultor consonans
Being tuned decides what can be heard at all, so attunement is a kind of perception before it is a kind of harmony.
Cycle phylum, in Motion
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings Resonance
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Resonance
Resonance Answering Cloud, Consonia accumulans
A system answers most strongly to what moves at its own rhythm, so timing can matter more than force.
Matter class
Its beings keep its palette: humus, malachite, lichen, moss, meadow, obsidian.
Holds, among the codex’s beings, Matter in General, Inorganic Matter, Organic Matter.
Matter in General section, in Matter
The universe and materiality, weight and lightness, the physical as such.
Its beings keep its matter: metal, mud, calcite.
beings Weightlessness
Verticality phylum, in Matter in General
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
beings Weightlessness
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Weightlessness
Weightlessness Floating Fall, Abaria cadens
A body falling freely with everything around it weighs nothing, and minds lifted in rapture report the same lightness.
Inorganic Matter section, in Matter
Solids and fluids, earth, air and water, weather, minerals and the landscape.
Its beings keep its matter: ice, crystal, mud, obsidian.
beings Archipelago, Ash, Clay, Cloud, Diamond, Erosion, Fire, Frost, Lake, Rain, River, Salt, Sand, Storm, Wind
Container phylum, in Inorganic Matter
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
Clay Pliant Earth, Pelotypus retinens
Clay is earth fine enough to take any shape when wet and keep it once dried and fired, so it became the first material in which people made vessels, figures and written records.
Lake Held Sky, Limnaria tenens
A lake is still water held in a basin, which keeps what flows into it, lets it settle in layers, and mirrors the sky on a surface calm enough to hold it.
Path phylum, in Inorganic Matter
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
River Passing Form, Potamorpha manens
A river is a form that lasts while every drop in it moves on, so it stays the same river through water that is always new.
Wind Levelling Current, Anemopora aequans
Wind is air moving down a difference of pressure, so it exists only while the world is uneven, and it carries whatever it passes through.
Link phylum, in Inorganic Matter
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Archipelago
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Archipelago
Archipelago Scattered Range, Nesodesmia submersa
An archipelago is a scatter of islands that are the summits of one submerged range, one body divided by the sea, and its separation breeds kinds found only there.
Force phylum, in Inorganic Matter
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Diamond
Diamond Pressed Light, Adamantaria pressa
Diamond is carbon pressed deep in the earth into the hardest crystal, which eruptions carry to the surface and cutting turns into scattered light.
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
Fire Kindling Chain, Pyrocatena accendens
Fire is matter transformed in a chain that feeds itself, each burning part heating the next until its fuel or air is spent.
Storm Unburdening Cell, Turbocella exonerans
Tension stored past a threshold is released as a force that remakes its surroundings and then spends itself.
Balance phylum, in Inorganic Matter
Is its logic an equilibrium between opposites or weights?
Its body is organized as a balance, its weights held in equilibrium around an axis.
beings Salt
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Salt
Salt Fixing Crystal, Halocrystis figens
Salt is the crystal left when the sea dries, and it keeps what it touches by drawing out its water, until in excess it makes the land barren.
Cycle phylum, in Inorganic Matter
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings Ash
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings Ash
Ash Fertile Remnant, Favillaria nutriens
Ash is the mineral remainder of a burnt body, and it returns to the soil as food for the next growth or rides the wind far from the fire that made it.
Scale phylum, in Inorganic Matter
Is its logic more and less, a gradient, an amount that rises or falls?
Its body is organized as a scale, its parts graded from small to large.
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Frost
Frost Night Feather, Pruinaria plumata
Frost is vapour that freezes straight onto ground colder than the air on still, clear nights, growing feathered crystals that show where the cold lies and vanish at sunrise.
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings Sand
Sand Drifting Multitude, Psammoplethos migrans
Sand is stone worn into grains small enough to flow and hard enough to last, so it drifts in dunes, holds water between its grains and melts into glass.
Verticality phylum, in Inorganic Matter
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Cloud
Cloud Floating Likeness, Nubifacies mutabilis
A cloud is water condensed into droplets fine enough to float, its outline remade by every wind, and its changing forms are where the mind most readily finds faces.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
Erosion Patient Scour, Abrasoria lenta
Water, wind and ice wear down whatever stands above them, grain by grain, and carry it to low places where it builds new ground, so erosion makes landforms by taking land away.
Rain Returning Fall, Pluviaria reddens
Rain is water that rose as vapour and falls back to the ground, so the land lives by a return it partly feeds itself.
Organic Matter section, in Matter
Life and death, plants, animals and the body, and the senses: touch, heat, taste, smell, sound, light and colour.
Its beings keep its matter: mesoglea, bark, petal tissue, gill tissue, slime.
beings Amber, Breath, Chiaroscuro, Chimera, Entelechy, Iridescence, Music, Silence, Tinnitus, Vertigo, Shared Breath
Container phylum, in Organic Matter
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Amber
Amber Outlasting Resin, Succinaria perennis
Amber is a tree's resin hardened over ages into a seal that keeps small moments of life intact long after the forest that made it is gone.
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Tinnitus
Tinnitus Inner Chime, Endophonus tacitus
Tinnitus is a sound made by the hearing system itself, most often where hearing has been lost, and its hearer alone hears it, loudest in silence.
Path phylum, in Organic Matter
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Entelechy
Entelechy Completing Seed, Telocarpus intrinsecus
A living thing holds within it the form it grows toward, and entelechy is that inner completion at work, the seed already aimed at the plant.
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Music
Music Waiting Songmaker, Melopoeus exspectans
Sound ordered in time makes a listener expect what comes next, and music means by how it meets, delays or denies that expectation.
Link phylum, in Organic Matter
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Shared Breath
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Shared Breath
Shared Breath Choir Lung, Synpnoe chorica
A song sets the moments when its singers must breathe, so singing together makes a group breathe, and their hearts beat, as one.
Balance phylum, in Organic Matter
Is its logic an equilibrium between opposites or weights?
Its body is organized as a balance, its weights held in equilibrium around an axis.
beings Chiaroscuro
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Chiaroscuro
Chiaroscuro Rounding Shadow, Sciophota sculpens
Light set against dark across a surface makes a flat image look round, since the eye reads graded shade as a form turning away from the light.
Cycle phylum, in Organic Matter
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings Breath
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings Breath
Breath Turn-Taking Bellows, Pneumatophora alternans
A body lives only by taking in the air around it and giving it back in a rhythm it keeps without thinking, so breath is the place where inside and outside are exchanged.
Part and whole phylum, in Organic Matter
Is its logic parts that make a whole, units fitted together?
Its body is organized as parts making a whole, each part distinct and fitted to the others.
beings Chimera
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Chimera
Chimera Polyglot Graft, Insitaria polyglotta
One body can be made of parts from different kinds and still live, and wherever kinds are meant to stay pure such a body is read as a monster or a marvel.
Scale phylum, in Organic Matter
Is its logic more and less, a gradient, an amount that rises or falls?
Its body is organized as a scale, its parts graded from small to large.
beings Iridescence, Silence
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Silence
Silence Full Quiet, Tacitaria plena
Silence is never the absence of all sound but a frame in which the sounds that louder ones hid can be heard, so it is a way of listening.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Iridescence
Iridescence Shifting Lustre, Stratochroa versans
Iridescence is colour made by fine layers that send light back in step, so it changes with the angle of sight and dies when the layers lose their order.
Verticality phylum, in Organic Matter
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
beings Vertigo
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Vertigo
Vertigo Reeling Edge, Ilingia praeceps
Vertigo is the felt loss of ground when the senses disagree about which way is down, and at a height it joins the fear of falling to a pull toward the drop.
Intellect class
Its beings keep its palette: abyss, iris, verdigris, oilslick.
Holds, among the codex’s beings, Formation of Ideas, Communication of Ideas.
Formation of Ideas section, in Intellect
Thought and idea, attention, reasoning, belief and doubt, knowledge, memory, imagination.
Its beings keep its matter: wire tissue, mesoglea, amber.
beings Apophenia, Dream, Faith, Memory, Oblivion, Placebo, Presence, Prophecy, Knowing Trust, Afterlistening, Commemorative Revision, Simultaneous Remembering, Hesychology, Subtractive Phenomenology
Container phylum, in Formation of Ideas
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
beings Dream, Placebo, Knowing Trust
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Knowing Trust
Knowing Trust Open Trust, Fidivacua aperta
Trust given knowingly to something empty can still change the one who gives it, because what acts is the act of trusting, not its object.
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Dream
Dream Night Ferment, Oneirozyma nocturna
Each night the sleeping mind turns the day's residue into scenes it lives as real, digesting experience by imagining it, and most of what it makes is gone by morning.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Placebo
Placebo Empty Remedy, Semiotheria inanis
The sign of a cure can act as a cure, because the body answers to what treatment means.
Path phylum, in Formation of Ideas
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
beings Memory, Prophecy, Afterlistening
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Prophecy
Prophecy Foreseeing Polyp, Mantipolypus praesens
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.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Afterlistening
Afterlistening Lingering Ear, Postaudia expectans
Music leaves its listeners expecting, so the silence after it is heard as music; for a while a cough lands like a cadence and the street sounds composed.
Decay class, the dominant organ
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It holds how it fails, and its residue.
beings Memory
Memory Recollecting Fungus, Mnemomyces reconstruens
Remembering rebuilds the past each time, so forgetting is not memory's failure but the work that shapes what is kept.
Link phylum, in Formation of Ideas
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Apophenia
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Apophenia
Apophenia Cloud-Face Weaver, Simulacrifex nebularis
A mind tuned to find patterns finds them in noise too, and the meaning it feels is the same whether the pattern is there or not.
Force phylum, in Formation of Ideas
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
beings Oblivion
Decay class, the dominant organ
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It holds how it fails, and its residue.
beings Oblivion
Oblivion Clearing Current, Lethomyces purgans
Forgetting clears what is unused so that a mind can learn and act and a divided city can live together again, and the same force, pressed too far, erases what should be kept.
Cycle phylum, in Formation of Ideas
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings Commemorative Revision, Simultaneous Remembering
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Commemorative Revision, Simultaneous Remembering
Commemorative Revision Anniversary Rewriter, Anamnestes palimpsestus
Each performance of a rite reopens the memory it marks to change, so a group's past is rewritten in steps, on the dates of its rites, while the form stays the same.
Simultaneous Remembering Tide of Recall, Synmnemon calendaris
When a whole people remembers the same past on the same day, each one's memory is pulled toward everyone else's, so a feast day makes many memories into one, and between feasts they drift apart again.
Part and whole phylum, in Formation of Ideas
Is its logic parts that make a whole, units fitted together?
Its body is organized as parts making a whole, each part distinct and fitted to the others.
beings Subtractive Phenomenology
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Subtractive Phenomenology
Subtractive Phenomenology Lantern of Less, Aphaeresis sensoria
A science of what experience contains beneath what it is busy with, found by taking away one sense at a time, sound, light, movement, a quick breath, until the background that was always there can be inventoried.
Centre and periphery phylum, in Formation of Ideas
Is its logic a core and what surrounds it, near to or far from a centre?
Its body is organized around a centre, its parts thinning and fading toward the edge.
beings Presence
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Presence
Presence Here Glow, Adessia lucens
Presence joins the body's being here to attention on what is here, and that joining turns the passing moment into a lived one.
Scale phylum, in Formation of Ideas
Is its logic more and less, a gradient, an amount that rises or falls?
Its body is organized as a scale, its parts graded from small to large.
beings Hesychology
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Hesychology
Hesychology Stillness Gauge, Hesychometra gradata
Stillness can be the variable of a science; as sound is withdrawn and breath slows step by step, experience changes in an order that trained observers can map and share.
Verticality phylum, in Formation of Ideas
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
beings Faith
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Faith
Faith Watcher of the Unseen, Fidosensor invisibilium
Trust given ahead of evidence changes what one perceives and does, and so changes what one meets.
Communication of Ideas section, in Intellect
Meaning and its signs, language, speech and writing, representation, teaching.
Its beings keep its matter: paper, ink, scale dust.
beings Echolalia, Glossolalia, Pointillism, Syllable, Symbol, Babelhum, Poetry
Link phylum, in Communication of Ideas
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Symbol
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Symbol
Symbol Translating Bivalve, Symbolaria transferens
A symbol carries meaning from one thing to another by a bond its users share, so it works as a translation, and the meaning it carries grows richer with each crossing.
Force phylum, in Communication of Ideas
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
beings Glossolalia
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Glossolalia
Glossolalia Fervent Babble, Lalopneuma effundens
Glossolalia is fluent speech in an invented tongue, built from the speaker's own sounds in the rise and fall of talk, and its fervour reaches hearers ahead of any meaning.
Cycle phylum, in Communication of Ideas
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Poetry
Poetry Condensing Sky, Versicaelum condensans
Language under the pressure of form says more than its words, and is remembered because of that pressure.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Echolalia
Echolalia Answering Conch, Echomimus iterans
Echolalia gives back the words it hears, whole and in their own tune, and the borrowed phrase can answer, comfort, or grow into speech of one's own.
Part and whole phylum, in Communication of Ideas
Is its logic parts that make a whole, units fitted together?
Its body is organized as parts making a whole, each part distinct and fitted to the others.
beings Pointillism, Syllable, Babelhum
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Syllable
Syllable Pulse Blossom, Sonopetala articulata
The smallest beat of speech is also its seed, since words, rhythm and rhyme all grow from how syllables combine.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Babelhum
Babelhum Murmur Swarm, Murmurus babelicus
The hum of a crowded room, where so many voices' syllables mix that none can be told apart, is the heat death of speech; only one's own name still rises out of it.
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings Pointillism
Pointillism Distant Speckle, Punctopsia miscens
Pointillism builds an image from separate dots of pure colour that the eye fuses at a distance, so the picture is finished in the viewer's eye.
Volition class
Its beings keep its palette: ember, saffron, amber, oxblood.
Holds, among the codex’s beings, Individual Volition.
Individual Volition section, in Volition
Will and choice, intention and plan, action and skill, means, conduct and its results.
Its beings keep its matter: chitin, metal, woven fibre.
Force phylum, in Individual Volition
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
beings Volition
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Volition
Volition Choosing Knot, Voluntaria eligens
An act is willed when it follows from a choice the agent makes after weighing desires and reasons, and the will shows itself most plainly where it fails to carry the act through.
Scale phylum, in Individual Volition
Is its logic more and less, a gradient, an amount that rises or falls?
Its body is organized as a scale, its parts graded from small to large.
beings Patience
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Patience
Patience Slow Ripener, Patientaria maturans
Some goods ripen only with time, and patience bears that time while the nearer reward is left alone, for as long as the promise looks worth keeping.
Affections class
Its beings keep its palette: rose, dusk, coral, vermilion, gilt.
Holds, among the codex’s beings, Affections in General, Personal Affections, Sympathetic Affections, Moral Affections, Religious Affections.
Affections in General section, in Affections
Feeling and sensibility as such, emotion and its absence.
Its beings keep its matter: tincture, aura, mesoglea.
beings Qualia
Centre and periphery phylum, in Affections in General
Is its logic a core and what surrounds it, near to or far from a centre?
Its body is organized around a centre, its parts thinning and fading toward the edge.
beings Qualia
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Qualia
Qualia Inward Eye, Qualiocellus intimus
Every experience has a felt quality that no complete description of the brain seems to contain, so knowing everything about seeing red is not the same as seeing it.
Personal Affections section, in Affections
Pleasure and pain of one's own, hope and fear, beauty and taste, pride and humility.
Its beings keep its matter: petal tissue, tincture, oil.
beings Fear, Nostalgia, The Swing Door
Path phylum, in Personal Affections
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
beings Nostalgia
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Nostalgia
Nostalgia Homeward Ache, Nostodynia praesentis
Longing to return to a home or a time that is gone smooths the past into a place worth going back to, and the ache can turn even on the present as it slips away.
Force phylum, in Personal Affections
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
beings Fear
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Fear
Fear Bristling Sentinel, Horripila vigilans
A body that acts on a warning before it understands it survives more often, so fear moves first and asks afterwards.
Cycle phylum, in Personal Affections
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings The Swing Door
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings The Swing Door
The Swing Door Answering Breath, Phobopnoe reciproca
Fear quickens the breath, and the breath can quicken or quiet fear in return, so the two make a loop that can be entered from either side.
Sympathetic Affections section, in Affections
Feelings toward others: love and hate, friendship, gratitude, anger, pity, envy.
Its beings keep its matter: silk, membrane, tincture.
beings Love, Lullaby, Solitude, Witnessed Relief, Gazeroot (second reading), The Shared Cell
Container phylum, in Sympathetic Affections
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
beings Solitude, The Shared Cell
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Solitude, The Shared Cell
Solitude Hollow Listener, Eremocardia intenta
Withdrawing from others changes what can be perceived, and solitude differs from loneliness only in whether the withdrawal was chosen.
The Shared Cell Twin Anchorhold, Anachoretes binatus
A pair can be solitary; two people who withdraw from the world together, an anchoress and her companion, an old couple in a remote house, keep a solitude neither could keep alone, because each guards the other from everyone else.
Link phylum, in Sympathetic Affections
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Love, Witnessed Relief, Gazeroot (second reading)
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Love, Gazeroot (second reading)
Love Drawing Bond, Erodesma tenax
Love draws beings to one particular other and holds them there, by a pull that body and mind build together, and the bond becomes a base from which each can venture out.
Gazeroot (second reading) Witness Thread, Martyromyces nexilis
Relief can live between two people rather than in either, as a thread that forms while one watches the other be relieved and spreads as a network through a group.
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings Witnessed Relief
Witnessed Relief Witness Balm, Martyrotheria contagiosa
The meaning of being treated can be caught from watching another person be relieved, so relief, and harm, travel through a group by witness.
Cycle phylum, in Sympathetic Affections
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings Lullaby
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Lullaby
Lullaby Rocking Hush, Cunabularia sopiens
A lullaby is a slow song sung close with a sway, and in cultures across the world it calms a child into sleep while binding it to the voice that sings.
Moral Affections section, in Affections
Duty and right, virtue and vice, justice and guilt, honour and shame.
Its beings keep its matter: porcelain, nacre, ice.
beings Innocence
Verticality phylum, in Moral Affections
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
beings Innocence
Decay class, the dominant organ
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It holds how it fails, and its residue.
beings Innocence
Innocence Unharmed Gaze, Innoxella aperta
A gaze that harm has yet to reach trusts what it sees, and it is known most clearly by the first betrayal that ends it.
Religious Affections section, in Affections
The divine and superhuman beings, heaven and hell, religion, worship and rite, the occult.
Its beings keep its matter: light, smoke, wax.
beings Geomancy, Miracle, Possession, Ritual, Trance
Container phylum, in Religious Affections
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
beings Possession
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Possession
Possession Ridden Vessel, Enthearia inquilina
A person can be inhabited by another presence that moves and speaks through the body, and a group that recognises the tenant lets it say and demand what the host alone would keep unsaid.
Path phylum, in Religious Affections
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
beings Ritual
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Ritual
Ritual Processional Nest, Ritunidus iterans
Repeating a prescribed form together creates belonging and passage that no single intention could create.
Centre and periphery phylum, in Religious Affections
Is its logic a core and what surrounds it, near to or far from a centre?
Its body is organized around a centre, its parts thinning and fading toward the edge.
beings Geomancy
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Geomancy
Geomancy Oracle Stone, Punctolithus respondens
A finite set of forms can turn any random mark into an answer, which says as much about the forms as about chance.
Scale phylum, in Religious Affections
Is its logic more and less, a gradient, an amount that rises or falls?
Its body is organized as a scale, its parts graded from small to large.
beings Trance
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Trance
Trance Loosening Beat, Ekstasaria rhythmica
Rhythm, breath and dance kept up long enough shift a waking person into a state where the self loosens, and the rite around it gives that state its meaning and its end.
Verticality phylum, in Religious Affections
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
beings Miracle
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings Miracle
Miracle Breaking Sign, Thaumatia signifera
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.
Wilkins's Real Character
Wilkins sorted all that can be named under forty genera, so that each word of his philosophical language would show, in its letters, what kind of thing it names. After John Wilkins, An Essay towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language, 1668.
Its predicaments give a being its symmetry, its genera its outline. Its kinds were given to the beings by blind readers. Then come the codex’s own ranks: the bodily pattern its logic follows (its phylum) and the organ it cannot lose (its class). Choose any branch to read it.
The General Genera predicament
Its beings keep its symmetry: concentric, fractal, radial many.
Holds, among the codex’s beings, Transcendental General, Transcendental Mixed, Transcendental Relation of Action, Discourse, God, World.
Transcendental General genus, in The General Genera
The most general notions: being, kind, cause, end, means, condition.
Its beings keep its outline: globular, star.
Path phylum, in Transcendental General
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
beings Entelechy
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Entelechy
Entelechy Completing Seed, Telocarpus intrinsecus
A living thing holds within it the form it grows toward, and entelechy is that inner completion at work, the seed already aimed at the plant.
Force phylum, in Transcendental General
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
beings Rushmaker
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Rushmaker
Rushmaker Rush Breaker, Pancursor ruptor
Where everyone's safety depends on everyone staying calm, one sign of threat can set off a rush that makes the threat real.
Transcendental Mixed genus, in The General Genera
Notions mixing quantity and quality: likeness and difference, more and less, whole and part, order.
Its beings keep its outline: knot, cage.
beings Emergence, Entanglement, Entropy, Symmetry, Self-Ending Order
Link phylum, in Transcendental Mixed
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Entanglement
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Entanglement
Entanglement Inseparable Stone, Synlithus inseparabilis
Some pairs share one state and have none of their own, so the pair is more real than either part.
Force phylum, in Transcendental Mixed
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
beings Self-Ending Order
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Self-Ending Order
Self-Ending Order Slope Eater, Clinophagus evanescens
Order appears where a difference is steep because ordered flow levels it faster than chance, so every such pattern is entropy's shortcut and works toward its own end.
Balance phylum, in Transcendental Mixed
Is its logic an equilibrium between opposites or weights?
Its body is organized as a balance, its weights held in equilibrium around an axis.
beings Symmetry
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Symmetry
Symmetry Mirror Spar, Invariantia gemella
What stays the same when something is turned, mirrored or moved tells you what that thing really is.
Part and whole phylum, in Transcendental Mixed
Is its logic parts that make a whole, units fitted together?
Its body is organized as parts making a whole, each part distinct and fitted to the others.
beings Emergence
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Emergence
Emergence Rising Cluster, Holobotrys oriens
When many parts interact, the whole can do what no part can, and that new behaviour needs its own description.
Scale phylum, in Transcendental Mixed
Is its logic more and less, a gradient, an amount that rises or falls?
Its body is organized as a scale, its parts graded from small to large.
beings Entropy
Decay class, the dominant organ
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It holds how it fails, and its residue.
beings Entropy
Entropy Evening Rot, Aequalis dissolvens
Left to itself every difference evens out, and that evening out is what gives time its direction.
Transcendental Relation of Action genus, in The General Genera
The course of any action: beginning, going on, ending, success and failure.
Its beings keep its outline: coil, ribbon.
beings Metamorphosis, Threshold
Path phylum, in Transcendental Relation of Action
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
beings Threshold
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Threshold
Threshold Crossing Sill, Liminaria transitoria
Between two states runs a line that one small step crosses, and many crossings hold a margin of waiting, where a being has left the old state and has yet to enter the new.
Cycle phylum, in Transcendental Relation of Action
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings Metamorphosis
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Metamorphosis
Metamorphosis Rebuilding Chrysalis, Histolysa reformans
One life can pass through bodies of wholly different form by dissolving the old one and building the next from its matter, so a being stays itself through a complete change of shape.
Discourse genus, in The General Genera
Grammar and logic: words, sentences, arguments, method and proof.
Its beings keep its outline: scroll, filiform.
beings Echolalia, Glossolalia, Prophecy, Syllable, Symbol, Babelhum, Tongue Horizon, Poetry
Path phylum, in Discourse
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
beings Prophecy, Tongue Horizon
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Tongue Horizon
Tongue Horizon Parting Tongue, Glossorizon divergens
Two peoples drifting apart one syllable at a time reach a moment after which they no longer understand each other; no one notices it being crossed, and it cannot be crossed back.
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Prophecy
Prophecy Foreseeing Polyp, Mantipolypus praesens
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.
Link phylum, in Discourse
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Symbol
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Symbol
Symbol Translating Bivalve, Symbolaria transferens
A symbol carries meaning from one thing to another by a bond its users share, so it works as a translation, and the meaning it carries grows richer with each crossing.
Force phylum, in Discourse
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
beings Glossolalia
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Glossolalia
Glossolalia Fervent Babble, Lalopneuma effundens
Glossolalia is fluent speech in an invented tongue, built from the speaker's own sounds in the rise and fall of talk, and its fervour reaches hearers ahead of any meaning.
Cycle phylum, in Discourse
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Poetry
Poetry Condensing Sky, Versicaelum condensans
Language under the pressure of form says more than its words, and is remembered because of that pressure.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Echolalia
Echolalia Answering Conch, Echomimus iterans
Echolalia gives back the words it hears, whole and in their own tune, and the borrowed phrase can answer, comfort, or grow into speech of one's own.
Part and whole phylum, in Discourse
Is its logic parts that make a whole, units fitted together?
Its body is organized as parts making a whole, each part distinct and fitted to the others.
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Syllable
Syllable Pulse Blossom, Sonopetala articulata
The smallest beat of speech is also its seed, since words, rhythm and rhyme all grow from how syllables combine.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Babelhum
Babelhum Murmur Swarm, Murmurus babelicus
The hum of a crowded room, where so many voices' syllables mix that none can be told apart, is the heat death of speech; only one's own name still rises out of it.
God genus, in The General Genera
God and the divine.
Its beings keep its outline: spire, crown.
beings Miracle
Verticality phylum, in God
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
beings Miracle
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings Miracle
Miracle Breaking Sign, Thaumatia signifera
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.
World genus, in The General Genera
The world as a whole, spiritual and corporeal: spirits and angels, the heavens and the stars, the earth.
Its beings keep its outline: discoid, globular.
beings Archipelago, Erosion, Possession
Container phylum, in World
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
beings Possession
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Possession
Possession Ridden Vessel, Enthearia inquilina
A person can be inhabited by another presence that moves and speaks through the body, and a group that recognises the tenant lets it say and demand what the host alone would keep unsaid.
Link phylum, in World
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Archipelago
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Archipelago
Archipelago Scattered Range, Nesodesmia submersa
An archipelago is a scatter of islands that are the summits of one submerged range, one body divided by the sea, and its separation breeds kinds found only there.
Verticality phylum, in World
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
beings Erosion
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Erosion
Erosion Patient Scour, Abrasoria lenta
Water, wind and ice wear down whatever stands above them, grain by grain, and carry it to low places where it builds new ground, so erosion makes landforms by taking land away.
Substance predicament
Its beings keep its symmetry: bilateral, dendritic, radial 5.
Holds, among the codex’s beings, Element, Stone, Beast.
Element genus, in Substance
The elements, fire, air, water and earth, and the meteors: weather and what happens in the air.
Its beings keep its outline: sac, bell.
beings Cloud, Fire, Frost, Lake, Rain, River, Storm, Wind
Container phylum, in Element
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
beings Lake
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Lake
Lake Held Sky, Limnaria tenens
A lake is still water held in a basin, which keeps what flows into it, lets it settle in layers, and mirrors the sky on a surface calm enough to hold it.
Path phylum, in Element
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
River Passing Form, Potamorpha manens
A river is a form that lasts while every drop in it moves on, so it stays the same river through water that is always new.
Wind Levelling Current, Anemopora aequans
Wind is air moving down a difference of pressure, so it exists only while the world is uneven, and it carries whatever it passes through.
Force phylum, in Element
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
Fire Kindling Chain, Pyrocatena accendens
Fire is matter transformed in a chain that feeds itself, each burning part heating the next until its fuel or air is spent.
Storm Unburdening Cell, Turbocella exonerans
Tension stored past a threshold is released as a force that remakes its surroundings and then spends itself.
Scale phylum, in Element
Is its logic more and less, a gradient, an amount that rises or falls?
Its body is organized as a scale, its parts graded from small to large.
beings Frost
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Frost
Frost Night Feather, Pruinaria plumata
Frost is vapour that freezes straight onto ground colder than the air on still, clear nights, growing feathered crystals that show where the cold lies and vanish at sunrise.
Verticality phylum, in Element
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Cloud
Cloud Floating Likeness, Nubifacies mutabilis
A cloud is water condensed into droplets fine enough to float, its outline remade by every wind, and its changing forms are where the mind most readily finds faces.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Rain
Rain Returning Fall, Pluviaria reddens
Rain is water that rose as vapour and falls back to the ground, so the land lives by a return it partly feeds itself.
Stone genus, in Substance
Stones, earths and gems.
Its beings keep its outline: columnar, cluster.
beings Amber, Ash, Clay, Diamond, Petrification, Salt, Sand
Container phylum, in Stone
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Amber
Amber Outlasting Resin, Succinaria perennis
Amber is a tree's resin hardened over ages into a seal that keeps small moments of life intact long after the forest that made it is gone.
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Clay
Clay Pliant Earth, Pelotypus retinens
Clay is earth fine enough to take any shape when wet and keep it once dried and fired, so it became the first material in which people made vessels, figures and written records.
Force phylum, in Stone
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
beings Diamond
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Diamond
Diamond Pressed Light, Adamantaria pressa
Diamond is carbon pressed deep in the earth into the hardest crystal, which eruptions carry to the surface and cutting turns into scattered light.
Balance phylum, in Stone
Is its logic an equilibrium between opposites or weights?
Its body is organized as a balance, its weights held in equilibrium around an axis.
beings Salt
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Salt
Salt Fixing Crystal, Halocrystis figens
Salt is the crystal left when the sea dries, and it keeps what it touches by drawing out its water, until in excess it makes the land barren.
Cycle phylum, in Stone
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings Ash
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings Ash
Ash Fertile Remnant, Favillaria nutriens
Ash is the mineral remainder of a burnt body, and it returns to the soil as food for the next growth or rides the wind far from the fire that made it.
Part and whole phylum, in Stone
Is its logic parts that make a whole, units fitted together?
Its body is organized as parts making a whole, each part distinct and fitted to the others.
beings Petrification
Decay class, the dominant organ
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It holds how it fails, and its residue.
beings Petrification
Petrification Faithful Stone, Lithomorpha fidelis
Petrification replaces a living body with stone, grain by grain, so its form outlasts its matter and stays exact and rigid until it shatters.
Scale phylum, in Stone
Is its logic more and less, a gradient, an amount that rises or falls?
Its body is organized as a scale, its parts graded from small to large.
beings Sand
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings Sand
Sand Drifting Multitude, Psammoplethos migrans
Sand is stone worn into grains small enough to flow and hard enough to last, so it drifts in dunes, holds water between its grains and melts into glass.
Beast genus, in Substance
Beasts.
Its beings keep its outline: quadruped.
beings Chimera
Part and whole phylum, in Beast
Is its logic parts that make a whole, units fitted together?
Its body is organized as parts making a whole, each part distinct and fitted to the others.
beings Chimera
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Chimera
Chimera Polyglot Graft, Insitaria polyglotta
One body can be made of parts from different kinds and still live, and wherever kinds are meant to stay pure such a body is read as a monster or a marvel.
Quantity predicament
Its beings keep its symmetry: tessellated, radial 6, radial 8.
Holds, among the codex’s beings, Space.
Space genus, in Quantity
Time and place, and the parts of each.
Its beings keep its outline: cage, ribbon.
beings Equinox, Eternity, Spring, Winter, Foresilence, Tide of Days
Container phylum, in Space
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
beings Winter
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Winter
Winter Keeping Sleep, Hiemaria condens
Winter is the cold season when growth stops, and life outlasts it by withdrawing, sleeping and living on its stores, its seed kept for the year to come.
Force phylum, in Space
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
beings Spring
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Spring
Spring Sudden Green, Vernaria erumpens
Spring is the season when life stored through the cold breaks open all at once, set off by lengthening days and returning warmth, and it spends in weeks what was saved for months.
Balance phylum, in Space
Is its logic an equilibrium between opposites or weights?
Its body is organized as a balance, its weights held in equilibrium around an axis.
beings Equinox, Foresilence
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Equinox
Equinox Hinge of the Year, Isohemera bifrons
Day and night are equal only at the instant the year passes from one side to the other, so a balance can be a crossing that no one can stay in.
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Foresilence
Foresilence Jointing Pause, Pausiphonia articulans
Silence shapes music; a pause sets how long the listener waits, so what is withheld decides how the next sound is heard.
Cycle phylum, in Space
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings Tide of Days
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Tide of Days
Tide of Days Ring of Feasts, Fastocyclus communis
A calendar is a system in which the sky gives fixed points, rites give them forms and memory gives them meaning, so a group keeps returning together to the same days and the same past.
Centre and periphery phylum, in Space
Is its logic a core and what surrounds it, near to or far from a centre?
Its body is organized around a centre, its parts thinning and fading toward the edge.
beings Eternity
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Eternity
Eternity Slowest Rhythm, Aeviaria lentissima
Eternity is time without end, or the whole of time held at once, and a turning thing comes nearer to it the slower its rhythm runs.
Quality predicament
Its beings keep its symmetry: amorphous, asymmetric.
Holds, among the codex’s beings, Natural Power, Habit, Manners, Sensible Quality, Disease.
Natural Power genus, in Quality
The powers of soul and body: the senses, memory, imagination, understanding, will.
Its beings keep its outline: bell, star.
beings Apophenia, Dream, Memory, Oblivion, Presence, Trance, Afterlistening, Simultaneous Remembering
Container phylum, in Natural Power
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
beings Dream
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Dream
Dream Night Ferment, Oneirozyma nocturna
Each night the sleeping mind turns the day's residue into scenes it lives as real, digesting experience by imagining it, and most of what it makes is gone by morning.
Path phylum, in Natural Power
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
beings Memory, Afterlistening
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Afterlistening
Afterlistening Lingering Ear, Postaudia expectans
Music leaves its listeners expecting, so the silence after it is heard as music; for a while a cough lands like a cadence and the street sounds composed.
Decay class, the dominant organ
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It holds how it fails, and its residue.
beings Memory
Memory Recollecting Fungus, Mnemomyces reconstruens
Remembering rebuilds the past each time, so forgetting is not memory's failure but the work that shapes what is kept.
Link phylum, in Natural Power
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Apophenia
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Apophenia
Apophenia Cloud-Face Weaver, Simulacrifex nebularis
A mind tuned to find patterns finds them in noise too, and the meaning it feels is the same whether the pattern is there or not.
Force phylum, in Natural Power
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
beings Oblivion
Decay class, the dominant organ
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It holds how it fails, and its residue.
beings Oblivion
Oblivion Clearing Current, Lethomyces purgans
Forgetting clears what is unused so that a mind can learn and act and a divided city can live together again, and the same force, pressed too far, erases what should be kept.
Cycle phylum, in Natural Power
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings Simultaneous Remembering
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Simultaneous Remembering
Simultaneous Remembering Tide of Recall, Synmnemon calendaris
When a whole people remembers the same past on the same day, each one's memory is pulled toward everyone else's, so a feast day makes many memories into one, and between feasts they drift apart again.
Centre and periphery phylum, in Natural Power
Is its logic a core and what surrounds it, near to or far from a centre?
Its body is organized around a centre, its parts thinning and fading toward the edge.
beings Presence
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Presence
Presence Here Glow, Adessia lucens
Presence joins the body's being here to attention on what is here, and that joining turns the passing moment into a lived one.
Scale phylum, in Natural Power
Is its logic more and less, a gradient, an amount that rises or falls?
Its body is organized as a scale, its parts graded from small to large.
beings Trance
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Trance
Trance Loosening Beat, Ekstasaria rhythmica
Rhythm, breath and dance kept up long enough shift a waking person into a state where the self loosens, and the rite around it gives that state its meaning and its end.
Habit genus, in Quality
Acquired dispositions: virtues and vices, knowledge and the arts.
Its beings keep its outline: coil, cluster.
beings Geomancy, Innocence, Music, Patience, Hesychology, Subtractive Phenomenology
Path phylum, in Habit
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
beings Music
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Music
Music Waiting Songmaker, Melopoeus exspectans
Sound ordered in time makes a listener expect what comes next, and music means by how it meets, delays or denies that expectation.
Part and whole phylum, in Habit
Is its logic parts that make a whole, units fitted together?
Its body is organized as parts making a whole, each part distinct and fitted to the others.
beings Subtractive Phenomenology
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Subtractive Phenomenology
Subtractive Phenomenology Lantern of Less, Aphaeresis sensoria
A science of what experience contains beneath what it is busy with, found by taking away one sense at a time, sound, light, movement, a quick breath, until the background that was always there can be inventoried.
Centre and periphery phylum, in Habit
Is its logic a core and what surrounds it, near to or far from a centre?
Its body is organized around a centre, its parts thinning and fading toward the edge.
beings Geomancy
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Geomancy
Geomancy Oracle Stone, Punctolithus respondens
A finite set of forms can turn any random mark into an answer, which says as much about the forms as about chance.
Scale phylum, in Habit
Is its logic more and less, a gradient, an amount that rises or falls?
Its body is organized as a scale, its parts graded from small to large.
beings Patience, Hesychology
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Hesychology
Hesychology Stillness Gauge, Hesychometra gradata
Stillness can be the variable of a science; as sound is withdrawn and breath slows step by step, experience changes in an order that trained observers can map and share.
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Patience
Patience Slow Ripener, Patientaria maturans
Some goods ripen only with time, and patience bears that time while the nearer reward is left alone, for as long as the promise looks worth keeping.
Verticality phylum, in Habit
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
beings Innocence
Decay class, the dominant organ
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It holds how it fails, and its residue.
beings Innocence
Innocence Unharmed Gaze, Innoxella aperta
A gaze that harm has yet to reach trusts what it sees, and it is known most clearly by the first betrayal that ends it.
Manners genus, in Quality
Ways of behaving toward others: courtesy and rudeness, humility and pride.
Its beings keep its outline: fan, crown.
beings Solitude
Container phylum, in Manners
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
beings Solitude
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Solitude
Solitude Hollow Listener, Eremocardia intenta
Withdrawing from others changes what can be perceived, and solitude differs from loneliness only in whether the withdrawal was chosen.
Sensible Quality genus, in Quality
What the senses meet: colour, sound, taste, smell, heat and texture.
Its beings keep its outline: bell, fan.
beings Aura, Chiaroscuro, Iridescence, Qualia
Balance phylum, in Sensible Quality
Is its logic an equilibrium between opposites or weights?
Its body is organized as a balance, its weights held in equilibrium around an axis.
beings Chiaroscuro
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Chiaroscuro
Chiaroscuro Rounding Shadow, Sciophota sculpens
Light set against dark across a surface makes a flat image look round, since the eye reads graded shade as a form turning away from the light.
Centre and periphery phylum, in Sensible Quality
Is its logic a core and what surrounds it, near to or far from a centre?
Its body is organized around a centre, its parts thinning and fading toward the edge.
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Qualia
Qualia Inward Eye, Qualiocellus intimus
Every experience has a felt quality that no complete description of the brain seems to contain, so knowing everything about seeing red is not the same as seeing it.
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Aura
Aura Herald Glow, Nimbaria praenuntians
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.
Scale phylum, in Sensible Quality
Is its logic more and less, a gradient, an amount that rises or falls?
Its body is organized as a scale, its parts graded from small to large.
beings Iridescence
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Iridescence
Iridescence Shifting Lustre, Stratochroa versans
Iridescence is colour made by fine layers that send light back in step, so it changes with the angle of sight and dies when the layers lose their order.
Disease genus, in Quality
Sickness and its kinds.
Its beings keep its outline: creeping, sac.
beings Placebo, Tinnitus, Vertigo
Container phylum, in Disease
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Tinnitus
Tinnitus Inner Chime, Endophonus tacitus
Tinnitus is a sound made by the hearing system itself, most often where hearing has been lost, and its hearer alone hears it, loudest in silence.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Placebo
Placebo Empty Remedy, Semiotheria inanis
The sign of a cure can act as a cure, because the body answers to what treatment means.
Verticality phylum, in Disease
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
beings Vertigo
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Vertigo
Vertigo Reeling Edge, Ilingia praeceps
Vertigo is the felt loss of ground when the senses disagree about which way is down, and at a height it joins the fear of falling to a pull toward the drop.
Action predicament
Its beings keep its symmetry: spiral, helical.
Holds, among the codex’s beings, Spiritual Action, Corporeal Action, Motion, Operation.
Spiritual Action genus, in Action
Acts of mind and will: thinking, judging, willing, and the passions.
Its beings keep its outline: spire, bell.
beings Faith, Fear, Love, Nostalgia, Reflection, Silence, Volition, Knowing Trust, Witnessed Relief, Gazeroot (second reading), The Swing Door
Container phylum, in Spiritual Action
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
beings Knowing Trust
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Knowing Trust
Knowing Trust Open Trust, Fidivacua aperta
Trust given knowingly to something empty can still change the one who gives it, because what acts is the act of trusting, not its object.
Path phylum, in Spiritual Action
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
beings Nostalgia
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Nostalgia
Nostalgia Homeward Ache, Nostodynia praesentis
Longing to return to a home or a time that is gone smooths the past into a place worth going back to, and the ache can turn even on the present as it slips away.
Link phylum, in Spiritual Action
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Love, Witnessed Relief, Gazeroot (second reading)
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Love, Gazeroot (second reading)
Love Drawing Bond, Erodesma tenax
Love draws beings to one particular other and holds them there, by a pull that body and mind build together, and the bond becomes a base from which each can venture out.
Gazeroot (second reading) Witness Thread, Martyromyces nexilis
Relief can live between two people rather than in either, as a thread that forms while one watches the other be relieved and spreads as a network through a group.
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings Witnessed Relief
Witnessed Relief Witness Balm, Martyrotheria contagiosa
The meaning of being treated can be caught from watching another person be relieved, so relief, and harm, travel through a group by witness.
Force phylum, in Spiritual Action
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Volition
Volition Choosing Knot, Voluntaria eligens
An act is willed when it follows from a choice the agent makes after weighing desires and reasons, and the will shows itself most plainly where it fails to carry the act through.
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Fear
Fear Bristling Sentinel, Horripila vigilans
A body that acts on a warning before it understands it survives more often, so fear moves first and asks afterwards.
Balance phylum, in Spiritual Action
Is its logic an equilibrium between opposites or weights?
Its body is organized as a balance, its weights held in equilibrium around an axis.
beings Reflection
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Reflection
Reflection Returned Light, Anaclasia revertens
A smooth surface sends light back at the angle it came, giving an image of the world, and a mind can turn back the same way on its own thinking.
Cycle phylum, in Spiritual Action
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings The Swing Door
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings The Swing Door
The Swing Door Answering Breath, Phobopnoe reciproca
Fear quickens the breath, and the breath can quicken or quiet fear in return, so the two make a loop that can be entered from either side.
Scale phylum, in Spiritual Action
Is its logic more and less, a gradient, an amount that rises or falls?
Its body is organized as a scale, its parts graded from small to large.
beings Silence
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Silence
Silence Full Quiet, Tacitaria plena
Silence is never the absence of all sound but a frame in which the sounds that louder ones hid can be heard, so it is a way of listening.
Verticality phylum, in Spiritual Action
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
beings Faith
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Faith
Faith Watcher of the Unseen, Fidosensor invisibilium
Trust given ahead of evidence changes what one perceives and does, and so changes what one meets.
Corporeal Action genus, in Action
Acts of the body: eating, sleeping, breathing, the bodily functions.
Its beings keep its outline: vase, sac.
beings Awakening, Breath, Shared Breath
Link phylum, in Corporeal Action
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Shared Breath
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Shared Breath
Shared Breath Choir Lung, Synpnoe chorica
A song sets the moments when its singers must breathe, so singing together makes a group breathe, and their hearts beat, as one.
Cycle phylum, in Corporeal Action
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings Breath
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings Breath
Breath Turn-Taking Bellows, Pneumatophora alternans
A body lives only by taking in the air around it and giving it back in a rhythm it keeps without thinking, so breath is the place where inside and outside are exchanged.
Verticality phylum, in Corporeal Action
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
beings Awakening
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Awakening
Awakening Dawning Eye, Egersia matutina
Each morning the brain switches from sleep to waking and the senses open to the world, and the same passage names the wider change from a closed view into an open one.
Motion genus, in Action
Movements: going, running, flying, swimming.
Its beings keep its outline: winged, ribbon.
beings Resonance, Resonance (second reading), Weightlessness
Link phylum, in Motion
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Resonance (second reading)
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Resonance (second reading)
Resonance (second reading) Listening Bell, Auscultor consonans
Being tuned decides what can be heard at all, so attunement is a kind of perception before it is a kind of harmony.
Cycle phylum, in Motion
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings Resonance
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Resonance
Resonance Answering Cloud, Consonia accumulans
A system answers most strongly to what moves at its own rhythm, so timing can matter more than force.
Verticality phylum, in Motion
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
beings Weightlessness
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Weightlessness
Weightlessness Floating Fall, Abaria cadens
A body falling freely with everything around it weighs nothing, and minds lifted in rapture report the same lightness.
Operation genus, in Action
The crafts and their works: making, building, weaving, cooking.
Its beings keep its outline: vase, cage.
beings Lullaby, Mimesis, Pointillism
Link phylum, in Operation
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Mimesis
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Mimesis
Mimesis Returning Moth, Similimorpha reddens
Making a likeness is a way of knowing and of becoming, and also the oldest way of being deceived.
Cycle phylum, in Operation
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings Lullaby
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Lullaby
Lullaby Rocking Hush, Cunabularia sopiens
A lullaby is a slow song sung close with a sway, and in cultures across the world it calms a child into sleep while binding it to the voice that sings.
Part and whole phylum, in Operation
Is its logic parts that make a whole, units fitted together?
Its body is organized as parts making a whole, each part distinct and fitted to the others.
beings Pointillism
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings Pointillism
Pointillism Distant Speckle, Punctopsia miscens
Pointillism builds an image from separate dots of pure colour that the eye fuses at a distance, so the picture is finished in the viewer's eye.
Relation predicament
Its beings keep its symmetry: biradial, radial 3.
Holds, among the codex’s beings, Oeconomical Relation, Ecclesiastical Relation.
Oeconomical Relation genus, in Relation
The household and family: marriage, parent and child, kin.
Its beings keep its outline: knot, pendant.
beings The Shared Cell
Container phylum, in Oeconomical Relation
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
beings The Shared Cell
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings The Shared Cell
The Shared Cell Twin Anchorhold, Anachoretes binatus
A pair can be solitary; two people who withdraw from the world together, an anchoress and her companion, an old couple in a remote house, keep a solitude neither could keep alone, because each guards the other from everyone else.
Ecclesiastical Relation genus, in Relation
Religion and the church: rites, offices and holy things.
Its beings keep its outline: spire, crown.
beings Ritual, Commemorative Revision
Path phylum, in Ecclesiastical Relation
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
beings Ritual
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Ritual
Ritual Processional Nest, Ritunidus iterans
Repeating a prescribed form together creates belonging and passage that no single intention could create.
Cycle phylum, in Ecclesiastical Relation
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings Commemorative Revision
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Commemorative Revision
Commemorative Revision Anniversary Rewriter, Anamnestes palimpsestus
Each performance of a rite reopens the memory it marks to change, so a group's past is rewritten in steps, on the dates of its rites, while the form stays the same.
WordNet
The twenty-five files in which WordNet's makers entered every sense of every English noun: a flat list, with no tree above it. After WordNet's noun lexicographer files (Princeton University).
Its categories give a being its gesture and the way it grew. Its kinds were given to the beings by blind readers. Then come the codex’s own ranks: the bodily pattern its logic follows (its phylum) and the organ it cannot lose (its class). Choose any branch to read it.
Things group
Holds, among the codex’s beings, Object, Substance, Animal.
Object category, in Things
Natural objects, not made by people.
Its beings keep its gesture: hardens, sinks; its growth: faceted, sedimentary.
beings Archipelago, Cloud, Lake, River
Container phylum, in Object
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
beings Lake
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Lake
Lake Held Sky, Limnaria tenens
A lake is still water held in a basin, which keeps what flows into it, lets it settle in layers, and mirrors the sky on a surface calm enough to hold it.
Path phylum, in Object
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
beings River
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings River
River Passing Form, Potamorpha manens
A river is a form that lasts while every drop in it moves on, so it stays the same river through water that is always new.
Link phylum, in Object
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Archipelago
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Archipelago
Archipelago Scattered Range, Nesodesmia submersa
An archipelago is a scatter of islands that are the summits of one submerged range, one body divided by the sea, and its separation breeds kinds found only there.
Verticality phylum, in Object
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
beings Cloud
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Cloud
Cloud Floating Likeness, Nubifacies mutabilis
A cloud is water condensed into droplets fine enough to float, its outline remade by every wind, and its changing forms are where the mind most readily finds faces.
Substance category, in Things
Substances.
Its beings keep its gesture: dissolves, sinks; its growth: sedimentary, encrusted.
beings Amber, Ash, Clay, Diamond, Salt, Sand
Container phylum, in Substance
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Amber
Amber Outlasting Resin, Succinaria perennis
Amber is a tree's resin hardened over ages into a seal that keeps small moments of life intact long after the forest that made it is gone.
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Clay
Clay Pliant Earth, Pelotypus retinens
Clay is earth fine enough to take any shape when wet and keep it once dried and fired, so it became the first material in which people made vessels, figures and written records.
Force phylum, in Substance
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
beings Diamond
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Diamond
Diamond Pressed Light, Adamantaria pressa
Diamond is carbon pressed deep in the earth into the hardest crystal, which eruptions carry to the surface and cutting turns into scattered light.
Balance phylum, in Substance
Is its logic an equilibrium between opposites or weights?
Its body is organized as a balance, its weights held in equilibrium around an axis.
beings Salt
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Salt
Salt Fixing Crystal, Halocrystis figens
Salt is the crystal left when the sea dries, and it keeps what it touches by drawing out its water, until in excess it makes the land barren.
Cycle phylum, in Substance
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings Ash
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings Ash
Ash Fertile Remnant, Favillaria nutriens
Ash is the mineral remainder of a burnt body, and it returns to the soil as food for the next growth or rides the wind far from the fire that made it.
Scale phylum, in Substance
Is its logic more and less, a gradient, an amount that rises or falls?
Its body is organized as a scale, its parts graded from small to large.
beings Sand
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings Sand
Sand Drifting Multitude, Psammoplethos migrans
Sand is stone worn into grains small enough to flow and hard enough to last, so it drifts in dunes, holds water between its grains and melts into glass.
Animal category, in Things
Animals.
Its beings keep its gesture: reaches, turns; its growth: moulting, intercalary.
beings Chimera
Part and whole phylum, in Animal
Is its logic parts that make a whole, units fitted together?
Its body is organized as parts making a whole, each part distinct and fitted to the others.
beings Chimera
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Chimera
Chimera Polyglot Graft, Insitaria polyglotta
One body can be made of parts from different kinds and still live, and wherever kinds are meant to stay pure such a body is read as a monster or a marvel.
Happenings group
Holds, among the codex’s beings, Act, Event, Process, Phenomenon.
Act category, in Happenings
Acts or actions.
Its beings keep its gesture: bursts, splits; its growth: apical, grafted.
beings Geomancy, Mimesis, Pointillism, Ritual, Knowing Trust
Container phylum, in Act
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
beings Knowing Trust
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Knowing Trust
Knowing Trust Open Trust, Fidivacua aperta
Trust given knowingly to something empty can still change the one who gives it, because what acts is the act of trusting, not its object.
Path phylum, in Act
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
beings Ritual
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Ritual
Ritual Processional Nest, Ritunidus iterans
Repeating a prescribed form together creates belonging and passage that no single intention could create.
Link phylum, in Act
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Mimesis
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Mimesis
Mimesis Returning Moth, Similimorpha reddens
Making a likeness is a way of knowing and of becoming, and also the oldest way of being deceived.
Part and whole phylum, in Act
Is its logic parts that make a whole, units fitted together?
Its body is organized as parts making a whole, each part distinct and fitted to the others.
beings Pointillism
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings Pointillism
Pointillism Distant Speckle, Punctopsia miscens
Pointillism builds an image from separate dots of pure colour that the eye fuses at a distance, so the picture is finished in the viewer's eye.
Centre and periphery phylum, in Act
Is its logic a core and what surrounds it, near to or far from a centre?
Its body is organized around a centre, its parts thinning and fading toward the edge.
beings Geomancy
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Geomancy
Geomancy Oracle Stone, Punctolithus respondens
A finite set of forms can turn any random mark into an answer, which says as much about the forms as about chance.
Event category, in Happenings
Natural events.
Its beings keep its gesture: bursts, dissolves; its growth: moulting, regenerated.
beings Miracle
Verticality phylum, in Event
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
beings Miracle
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings Miracle
Miracle Breaking Sign, Thaumatia signifera
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.
Process category, in Happenings
Natural processes.
Its beings keep its gesture: turns, coils; its growth: accretion, intercalary.
beings Awakening, Breath, Entelechy, Entropy, Erosion, Fire, Metamorphosis, Petrification, Rushmaker, Shared Breath, Self-Ending Order, Tongue Horizon, Witnessed Relief, Gazeroot (second reading), Commemorative Revision, The Swing Door
Path phylum, in Process
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
beings Entelechy, Tongue Horizon
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Entelechy
Entelechy Completing Seed, Telocarpus intrinsecus
A living thing holds within it the form it grows toward, and entelechy is that inner completion at work, the seed already aimed at the plant.
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Tongue Horizon
Tongue Horizon Parting Tongue, Glossorizon divergens
Two peoples drifting apart one syllable at a time reach a moment after which they no longer understand each other; no one notices it being crossed, and it cannot be crossed back.
Link phylum, in Process
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Shared Breath, Witnessed Relief, Gazeroot (second reading)
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Shared Breath, Gazeroot (second reading)
Shared Breath Choir Lung, Synpnoe chorica
A song sets the moments when its singers must breathe, so singing together makes a group breathe, and their hearts beat, as one.
Gazeroot (second reading) Witness Thread, Martyromyces nexilis
Relief can live between two people rather than in either, as a thread that forms while one watches the other be relieved and spreads as a network through a group.
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings Witnessed Relief
Witnessed Relief Witness Balm, Martyrotheria contagiosa
The meaning of being treated can be caught from watching another person be relieved, so relief, and harm, travel through a group by witness.
Force phylum, in Process
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
beings Fire, Rushmaker, Self-Ending Order
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Fire, Rushmaker, Self-Ending Order
Fire Kindling Chain, Pyrocatena accendens
Fire is matter transformed in a chain that feeds itself, each burning part heating the next until its fuel or air is spent.
Rushmaker Rush Breaker, Pancursor ruptor
Where everyone's safety depends on everyone staying calm, one sign of threat can set off a rush that makes the threat real.
Self-Ending Order Slope Eater, Clinophagus evanescens
Order appears where a difference is steep because ordered flow levels it faster than chance, so every such pattern is entropy's shortcut and works toward its own end.
Cycle phylum, in Process
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings Breath, Metamorphosis, Commemorative Revision, The Swing Door
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Metamorphosis, Commemorative Revision, The Swing Door
Metamorphosis Rebuilding Chrysalis, Histolysa reformans
One life can pass through bodies of wholly different form by dissolving the old one and building the next from its matter, so a being stays itself through a complete change of shape.
Commemorative Revision Anniversary Rewriter, Anamnestes palimpsestus
Each performance of a rite reopens the memory it marks to change, so a group's past is rewritten in steps, on the dates of its rites, while the form stays the same.
The Swing Door Answering Breath, Phobopnoe reciproca
Fear quickens the breath, and the breath can quicken or quiet fear in return, so the two make a loop that can be entered from either side.
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings Breath
Breath Turn-Taking Bellows, Pneumatophora alternans
A body lives only by taking in the air around it and giving it back in a rhythm it keeps without thinking, so breath is the place where inside and outside are exchanged.
Part and whole phylum, in Process
Is its logic parts that make a whole, units fitted together?
Its body is organized as parts making a whole, each part distinct and fitted to the others.
beings Petrification
Decay class, the dominant organ
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It holds how it fails, and its residue.
beings Petrification
Petrification Faithful Stone, Lithomorpha fidelis
Petrification replaces a living body with stone, grain by grain, so its form outlasts its matter and stays exact and rigid until it shatters.
Scale phylum, in Process
Is its logic more and less, a gradient, an amount that rises or falls?
Its body is organized as a scale, its parts graded from small to large.
beings Entropy
Decay class, the dominant organ
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It holds how it fails, and its residue.
beings Entropy
Entropy Evening Rot, Aequalis dissolvens
Left to itself every difference evens out, and that evening out is what gives time its direction.
Verticality phylum, in Process
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
Awakening Dawning Eye, Egersia matutina
Each morning the brain switches from sleep to waking and the senses open to the world, and the same passage names the wider change from a closed view into an open one.
Erosion Patient Scour, Abrasoria lenta
Water, wind and ice wear down whatever stands above them, grain by grain, and carry it to low places where it builds new ground, so erosion makes landforms by taking land away.
Phenomenon category, in Happenings
Natural phenomena.
Its beings keep its gesture: emits, pulses; its growth: gnomonic, swelling.
beings Emergence, Frost, Iridescence, Placebo, Rain, Reflection, Resonance, Resonance (second reading), Storm, Wind
Container phylum, in Phenomenon
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
beings Placebo
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Placebo
Placebo Empty Remedy, Semiotheria inanis
The sign of a cure can act as a cure, because the body answers to what treatment means.
Path phylum, in Phenomenon
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
beings Wind
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings Wind
Wind Levelling Current, Anemopora aequans
Wind is air moving down a difference of pressure, so it exists only while the world is uneven, and it carries whatever it passes through.
Link phylum, in Phenomenon
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Resonance (second reading)
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Resonance (second reading)
Resonance (second reading) Listening Bell, Auscultor consonans
Being tuned decides what can be heard at all, so attunement is a kind of perception before it is a kind of harmony.
Force phylum, in Phenomenon
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
beings Storm
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Storm
Storm Unburdening Cell, Turbocella exonerans
Tension stored past a threshold is released as a force that remakes its surroundings and then spends itself.
Balance phylum, in Phenomenon
Is its logic an equilibrium between opposites or weights?
Its body is organized as a balance, its weights held in equilibrium around an axis.
beings Reflection
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Reflection
Reflection Returned Light, Anaclasia revertens
A smooth surface sends light back at the angle it came, giving an image of the world, and a mind can turn back the same way on its own thinking.
Cycle phylum, in Phenomenon
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings Resonance
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Resonance
Resonance Answering Cloud, Consonia accumulans
A system answers most strongly to what moves at its own rhythm, so timing can matter more than force.
Part and whole phylum, in Phenomenon
Is its logic parts that make a whole, units fitted together?
Its body is organized as parts making a whole, each part distinct and fitted to the others.
beings Emergence
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Emergence
Emergence Rising Cluster, Holobotrys oriens
When many parts interact, the whole can do what no part can, and that new behaviour needs its own description.
Scale phylum, in Phenomenon
Is its logic more and less, a gradient, an amount that rises or falls?
Its body is organized as a scale, its parts graded from small to large.
beings Frost, Iridescence
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Frost
Frost Night Feather, Pruinaria plumata
Frost is vapour that freezes straight onto ground colder than the air on still, clear nights, growing feathered crystals that show where the cold lies and vanish at sunrise.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Iridescence
Iridescence Shifting Lustre, Stratochroa versans
Iridescence is colour made by fine layers that send light back in step, so it changes with the angle of sight and dies when the layers lose their order.
Verticality phylum, in Phenomenon
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
beings Rain
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Rain
Rain Returning Fall, Pluviaria reddens
Rain is water that rose as vapour and falls back to the ground, so the land lives by a return it partly feeds itself.
Abstractions group
Holds, among the codex’s beings, Attribute, Cognition, Communication, Feeling, Relation, State, Time.
Attribute category, in Abstractions
Attributes of people and objects.
Its beings keep its gesture: hardens, balances; its growth: faceted, accretion.
beings Aura, Innocence, Patience, Symmetry
Balance phylum, in Attribute
Is its logic an equilibrium between opposites or weights?
Its body is organized as a balance, its weights held in equilibrium around an axis.
beings Symmetry
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Symmetry
Symmetry Mirror Spar, Invariantia gemella
What stays the same when something is turned, mirrored or moved tells you what that thing really is.
Centre and periphery phylum, in Attribute
Is its logic a core and what surrounds it, near to or far from a centre?
Its body is organized around a centre, its parts thinning and fading toward the edge.
beings Aura
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Aura
Aura Herald Glow, Nimbaria praenuntians
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.
Scale phylum, in Attribute
Is its logic more and less, a gradient, an amount that rises or falls?
Its body is organized as a scale, its parts graded from small to large.
beings Patience
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Patience
Patience Slow Ripener, Patientaria maturans
Some goods ripen only with time, and patience bears that time while the nearer reward is left alone, for as long as the promise looks worth keeping.
Verticality phylum, in Attribute
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
beings Innocence
Decay class, the dominant organ
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It holds how it fails, and its residue.
beings Innocence
Innocence Unharmed Gaze, Innoxella aperta
A gaze that harm has yet to reach trusts what it sees, and it is known most clearly by the first betrayal that ends it.
Cognition category, in Abstractions
Cognitive processes and contents.
Its beings keep its gesture: gathers, coils; its growth: gnomonic, accretion.
beings Apophenia, Dream, Faith, Memory, Oblivion, Qualia, Silence, Volition, Afterlistening, Simultaneous Remembering, Hesychology, Subtractive Phenomenology
Container phylum, in Cognition
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
beings Dream
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Dream
Dream Night Ferment, Oneirozyma nocturna
Each night the sleeping mind turns the day's residue into scenes it lives as real, digesting experience by imagining it, and most of what it makes is gone by morning.
Path phylum, in Cognition
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
beings Memory, Afterlistening
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Afterlistening
Afterlistening Lingering Ear, Postaudia expectans
Music leaves its listeners expecting, so the silence after it is heard as music; for a while a cough lands like a cadence and the street sounds composed.
Decay class, the dominant organ
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It holds how it fails, and its residue.
beings Memory
Memory Recollecting Fungus, Mnemomyces reconstruens
Remembering rebuilds the past each time, so forgetting is not memory's failure but the work that shapes what is kept.
Link phylum, in Cognition
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Apophenia
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Apophenia
Apophenia Cloud-Face Weaver, Simulacrifex nebularis
A mind tuned to find patterns finds them in noise too, and the meaning it feels is the same whether the pattern is there or not.
Force phylum, in Cognition
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Volition
Volition Choosing Knot, Voluntaria eligens
An act is willed when it follows from a choice the agent makes after weighing desires and reasons, and the will shows itself most plainly where it fails to carry the act through.
Decay class, the dominant organ
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It holds how it fails, and its residue.
beings Oblivion
Oblivion Clearing Current, Lethomyces purgans
Forgetting clears what is unused so that a mind can learn and act and a divided city can live together again, and the same force, pressed too far, erases what should be kept.
Cycle phylum, in Cognition
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings Simultaneous Remembering
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Simultaneous Remembering
Simultaneous Remembering Tide of Recall, Synmnemon calendaris
When a whole people remembers the same past on the same day, each one's memory is pulled toward everyone else's, so a feast day makes many memories into one, and between feasts they drift apart again.
Part and whole phylum, in Cognition
Is its logic parts that make a whole, units fitted together?
Its body is organized as parts making a whole, each part distinct and fitted to the others.
beings Subtractive Phenomenology
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Subtractive Phenomenology
Subtractive Phenomenology Lantern of Less, Aphaeresis sensoria
A science of what experience contains beneath what it is busy with, found by taking away one sense at a time, sound, light, movement, a quick breath, until the background that was always there can be inventoried.
Centre and periphery phylum, in Cognition
Is its logic a core and what surrounds it, near to or far from a centre?
Its body is organized around a centre, its parts thinning and fading toward the edge.
beings Qualia
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Qualia
Qualia Inward Eye, Qualiocellus intimus
Every experience has a felt quality that no complete description of the brain seems to contain, so knowing everything about seeing red is not the same as seeing it.
Scale phylum, in Cognition
Is its logic more and less, a gradient, an amount that rises or falls?
Its body is organized as a scale, its parts graded from small to large.
beings Silence, Hesychology
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Hesychology
Hesychology Stillness Gauge, Hesychometra gradata
Stillness can be the variable of a science; as sound is withdrawn and breath slows step by step, experience changes in an order that trained observers can map and share.
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Silence
Silence Full Quiet, Tacitaria plena
Silence is never the absence of all sound but a frame in which the sounds that louder ones hid can be heard, so it is a way of listening.
Verticality phylum, in Cognition
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
beings Faith
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Faith
Faith Watcher of the Unseen, Fidosensor invisibilium
Trust given ahead of evidence changes what one perceives and does, and so changes what one meets.
Communication category, in Abstractions
Communicative processes and contents.
Its beings keep its gesture: emits, interlaces; its growth: budding, grafted.
beings Chiaroscuro, Echolalia, Glossolalia, Lullaby, Music, Prophecy, Syllable, Symbol, Babelhum, Poetry
Path phylum, in Communication
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Prophecy
Prophecy Foreseeing Polyp, Mantipolypus praesens
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.
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Music
Music Waiting Songmaker, Melopoeus exspectans
Sound ordered in time makes a listener expect what comes next, and music means by how it meets, delays or denies that expectation.
Link phylum, in Communication
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Symbol
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Symbol
Symbol Translating Bivalve, Symbolaria transferens
A symbol carries meaning from one thing to another by a bond its users share, so it works as a translation, and the meaning it carries grows richer with each crossing.
Force phylum, in Communication
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
beings Glossolalia
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Glossolalia
Glossolalia Fervent Babble, Lalopneuma effundens
Glossolalia is fluent speech in an invented tongue, built from the speaker's own sounds in the rise and fall of talk, and its fervour reaches hearers ahead of any meaning.
Balance phylum, in Communication
Is its logic an equilibrium between opposites or weights?
Its body is organized as a balance, its weights held in equilibrium around an axis.
beings Chiaroscuro
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Chiaroscuro
Chiaroscuro Rounding Shadow, Sciophota sculpens
Light set against dark across a surface makes a flat image look round, since the eye reads graded shade as a form turning away from the light.
Cycle phylum, in Communication
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings Echolalia, Lullaby, Poetry
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
Lullaby Rocking Hush, Cunabularia sopiens
A lullaby is a slow song sung close with a sway, and in cultures across the world it calms a child into sleep while binding it to the voice that sings.
Poetry Condensing Sky, Versicaelum condensans
Language under the pressure of form says more than its words, and is remembered because of that pressure.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Echolalia
Echolalia Answering Conch, Echomimus iterans
Echolalia gives back the words it hears, whole and in their own tune, and the borrowed phrase can answer, comfort, or grow into speech of one's own.
Part and whole phylum, in Communication
Is its logic parts that make a whole, units fitted together?
Its body is organized as parts making a whole, each part distinct and fitted to the others.
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Syllable
Syllable Pulse Blossom, Sonopetala articulata
The smallest beat of speech is also its seed, since words, rhythm and rhyme all grow from how syllables combine.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Babelhum
Babelhum Murmur Swarm, Murmurus babelicus
The hum of a crowded room, where so many voices' syllables mix that none can be told apart, is the heat death of speech; only one's own name still rises out of it.
Feeling category, in Abstractions
Feelings and emotions.
Its beings keep its gesture: quivers, pulses; its growth: swelling, moulting.
beings Fear, Love, Nostalgia, Vertigo
Path phylum, in Feeling
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
beings Nostalgia
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Nostalgia
Nostalgia Homeward Ache, Nostodynia praesentis
Longing to return to a home or a time that is gone smooths the past into a place worth going back to, and the ache can turn even on the present as it slips away.
Link phylum, in Feeling
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Love
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Love
Love Drawing Bond, Erodesma tenax
Love draws beings to one particular other and holds them there, by a pull that body and mind build together, and the bond becomes a base from which each can venture out.
Force phylum, in Feeling
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
beings Fear
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Fear
Fear Bristling Sentinel, Horripila vigilans
A body that acts on a warning before it understands it survives more often, so fear moves first and asks afterwards.
Verticality phylum, in Feeling
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
beings Vertigo
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Vertigo
Vertigo Reeling Edge, Ilingia praeceps
Vertigo is the felt loss of ground when the senses disagree about which way is down, and at a height it joins the fear of falling to a pull toward the drop.
Relation category, in Abstractions
Relations between people or things or ideas.
Its beings keep its gesture: joins, interlaces; its growth: grafted, budding.
beings Entanglement
Link phylum, in Relation
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Entanglement
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Entanglement
Entanglement Inseparable Stone, Synlithus inseparabilis
Some pairs share one state and have none of their own, so the pair is more real than either part.
State category, in Abstractions
Stable states of affairs.
Its beings keep its gesture: closes, sinks; its growth: sedimentary, regenerated.
beings Possession, Presence, Solitude, Threshold, Tinnitus, Trance, Weightlessness, The Shared Cell
Container phylum, in State
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
beings Possession, Solitude, Tinnitus, The Shared Cell
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Possession, Solitude, The Shared Cell
Possession Ridden Vessel, Enthearia inquilina
A person can be inhabited by another presence that moves and speaks through the body, and a group that recognises the tenant lets it say and demand what the host alone would keep unsaid.
Solitude Hollow Listener, Eremocardia intenta
Withdrawing from others changes what can be perceived, and solitude differs from loneliness only in whether the withdrawal was chosen.
The Shared Cell Twin Anchorhold, Anachoretes binatus
A pair can be solitary; two people who withdraw from the world together, an anchoress and her companion, an old couple in a remote house, keep a solitude neither could keep alone, because each guards the other from everyone else.
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Tinnitus
Tinnitus Inner Chime, Endophonus tacitus
Tinnitus is a sound made by the hearing system itself, most often where hearing has been lost, and its hearer alone hears it, loudest in silence.
Path phylum, in State
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
beings Threshold
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Threshold
Threshold Crossing Sill, Liminaria transitoria
Between two states runs a line that one small step crosses, and many crossings hold a margin of waiting, where a being has left the old state and has yet to enter the new.
Centre and periphery phylum, in State
Is its logic a core and what surrounds it, near to or far from a centre?
Its body is organized around a centre, its parts thinning and fading toward the edge.
beings Presence
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Presence
Presence Here Glow, Adessia lucens
Presence joins the body's being here to attention on what is here, and that joining turns the passing moment into a lived one.
Scale phylum, in State
Is its logic more and less, a gradient, an amount that rises or falls?
Its body is organized as a scale, its parts graded from small to large.
beings Trance
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Trance
Trance Loosening Beat, Ekstasaria rhythmica
Rhythm, breath and dance kept up long enough shift a waking person into a state where the self loosens, and the rite around it gives that state its meaning and its end.
Verticality phylum, in State
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
beings Weightlessness
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Weightlessness
Weightlessness Floating Fall, Abaria cadens
A body falling freely with everything around it weighs nothing, and minds lifted in rapture report the same lightness.
Time category, in Abstractions
Time and temporal relations.
Its beings keep its gesture: turns, pulses; its growth: accretion, intercalary.
beings Equinox, Eternity, Spring, Winter, Foresilence, Tide of Days
Container phylum, in Time
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
beings Winter
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Winter
Winter Keeping Sleep, Hiemaria condens
Winter is the cold season when growth stops, and life outlasts it by withdrawing, sleeping and living on its stores, its seed kept for the year to come.
Force phylum, in Time
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
beings Spring
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Spring
Spring Sudden Green, Vernaria erumpens
Spring is the season when life stored through the cold breaks open all at once, set off by lengthening days and returning warmth, and it spends in weeks what was saved for months.
Balance phylum, in Time
Is its logic an equilibrium between opposites or weights?
Its body is organized as a balance, its weights held in equilibrium around an axis.
beings Equinox, Foresilence
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Equinox
Equinox Hinge of the Year, Isohemera bifrons
Day and night are equal only at the instant the year passes from one side to the other, so a balance can be a crossing that no one can stay in.
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Foresilence
Foresilence Jointing Pause, Pausiphonia articulans
Silence shapes music; a pause sets how long the listener waits, so what is withheld decides how the next sound is heard.
Cycle phylum, in Time
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings Tide of Days
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Tide of Days
Tide of Days Ring of Feasts, Fastocyclus communis
A calendar is a system in which the sky gives fixed points, rites give them forms and memory gives them meaning, so a group keeps returning together to the same days and the same past.
Centre and periphery phylum, in Time
Is its logic a core and what surrounds it, near to or far from a centre?
Its body is organized around a centre, its parts thinning and fading toward the edge.
beings Eternity
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Eternity
Eternity Slowest Rhythm, Aeviaria lentissima
Eternity is time without end, or the whole of time held at once, and a turning thing comes nearer to it the slower its rhythm runs.
Llull's Nine Subjects
A ladder of being, from God down to the instruments, through which Llull's Art meant to reason about everything that is. After Ramon Llull, Ars brevis, 1308.
Its subjects choose the book of a being's first draw, which gives its body, its hand and the forms of its organs. Its later draws roam among the other books. Its kinds were given to the beings by blind readers. Then come the codex’s own ranks: the bodily pattern its logic follows (its phylum) and the organ it cannot lose (its class). Choose any branch to read it.
The ladder of being
Holds, among the codex’s beings, B · God, D · Heaven, E · Man, F · Imaginative, G · Sensitive, H · Vegetative, I · Elementative, K · Instrumentative.
B · God subject, in The ladder of being
God and the divine.
Its beings keep its book: the book of revolving figures.
Centre and periphery phylum, in B · God
Is its logic a core and what surrounds it, near to or far from a centre?
Its body is organized around a centre, its parts thinning and fading toward the edge.
beings Eternity
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Eternity
Eternity Slowest Rhythm, Aeviaria lentissima
Eternity is time without end, or the whole of time held at once, and a turning thing comes nearer to it the slower its rhythm runs.
Verticality phylum, in B · God
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
beings Miracle
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings Miracle
Miracle Breaking Sign, Thaumatia signifera
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.
D · Heaven subject, in The ladder of being
The heavens: the stars, their motions and their influences.
Its beings keep its book: the celestial atlas.
beings Equinox
Balance phylum, in D · Heaven
Is its logic an equilibrium between opposites or weights?
Its body is organized as a balance, its weights held in equilibrium around an axis.
beings Equinox
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Equinox
Equinox Hinge of the Year, Isohemera bifrons
Day and night are equal only at the instant the year passes from one side to the other, so a balance can be a crossing that no one can stay in.
E · Man subject, in The ladder of being
The human being, soul and body together: reason, will and memory, and what people are.
Its beings keep its book: the apothecary's book of humours, the treatise on the passions.
beings Echolalia, Glossolalia, Love, Memory, Nostalgia, Oblivion, Placebo, Possession, Presence, Prophecy, Solitude, Threshold, Trance, Volition, Knowing Trust, Rushmaker, Tongue Horizon, Witnessed Relief, Gazeroot (second reading), Commemorative Revision, The Shared Cell, Simultaneous Remembering, Hesychology
Container phylum, in E · Man
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
beings Placebo, Possession, Solitude, Knowing Trust, The Shared Cell
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Knowing Trust
Knowing Trust Open Trust, Fidivacua aperta
Trust given knowingly to something empty can still change the one who gives it, because what acts is the act of trusting, not its object.
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Possession, Solitude, The Shared Cell
Possession Ridden Vessel, Enthearia inquilina
A person can be inhabited by another presence that moves and speaks through the body, and a group that recognises the tenant lets it say and demand what the host alone would keep unsaid.
Solitude Hollow Listener, Eremocardia intenta
Withdrawing from others changes what can be perceived, and solitude differs from loneliness only in whether the withdrawal was chosen.
The Shared Cell Twin Anchorhold, Anachoretes binatus
A pair can be solitary; two people who withdraw from the world together, an anchoress and her companion, an old couple in a remote house, keep a solitude neither could keep alone, because each guards the other from everyone else.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Placebo
Placebo Empty Remedy, Semiotheria inanis
The sign of a cure can act as a cure, because the body answers to what treatment means.
Path phylum, in E · Man
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
beings Memory, Nostalgia, Prophecy, Threshold, Tongue Horizon
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Threshold, Tongue Horizon
Threshold Crossing Sill, Liminaria transitoria
Between two states runs a line that one small step crosses, and many crossings hold a margin of waiting, where a being has left the old state and has yet to enter the new.
Tongue Horizon Parting Tongue, Glossorizon divergens
Two peoples drifting apart one syllable at a time reach a moment after which they no longer understand each other; no one notices it being crossed, and it cannot be crossed back.
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Prophecy
Prophecy Foreseeing Polyp, Mantipolypus praesens
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.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Nostalgia
Nostalgia Homeward Ache, Nostodynia praesentis
Longing to return to a home or a time that is gone smooths the past into a place worth going back to, and the ache can turn even on the present as it slips away.
Decay class, the dominant organ
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It holds how it fails, and its residue.
beings Memory
Memory Recollecting Fungus, Mnemomyces reconstruens
Remembering rebuilds the past each time, so forgetting is not memory's failure but the work that shapes what is kept.
Link phylum, in E · Man
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Love, Witnessed Relief, Gazeroot (second reading)
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Love, Gazeroot (second reading)
Love Drawing Bond, Erodesma tenax
Love draws beings to one particular other and holds them there, by a pull that body and mind build together, and the bond becomes a base from which each can venture out.
Gazeroot (second reading) Witness Thread, Martyromyces nexilis
Relief can live between two people rather than in either, as a thread that forms while one watches the other be relieved and spreads as a network through a group.
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings Witnessed Relief
Witnessed Relief Witness Balm, Martyrotheria contagiosa
The meaning of being treated can be caught from watching another person be relieved, so relief, and harm, travel through a group by witness.
Force phylum, in E · Man
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
beings Glossolalia, Oblivion, Volition, Rushmaker
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Volition
Volition Choosing Knot, Voluntaria eligens
An act is willed when it follows from a choice the agent makes after weighing desires and reasons, and the will shows itself most plainly where it fails to carry the act through.
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Rushmaker
Rushmaker Rush Breaker, Pancursor ruptor
Where everyone's safety depends on everyone staying calm, one sign of threat can set off a rush that makes the threat real.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Glossolalia
Glossolalia Fervent Babble, Lalopneuma effundens
Glossolalia is fluent speech in an invented tongue, built from the speaker's own sounds in the rise and fall of talk, and its fervour reaches hearers ahead of any meaning.
Decay class, the dominant organ
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It holds how it fails, and its residue.
beings Oblivion
Oblivion Clearing Current, Lethomyces purgans
Forgetting clears what is unused so that a mind can learn and act and a divided city can live together again, and the same force, pressed too far, erases what should be kept.
Cycle phylum, in E · Man
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings Echolalia, Commemorative Revision, Simultaneous Remembering
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Commemorative Revision, Simultaneous Remembering
Commemorative Revision Anniversary Rewriter, Anamnestes palimpsestus
Each performance of a rite reopens the memory it marks to change, so a group's past is rewritten in steps, on the dates of its rites, while the form stays the same.
Simultaneous Remembering Tide of Recall, Synmnemon calendaris
When a whole people remembers the same past on the same day, each one's memory is pulled toward everyone else's, so a feast day makes many memories into one, and between feasts they drift apart again.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Echolalia
Echolalia Answering Conch, Echomimus iterans
Echolalia gives back the words it hears, whole and in their own tune, and the borrowed phrase can answer, comfort, or grow into speech of one's own.
Centre and periphery phylum, in E · Man
Is its logic a core and what surrounds it, near to or far from a centre?
Its body is organized around a centre, its parts thinning and fading toward the edge.
beings Presence
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Presence
Presence Here Glow, Adessia lucens
Presence joins the body's being here to attention on what is here, and that joining turns the passing moment into a lived one.
Scale phylum, in E · Man
Is its logic more and less, a gradient, an amount that rises or falls?
Its body is organized as a scale, its parts graded from small to large.
beings Trance, Hesychology
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Hesychology
Hesychology Stillness Gauge, Hesychometra gradata
Stillness can be the variable of a science; as sound is withdrawn and breath slows step by step, experience changes in an order that trained observers can map and share.
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Trance
Trance Loosening Beat, Ekstasaria rhythmica
Rhythm, breath and dance kept up long enough shift a waking person into a state where the self loosens, and the rite around it gives that state its meaning and its end.
F · Imaginative subject, in The ladder of being
The imagination and its images.
Its beings keep its book: the bestiary of display, the botany of sound.
beings Apophenia, Dream, Mimesis, Symmetry, Afterlistening, Poetry
Container phylum, in F · Imaginative
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
beings Dream
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Dream
Dream Night Ferment, Oneirozyma nocturna
Each night the sleeping mind turns the day's residue into scenes it lives as real, digesting experience by imagining it, and most of what it makes is gone by morning.
Path phylum, in F · Imaginative
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
beings Afterlistening
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Afterlistening
Afterlistening Lingering Ear, Postaudia expectans
Music leaves its listeners expecting, so the silence after it is heard as music; for a while a cough lands like a cadence and the street sounds composed.
Link phylum, in F · Imaginative
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
Apophenia Cloud-Face Weaver, Simulacrifex nebularis
A mind tuned to find patterns finds them in noise too, and the meaning it feels is the same whether the pattern is there or not.
Mimesis Returning Moth, Similimorpha reddens
Making a likeness is a way of knowing and of becoming, and also the oldest way of being deceived.
Balance phylum, in F · Imaginative
Is its logic an equilibrium between opposites or weights?
Its body is organized as a balance, its weights held in equilibrium around an axis.
beings Symmetry
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Symmetry
Symmetry Mirror Spar, Invariantia gemella
What stays the same when something is turned, mirrored or moved tells you what that thing really is.
Cycle phylum, in F · Imaginative
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings Poetry
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Poetry
Poetry Condensing Sky, Versicaelum condensans
Language under the pressure of form says more than its words, and is remembered because of that pressure.
G · Sensitive subject, in The ladder of being
The senses and sensation, feeling, and animal life.
Its beings keep its book: the treatise on the passions, the atlas of invented invertebrates.
beings Aura, Awakening, Chimera, Fear, Qualia, Silence, Tinnitus, Vertigo, Babelhum, Shared Breath, The Swing Door
Container phylum, in G · Sensitive
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
beings Tinnitus
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Tinnitus
Tinnitus Inner Chime, Endophonus tacitus
Tinnitus is a sound made by the hearing system itself, most often where hearing has been lost, and its hearer alone hears it, loudest in silence.
Link phylum, in G · Sensitive
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Shared Breath
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Shared Breath
Shared Breath Choir Lung, Synpnoe chorica
A song sets the moments when its singers must breathe, so singing together makes a group breathe, and their hearts beat, as one.
Force phylum, in G · Sensitive
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
beings Fear
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Fear
Fear Bristling Sentinel, Horripila vigilans
A body that acts on a warning before it understands it survives more often, so fear moves first and asks afterwards.
Cycle phylum, in G · Sensitive
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings The Swing Door
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings The Swing Door
The Swing Door Answering Breath, Phobopnoe reciproca
Fear quickens the breath, and the breath can quicken or quiet fear in return, so the two make a loop that can be entered from either side.
Part and whole phylum, in G · Sensitive
Is its logic parts that make a whole, units fitted together?
Its body is organized as parts making a whole, each part distinct and fitted to the others.
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Chimera
Chimera Polyglot Graft, Insitaria polyglotta
One body can be made of parts from different kinds and still live, and wherever kinds are meant to stay pure such a body is read as a monster or a marvel.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Babelhum
Babelhum Murmur Swarm, Murmurus babelicus
The hum of a crowded room, where so many voices' syllables mix that none can be told apart, is the heat death of speech; only one's own name still rises out of it.
Centre and periphery phylum, in G · Sensitive
Is its logic a core and what surrounds it, near to or far from a centre?
Its body is organized around a centre, its parts thinning and fading toward the edge.
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Qualia
Qualia Inward Eye, Qualiocellus intimus
Every experience has a felt quality that no complete description of the brain seems to contain, so knowing everything about seeing red is not the same as seeing it.
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Aura
Aura Herald Glow, Nimbaria praenuntians
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.
Scale phylum, in G · Sensitive
Is its logic more and less, a gradient, an amount that rises or falls?
Its body is organized as a scale, its parts graded from small to large.
beings Silence
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Silence
Silence Full Quiet, Tacitaria plena
Silence is never the absence of all sound but a frame in which the sounds that louder ones hid can be heard, so it is a way of listening.
Verticality phylum, in G · Sensitive
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Vertigo
Vertigo Reeling Edge, Ilingia praeceps
Vertigo is the felt loss of ground when the senses disagree about which way is down, and at a height it joins the fear of falling to a pull toward the drop.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Awakening
Awakening Dawning Eye, Egersia matutina
Each morning the brain switches from sleep to waking and the senses open to the world, and the same passage names the wider change from a closed view into an open one.
H · Vegetative subject, in The ladder of being
Growth, nourishment and generation, as in plants.
Its beings keep its book: the botany of sound, the mycological monograph.
beings Breath, Entelechy, Metamorphosis, Spring
Path phylum, in H · Vegetative
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
beings Entelechy
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Entelechy
Entelechy Completing Seed, Telocarpus intrinsecus
A living thing holds within it the form it grows toward, and entelechy is that inner completion at work, the seed already aimed at the plant.
Force phylum, in H · Vegetative
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
beings Spring
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Spring
Spring Sudden Green, Vernaria erumpens
Spring is the season when life stored through the cold breaks open all at once, set off by lengthening days and returning warmth, and it spends in weeks what was saved for months.
Cycle phylum, in H · Vegetative
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings Breath, Metamorphosis
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Metamorphosis
Metamorphosis Rebuilding Chrysalis, Histolysa reformans
One life can pass through bodies of wholly different form by dissolving the old one and building the next from its matter, so a being stays itself through a complete change of shape.
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings Breath
Breath Turn-Taking Bellows, Pneumatophora alternans
A body lives only by taking in the air around it and giving it back in a rhythm it keeps without thinking, so breath is the place where inside and outside are exchanged.
I · Elementative subject, in The ladder of being
The four elements and what is made of them: minerals, weather, mixtures.
Its beings keep its book: the meteorological atlas, the mineralogical treatise.
beings Amber, Archipelago, Ash, Clay, Cloud, Diamond, Emergence, Entanglement, Entropy, Erosion, Fire, Frost, Iridescence, Lake, Petrification, Rain, Reflection, Resonance, Resonance (second reading), River, Salt, Sand, Storm, Weightlessness, Wind, Winter, Self-Ending Order
Container phylum, in I · Elementative
Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
beings Amber, Clay, Lake, Winter
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Amber
Amber Outlasting Resin, Succinaria perennis
Amber is a tree's resin hardened over ages into a seal that keeps small moments of life intact long after the forest that made it is gone.
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
Clay Pliant Earth, Pelotypus retinens
Clay is earth fine enough to take any shape when wet and keep it once dried and fired, so it became the first material in which people made vessels, figures and written records.
Lake Held Sky, Limnaria tenens
A lake is still water held in a basin, which keeps what flows into it, lets it settle in layers, and mirrors the sky on a surface calm enough to hold it.
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Winter
Winter Keeping Sleep, Hiemaria condens
Winter is the cold season when growth stops, and life outlasts it by withdrawing, sleeping and living on its stores, its seed kept for the year to come.
Path phylum, in I · Elementative
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
River Passing Form, Potamorpha manens
A river is a form that lasts while every drop in it moves on, so it stays the same river through water that is always new.
Wind Levelling Current, Anemopora aequans
Wind is air moving down a difference of pressure, so it exists only while the world is uneven, and it carries whatever it passes through.
Link phylum, in I · Elementative
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Archipelago, Entanglement, Resonance (second reading)
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Archipelago, Entanglement
Archipelago Scattered Range, Nesodesmia submersa
An archipelago is a scatter of islands that are the summits of one submerged range, one body divided by the sea, and its separation breeds kinds found only there.
Entanglement Inseparable Stone, Synlithus inseparabilis
Some pairs share one state and have none of their own, so the pair is more real than either part.
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Resonance (second reading)
Resonance (second reading) Listening Bell, Auscultor consonans
Being tuned decides what can be heard at all, so attunement is a kind of perception before it is a kind of harmony.
Force phylum, in I · Elementative
Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
beings Diamond, Fire, Storm, Self-Ending Order
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Diamond
Diamond Pressed Light, Adamantaria pressa
Diamond is carbon pressed deep in the earth into the hardest crystal, which eruptions carry to the surface and cutting turns into scattered light.
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Fire, Storm, Self-Ending Order
Fire Kindling Chain, Pyrocatena accendens
Fire is matter transformed in a chain that feeds itself, each burning part heating the next until its fuel or air is spent.
Storm Unburdening Cell, Turbocella exonerans
Tension stored past a threshold is released as a force that remakes its surroundings and then spends itself.
Self-Ending Order Slope Eater, Clinophagus evanescens
Order appears where a difference is steep because ordered flow levels it faster than chance, so every such pattern is entropy's shortcut and works toward its own end.
Balance phylum, in I · Elementative
Is its logic an equilibrium between opposites or weights?
Its body is organized as a balance, its weights held in equilibrium around an axis.
beings Reflection, Salt
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Salt
Salt Fixing Crystal, Halocrystis figens
Salt is the crystal left when the sea dries, and it keeps what it touches by drawing out its water, until in excess it makes the land barren.
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Reflection
Reflection Returned Light, Anaclasia revertens
A smooth surface sends light back at the angle it came, giving an image of the world, and a mind can turn back the same way on its own thinking.
Cycle phylum, in I · Elementative
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Resonance
Resonance Answering Cloud, Consonia accumulans
A system answers most strongly to what moves at its own rhythm, so timing can matter more than force.
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings Ash
Ash Fertile Remnant, Favillaria nutriens
Ash is the mineral remainder of a burnt body, and it returns to the soil as food for the next growth or rides the wind far from the fire that made it.
Part and whole phylum, in I · Elementative
Is its logic parts that make a whole, units fitted together?
Its body is organized as parts making a whole, each part distinct and fitted to the others.
beings Emergence, Petrification
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Emergence
Emergence Rising Cluster, Holobotrys oriens
When many parts interact, the whole can do what no part can, and that new behaviour needs its own description.
Decay class, the dominant organ
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It holds how it fails, and its residue.
beings Petrification
Petrification Faithful Stone, Lithomorpha fidelis
Petrification replaces a living body with stone, grain by grain, so its form outlasts its matter and stays exact and rigid until it shatters.
Scale phylum, in I · Elementative
Is its logic more and less, a gradient, an amount that rises or falls?
Its body is organized as a scale, its parts graded from small to large.
beings Entropy, Frost, Iridescence, Sand
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Frost
Frost Night Feather, Pruinaria plumata
Frost is vapour that freezes straight onto ground colder than the air on still, clear nights, growing feathered crystals that show where the cold lies and vanish at sunrise.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Iridescence
Iridescence Shifting Lustre, Stratochroa versans
Iridescence is colour made by fine layers that send light back in step, so it changes with the angle of sight and dies when the layers lose their order.
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings Sand
Sand Drifting Multitude, Psammoplethos migrans
Sand is stone worn into grains small enough to flow and hard enough to last, so it drifts in dunes, holds water between its grains and melts into glass.
Decay class, the dominant organ
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It holds how it fails, and its residue.
beings Entropy
Entropy Evening Rot, Aequalis dissolvens
Left to itself every difference evens out, and that evening out is what gives time its direction.
Verticality phylum, in I · Elementative
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
beings Cloud, Erosion, Rain, Weightlessness
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Weightlessness
Weightlessness Floating Fall, Abaria cadens
A body falling freely with everything around it weighs nothing, and minds lifted in rapture report the same lightness.
Boundary class, the dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
beings Cloud
Cloud Floating Likeness, Nubifacies mutabilis
A cloud is water condensed into droplets fine enough to float, its outline remade by every wind, and its changing forms are where the mind most readily finds faces.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
Erosion Patient Scour, Abrasoria lenta
Water, wind and ice wear down whatever stands above them, grain by grain, and carry it to low places where it builds new ground, so erosion makes landforms by taking land away.
Rain Returning Fall, Pluviaria reddens
Rain is water that rose as vapour and falls back to the ground, so the land lives by a return it partly feeds itself.
K · Instrumentative subject, in The ladder of being
The means by which things are done: the arts and their tools, and the moral virtues and vices.
Its beings keep its book: the natural history of animal builders, the architecture of animals, the atlas of invented invertebrates.
beings Chiaroscuro, Faith, Geomancy, Innocence, Lullaby, Music, Patience, Pointillism, Ritual, Syllable, Symbol, Foresilence, Tide of Days, Subtractive Phenomenology
Path phylum, in K · Instrumentative
Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
Its body is organized along a path, from a beginning at one end to an end at the other.
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
Music Waiting Songmaker, Melopoeus exspectans
Sound ordered in time makes a listener expect what comes next, and music means by how it meets, delays or denies that expectation.
Ritual Processional Nest, Ritunidus iterans
Repeating a prescribed form together creates belonging and passage that no single intention could create.
Link phylum, in K · Instrumentative
Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
beings Symbol
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Symbol
Symbol Translating Bivalve, Symbolaria transferens
A symbol carries meaning from one thing to another by a bond its users share, so it works as a translation, and the meaning it carries grows richer with each crossing.
Balance phylum, in K · Instrumentative
Is its logic an equilibrium between opposites or weights?
Its body is organized as a balance, its weights held in equilibrium around an axis.
beings Chiaroscuro, Foresilence
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Foresilence
Foresilence Jointing Pause, Pausiphonia articulans
Silence shapes music; a pause sets how long the listener waits, so what is withheld decides how the next sound is heard.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Chiaroscuro
Chiaroscuro Rounding Shadow, Sciophota sculpens
Light set against dark across a surface makes a flat image look round, since the eye reads graded shade as a form turning away from the light.
Cycle phylum, in K · Instrumentative
Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
beings Lullaby, Tide of Days
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Lullaby
Lullaby Rocking Hush, Cunabularia sopiens
A lullaby is a slow song sung close with a sway, and in cultures across the world it calms a child into sleep while binding it to the voice that sings.
Output class, the dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
beings Tide of Days
Tide of Days Ring of Feasts, Fastocyclus communis
A calendar is a system in which the sky gives fixed points, rites give them forms and memory gives them meaning, so a group keeps returning together to the same days and the same past.
Part and whole phylum, in K · Instrumentative
Is its logic parts that make a whole, units fitted together?
Its body is organized as parts making a whole, each part distinct and fitted to the others.
beings Pointillism, Syllable, Subtractive Phenomenology
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Syllable
Syllable Pulse Blossom, Sonopetala articulata
The smallest beat of speech is also its seed, since words, rhythm and rhyme all grow from how syllables combine.
Mechanism class, the dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
beings Subtractive Phenomenology
Subtractive Phenomenology Lantern of Less, Aphaeresis sensoria
A science of what experience contains beneath what it is busy with, found by taking away one sense at a time, sound, light, movement, a quick breath, until the background that was always there can be inventoried.
Dispersal class, the dominant organ
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
beings Pointillism
Pointillism Distant Speckle, Punctopsia miscens
Pointillism builds an image from separate dots of pure colour that the eye fuses at a distance, so the picture is finished in the viewer's eye.
Centre and periphery phylum, in K · Instrumentative
Is its logic a core and what surrounds it, near to or far from a centre?
Its body is organized around a centre, its parts thinning and fading toward the edge.
beings Geomancy
Kernel class, the dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
beings Geomancy
Geomancy Oracle Stone, Punctolithus respondens
A finite set of forms can turn any random mark into an answer, which says as much about the forms as about chance.
Scale phylum, in K · Instrumentative
Is its logic more and less, a gradient, an amount that rises or falls?
Its body is organized as a scale, its parts graded from small to large.
beings Patience
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Patience
Patience Slow Ripener, Patientaria maturans
Some goods ripen only with time, and patience bears that time while the nearer reward is left alone, for as long as the promise looks worth keeping.
Verticality phylum, in K · Instrumentative
Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
Its body is organized vertically, rising from a low base to a high crown.
Intake class, the dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It holds what it attends to or consumes.
beings Faith
Faith Watcher of the Unseen, Fidosensor invisibilium
Trust given ahead of evidence changes what one perceives and does, and so changes what one meets.
Decay class, the dominant organ
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It holds how it fails, and its residue.
beings Innocence
Innocence Unharmed Gaze, Innoxella aperta
A gaze that harm has yet to reach trusts what it sees, and it is known most clearly by the first betrayal that ends it.
II Key an idea
Place an idea of your own, as a naturalist keys a specimen: its kind in the chosen tree, then its phylum, class and niche.
III Kinds and phyla
Each row a kind of the chosen tree that holds a being, each column a phylum. An empty cell is a placement nothing has been bred into yet.Each kind of the chosen tree that holds a being, with its beings and their phyla.
Filter by niche, class, level, stage, mode or origin
4 more kinds of Roget's Thesaurus hold no being yet.
19 more kinds of Wilkins's Real Character hold no being yet.
11 more kinds of WordNet hold no being yet.
1 more kinds of Llull's Nine Subjects hold no being yet.
RelationAbstract Relations · 3
QuantityAbstract Relations · 1
OrderAbstract Relations · 1
TimeAbstract Relations · 6
ChangeAbstract Relations · 6
CausationAbstract Relations · 1
FormSpace · 1
Inorganic MatterMatter · 15
Organic MatterMatter · 11
Formation of IdeasIntellect · 14
Communication of IdeasIntellect · 7
Individual VolitionVolition · 2
Affections in GeneralAffections · 1
Sympathetic AffectionsAffections · 6
Moral AffectionsAffections · 1
Transcendental GeneralThe General Genera · 2
Transcendental MixedThe General Genera · 5
Transcendental Relation of ActionThe General Genera · 2
DiscourseThe General Genera · 8
GodThe General Genera · 1
WorldThe General Genera · 3
ElementSubstance · 8
StoneSubstance · 7
BeastSubstance · 1
SpaceQuantity · 6
Natural PowerQuality · 8
HabitQuality · 6
MannersQuality · 1
Sensible QualityQuality · 4
Spiritual ActionAction · 11
Oeconomical RelationRelation · 1
AnimalThings · 1
ActHappenings · 5
EventHappenings · 1
ProcessHappenings · 16
PhenomenonHappenings · 10
CognitionAbstractions · 12
CommunicationAbstractions · 10
FeelingAbstractions · 4
RelationAbstractions · 1
StateAbstractions · 8
B · GodThe ladder of being · 2
D · HeavenThe ladder of being · 1
E · ManThe ladder of being · 23
PresenceCentre and periphery
PlaceboContainer
PossessionContainer
SolitudeContainer
Knowing TrustContainer
The Shared CellContainer
EcholaliaCycle
Commemorative RevisionCycle
Simultaneous RememberingCycle
GlossolaliaForce
OblivionForce
VolitionForce
RushmakerForce
LoveLink
Witnessed ReliefLink
Gazeroot (second reading)Link
MemoryPath
NostalgiaPath
ProphecyPath
ThresholdPath
Tongue HorizonPath
TranceScale
HesychologyScaleF · ImaginativeThe ladder of being · 6
G · SensitiveThe ladder of being · 11
H · VegetativeThe ladder of being · 4
I · ElementativeThe ladder of being · 27
ReflectionBalance
SaltBalance
AmberContainer
ClayContainer
LakeContainer
WinterContainer
AshCycle
ResonanceCycle
DiamondForce
FireForce
StormForce
Self-Ending OrderForce
ArchipelagoLink
EntanglementLink
Resonance (second reading)Link
EmergencePart and whole
PetrificationPart and whole
RiverPath
WindPath
EntropyScale
FrostScale
IridescenceScale
SandScale
CloudVerticality
ErosionVerticality
RainVerticality
WeightlessnessVerticalityK · InstrumentativeThe ladder of being · 14
IV The ranks
Every rank a being can hold, family by family, the fullest first. Open one to read what it means and see every being it holds.
The kinds of Roget's Thesaurus. Its classes give a being its palette, its sections its matter.
MatterInorganic Matter15+10Solids and fluids, earth, air and water, weather, minerals and the landscape.
IntellectFormation of Ideas14
+9Thought and idea, attention, reasoning, belief and doubt, knowledge, memory, imagination.
Its beings keep its palette: abyss, iris, verdigris, oilslick; its matter: wire tissue, mesoglea, amber.
Apophenia, Dream, Faith, Memory, Oblivion, Placebo, Presence, Prophecy, Knowing Trust, Afterlistening, Commemorative Revision, Simultaneous Remembering, Hesychology, Subtractive Phenomenology
MatterOrganic Matter11
+6Life and death, plants, animals and the body, and the senses: touch, heat, taste, smell, sound, light and colour.
Its beings keep its palette: humus, malachite, lichen, moss, meadow, obsidian; its matter: mesoglea, bark, petal tissue, gill tissue, slime.
Amber, Breath, Chiaroscuro, Chimera, Entelechy, Iridescence, Music, Silence, Tinnitus, Vertigo, Shared Breath
IntellectCommunication of Ideas7
+2Meaning and its signs, language, speech and writing, representation, teaching.
Its beings keep its palette: abyss, iris, verdigris, oilslick; its matter: paper, ink, scale dust.
Echolalia, Glossolalia, Pointillism, Syllable, Symbol, Babelhum, Poetry
Abstract RelationsTime6
+1Duration and its parts, period and instant, earliness and lateness, seasons and recurrence.
Its beings keep its palette: ink, sepia, bone, quartz, bismuth; its matter: calcite, amber, bark.
Equinox, Eternity, Spring, Winter, Foresilence, Tide of Days
Abstract RelationsChange6
+1Change and permanence, revolution and conversion, stability and its loss.
Its beings keep its palette: ink, sepia, bone, quartz, bismuth; its matter: wax, vapour, smoke.
Awakening, Entropy, Metamorphosis, Petrification, Threshold, Tongue Horizon
AffectionsSympathetic Affections6
+1Feelings toward others: love and hate, friendship, gratitude, anger, pity, envy.
Its beings keep its palette: rose, dusk, coral, vermilion, gilt; its matter: silk, membrane, tincture.
Love, Lullaby, Solitude, Witnessed Relief, Gazeroot (second reading), The Shared Cell
AffectionsReligious Affections5
The divine and superhuman beings, heaven and hell, religion, worship and rite, the occult.
Its beings keep its palette: rose, dusk, coral, vermilion, gilt; its matter: light, smoke, wax.
Abstract RelationsRelation3
Likeness and difference, kinship of things, copy and model, agreement.
Its beings keep its palette: ink, sepia, bone, quartz, bismuth; its matter: silk, hyphal felt, membrane.
AffectionsPersonal Affections3
Pleasure and pain of one's own, hope and fear, beauty and taste, pride and humility.
Its beings keep its palette: rose, dusk, coral, vermilion, gilt; its matter: petal tissue, tincture, oil.
SpaceMotion2Movement and rest, speed, travel and journey, impulse and force, going and coming.
Its beings keep its palette: lapis, frost, storm, indigo; its matter: feather, water, silk.
VolitionIndividual Volition2
Will and choice, intention and plan, action and skill, means, conduct and its results.
Abstract RelationsQuantity1How much: degree, greatness and smallness, increase and decrease, whole and part.
Its beings keep its palette: ink, sepia, bone, quartz, bismuth; its matter: sand, coral, calcite, spore dust.
Abstract RelationsOrder1Arrangement, sequence, class and kind, rule and its exceptions, order and disorder.
Its beings keep its palette: ink, sepia, bone, quartz, bismuth; its matter: crystal, silica glass, woven fibre.
Abstract RelationsCausation1Cause and effect, power and influence, chance and tendency.
Its beings keep its palette: ink, sepia, bone, quartz, bismuth; its matter: metal, obsidian, water.
SpaceSpace in General1
Place and room, presence and absence, situation and location.
Its beings keep its palette: lapis, frost, storm, indigo; its matter: water, vapour, porcelain.
SpaceForm1
Shape and figure, symmetry and distortion, structure, texture, straightness and curvature.
Its beings keep its palette: lapis, frost, storm, indigo; its matter: crystal, nacre, porcelain.
MatterMatter in General1The universe and materiality, weight and lightness, the physical as such.
Its beings keep its palette: humus, malachite, lichen, moss, meadow, obsidian; its matter: metal, mud, calcite.
AffectionsAffections in General1
Feeling and sensibility as such, emotion and its absence.
Its beings keep its palette: rose, dusk, coral, vermilion, gilt; its matter: tincture, aura, mesoglea.
AffectionsMoral Affections1
Duty and right, virtue and vice, justice and guilt, honour and shame.
Its beings keep its palette: rose, dusk, coral, vermilion, gilt; its matter: porcelain, nacre, ice.
No being yet in Existence, Number, Dimensions, Intersocial Volition.
The kinds of Wilkins's Real Character. Its predicaments give a being its symmetry, its genera its outline.
ActionSpiritual Action11+6Acts of mind and will: thinking, judging, willing, and the passions.
Its beings keep its symmetry: spiral, helical; its outline: spire, bell.
Faith, Fear, Love, Nostalgia, Reflection, Silence, Volition, Knowing Trust, Witnessed Relief, Gazeroot (second reading), The Swing Door
The General GeneraDiscourse8+3Grammar and logic: words, sentences, arguments, method and proof.
Its beings keep its symmetry: concentric, fractal, radial many; its outline: scroll, filiform.
Echolalia, Glossolalia, Prophecy, Syllable, Symbol, Babelhum, Tongue Horizon, Poetry
SubstanceElement8+3The elements, fire, air, water and earth, and the meteors: weather and what happens in the air.
QualityNatural Power8+3The powers of soul and body: the senses, memory, imagination, understanding, will.
Its beings keep its symmetry: amorphous, asymmetric; its outline: bell, star.
Apophenia, Dream, Memory, Oblivion, Presence, Trance, Afterlistening, Simultaneous Remembering
SubstanceStone7+2Stones, earths and gems.
QuantitySpace6+1Time and place, and the parts of each.
Its beings keep its symmetry: tessellated, radial 6, radial 8; its outline: cage, ribbon.
Equinox, Eternity, Spring, Winter, Foresilence, Tide of Days
QualityHabit6
+1Acquired dispositions: virtues and vices, knowledge and the arts.
Its beings keep its symmetry: amorphous, asymmetric; its outline: coil, cluster.
Geomancy, Innocence, Music, Patience, Hesychology, Subtractive Phenomenology
The General GeneraTranscendental Mixed5Notions mixing quantity and quality: likeness and difference, more and less, whole and part, order.
Its beings keep its symmetry: concentric, fractal, radial many; its outline: knot, cage.
Emergence, Entanglement, Entropy, Symmetry, Self-Ending Order
QualitySensible Quality4What the senses meet: colour, sound, taste, smell, heat and texture.
Its beings keep its symmetry: amorphous, asymmetric; its outline: bell, fan.
The General GeneraWorld3The world as a whole, spiritual and corporeal: spirits and angels, the heavens and the stars, the earth.
Its beings keep its symmetry: concentric, fractal, radial many; its outline: discoid, globular.
QualityDisease3
Sickness and its kinds.
ActionCorporeal Action3
Acts of the body: eating, sleeping, breathing, the bodily functions.
Its beings keep its symmetry: spiral, helical; its outline: vase, sac.
ActionMotion3Movements: going, running, flying, swimming.
Its beings keep its symmetry: spiral, helical; its outline: winged, ribbon.
ActionOperation3The crafts and their works: making, building, weaving, cooking.
Its beings keep its symmetry: spiral, helical; its outline: vase, cage.
The General GeneraTranscendental General2The most general notions: being, kind, cause, end, means, condition.
The General GeneraTranscendental Relation of Action2The course of any action: beginning, going on, ending, success and failure.
Its beings keep its symmetry: concentric, fractal, radial many; its outline: coil, ribbon.
RelationEcclesiastical Relation2Religion and the church: rites, offices and holy things.
Its beings keep its symmetry: biradial, radial 3; its outline: spire, crown.
The General GeneraGod1God and the divine.
Its beings keep its symmetry: concentric, fractal, radial many; its outline: spire, crown.
SubstanceBeast1Beasts.
Its beings keep its symmetry: bilateral, dendritic, radial 5; its outline: quadruped.
QualityManners1Ways of behaving toward others: courtesy and rudeness, humility and pride.
Its beings keep its symmetry: amorphous, asymmetric; its outline: fan, crown.
RelationOeconomical Relation1The household and family: marriage, parent and child, kin.
Its beings keep its symmetry: biradial, radial 3; its outline: knot, pendant.
No being yet in Metal, Herb (by leaf), Herb (by flower), Herb (by seed vessel), Shrub, Tree, Exsanguious Animal, Fish, Bird, Peculiar Parts, General Parts, Magnitude, Measure, Possessions, Provisions, Civil Relation, Judicial Relation, Naval Relation, Military Relation.
The kinds of WordNet. Its categories give a being its gesture and the way it grew.
HappeningsProcess16+11Natural processes.
Its beings keep its gesture: turns, coils; its growth: accretion, intercalary.
Awakening, Breath, Entelechy, Entropy, Erosion, Fire, Metamorphosis, Petrification, Rushmaker, Shared Breath, Self-Ending Order, Tongue Horizon, Witnessed Relief, Gazeroot (second reading), Commemorative Revision, The Swing Door
AbstractionsCognition12+7Cognitive processes and contents.
Its beings keep its gesture: gathers, coils; its growth: gnomonic, accretion.
Apophenia, Dream, Faith, Memory, Oblivion, Qualia, Silence, Volition, Afterlistening, Simultaneous Remembering, Hesychology, Subtractive Phenomenology
HappeningsPhenomenon10+5Natural phenomena.
Its beings keep its gesture: emits, pulses; its growth: gnomonic, swelling.
Emergence, Frost, Iridescence, Placebo, Rain, Reflection, Resonance, Resonance (second reading), Storm, Wind
AbstractionsCommunication10+5Communicative processes and contents.
Its beings keep its gesture: emits, interlaces; its growth: budding, grafted.
Chiaroscuro, Echolalia, Glossolalia, Lullaby, Music, Prophecy, Syllable, Symbol, Babelhum, Poetry
AbstractionsState8+3Stable states of affairs.
Its beings keep its gesture: closes, sinks; its growth: sedimentary, regenerated.
Possession, Presence, Solitude, Threshold, Tinnitus, Trance, Weightlessness, The Shared Cell
ThingsSubstance6+1Substances.
AbstractionsTime6+1Time and temporal relations.
Its beings keep its gesture: turns, pulses; its growth: accretion, intercalary.
Equinox, Eternity, Spring, Winter, Foresilence, Tide of Days
HappeningsAct5Acts or actions.
Its beings keep its gesture: bursts, splits; its growth: apical, grafted.
ThingsObject4Natural objects, not made by people.
Its beings keep its gesture: hardens, sinks; its growth: faceted, sedimentary.
AbstractionsAttribute4Attributes of people and objects.
AbstractionsFeeling4Feelings and emotions.
ThingsAnimal1Animals.
Its beings keep its gesture: reaches, turns; its growth: moulting, intercalary.
HappeningsEvent1Natural events.
Its beings keep its gesture: bursts, dissolves; its growth: moulting, regenerated.
AbstractionsRelation1Relations between people or things or ideas.
Its beings keep its gesture: joins, interlaces; its growth: grafted, budding.
No being yet in Body, Plant, Food, Artifact, Person, Group, Location, Motive, Possession, Quantity, Shape.
The kinds of Llull's Nine Subjects. Its subjects choose the book of a being's first draw, which gives its body, its hand and the forms of its organs. Its later draws roam among the other books.
The ladder of beingI · Elementative27+22The four elements and what is made of them: minerals, weather, mixtures.
Its beings keep its book: the meteorological atlas, the mineralogical treatise.
Amber, Archipelago, Ash, Clay, Cloud, Diamond, Emergence, Entanglement, Entropy, Erosion, Fire, Frost, Iridescence, Lake, Petrification, Rain, Reflection, Resonance, Resonance (second reading), River, Salt, Sand, Storm, Weightlessness, Wind, Winter, Self-Ending Order
The ladder of beingE · Man23+18The human being, soul and body together: reason, will and memory, and what people are.
Its beings keep its book: the apothecary's book of humours, the treatise on the passions.
Echolalia, Glossolalia, Love, Memory, Nostalgia, Oblivion, Placebo, Possession, Presence, Prophecy, Solitude, Threshold, Trance, Volition, Knowing Trust, Rushmaker, Tongue Horizon, Witnessed Relief, Gazeroot (second reading), Commemorative Revision, The Shared Cell, Simultaneous Remembering, Hesychology
The ladder of beingK · Instrumentative14+9The means by which things are done: the arts and their tools, and the moral virtues and vices.
Its beings keep its book: the natural history of animal builders, the architecture of animals, the atlas of invented invertebrates.
Chiaroscuro, Faith, Geomancy, Innocence, Lullaby, Music, Patience, Pointillism, Ritual, Syllable, Symbol, Foresilence, Tide of Days, Subtractive Phenomenology
The ladder of beingG · Sensitive11+6The senses and sensation, feeling, and animal life.
The ladder of beingF · Imaginative6
+1The imagination and its images.
The ladder of beingH · Vegetative4Growth, nourishment and generation, as in plants.
Its beings keep its book: the botany of sound, the mycological monograph.
The ladder of beingB · God2God and the divine.
The ladder of beingD · Heaven1The heavens: the stars, their motions and their influences.
Its beings keep its book: the celestial atlas.
No being yet in C · Angel.
The books the plates were drawn from until the codex was unbound (30 October 2026); every plate is now in the codex’s own hand, and the books stay as the places Llull’s subjects gave each being. The thirteen take their places among the nineteen books of Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s On the Properties of Things (about 1240), an encyclopedia that runs down the ladder of being from God and the angels to stones, plants and animals, and closes on colours, numbers and music. Llull’s subjects choose the book of each being’s first draw, and its later draws roam among the others by meaning.
Book I · the book of revolving figuresVolvellae6+1Of God and the names of God.
A plate from an old book of revolving paper figures, its parts cut as discs that turn on one pin: concentric paper discs marked around their rims with small invented letters, joined by fine ruled chords.
Drawn as a being of concentric discs that turn on one pin, its parts marked around their rims; its organs: kernel as pin, boundary as outer rim, intake as window, mechanism as wheel, output as chord star, dispersal as loose discs, decay as worn disc.
chosen by B · God
Chiaroscuro, Cloud, Dream, Emergence, Knowing Trust, Subtractive Phenomenology
Book II · the illuminated book of the angelsAetheria1Of the angels.
A plate from an illuminated treatise on the angels, the spirits of the air: gold leaf and fine white highlights, its flames, rims and veils laid in thin translucent washes.
Drawn as a burning spirit of wheels within wheels, its rims full of eyes; its organs: kernel as heart of light, boundary as veil, intake as eyed rim, mechanism as wheel within a wheel, output as gilded flames, dispersal as sparks, decay as fallen feather.
chosen by C · Angel
Book III · the treatise on the passionsPathemata10+5Of the soul and reason.
A plate from an old treatise on the passions, each passion shown on a sea creature or a sensitive plant: the tissue flushing, bristling or shivering.
Drawn as a soft sea creature, a medusa or an anemone, caught in a sudden flush or shiver, its whole surface changing at once; its organs: kernel as spark, boundary as skin, intake as nerve net, mechanism as flush, output as signal, dispersal as contagion, decay as afterglow.
chosen by E · Man, G · Sensitive
Breath, Chimera, Diamond, Fear, Love, Qualia, Sand, Spring, Tinnitus, Babelhum
Book IV · the apothecary's book of humoursHumores9+4Of the humours of the body.
A plate from an old apothecary's book of humours and essences: coloured liquids held in thin membranes and glass, colours bleeding softly into one another.
Drawn as a being of coloured fluid held in a thin membrane, its mood visible in its colours; its organs: kernel as essence, boundary as meniscus, intake as wick, mechanism as still, output as tincture, dispersal as scent, decay as sediment.
chosen by E · Man
Apophenia, Frost, Music, Prophecy, Symmetry, Threshold, Tongue Horizon, Simultaneous Remembering, Poetry
Book VI · the architecture of animalsNidi10+5Of daily life.
A plate from an old treatise on the architecture of animals: woven, stacked and cemented structures, their builders absent, only their traces left.
Drawn as a nest or built shelter whose shape follows the rule it embodies; its organs: kernel as first cell, boundary as wall, intake as gathered material, mechanism as weave, output as chamber, dispersal as copy, decay as ruin.
chosen by K · Instrumentative
Archipelago, Geomancy, Lake, Possession, Rain, Ritual, Syllable, Weightlessness, Wind, Commemorative Revision
Book VIII · the celestial atlasUranographia13+8Of the world and the heavenly bodies.
A plate from an old celestial atlas: drawn in fine pale outline set with small pricked stars, the stars joined by faint ruled lines.
Drawn as a constellation with a body, its stars joined by faint lines into one figure; its organs: kernel as nucleus star, boundary as orbit, intake as corona, mechanism as orrery, output as rays, dispersal as meteor shower, decay as burnt-out star.
chosen by D · Heaven
Entropy, Equinox, Eternity, Glossolalia, Miracle, Petrification, Presence, Resonance, Silence, Solitude, Storm, Rushmaker, Tide of Days
Book XI · the meteorological atlasMeteora6+1Of the air and weather.
A plate from an old meteorological atlas: vapour rendered with soft stippling, currents with fine flowing lines.
Drawn as a cloud with a body, its own shape, density and inner weather; its organs: kernel as condensation nucleus, boundary as front, intake as inflow, mechanism as convection cell, output as precipitation, dispersal as plume, decay as dissipation.
chosen by I · Elementative
Clay, Entanglement, Fire, Placebo, Afterlistening, The Swing Door
Book XVI · the mineralogical treatiseMinerals7+2Of stones and metals.
A plate from an old mineralogical treatise: facets, inclusions and growth bands carefully observed.
Drawn as a crystal or crystal cluster with its own habit; its organs: kernel as seed crystal, boundary as rind, intake as mother liquor, mechanism as lattice, output as habit, dispersal as shard, decay as weathering.
chosen by I · Elementative
Ash, Nostalgia, Patience, Salt, Volition, The Shared Cell, Hesychology
Book XVII · the botany of soundCymatic Flora5Of plants and trees.
A botanical plate of plants shaped by sound: drawn with the fine regular lines of the nodal patterns sand forms on a vibrating plate.
Drawn as a plant caught in the middle of its growth, part bud and part bloom; its organs: kernel as seed, boundary as epidermis, intake as root, mechanism as stem, output as bloom, dispersal as pollen, decay as compost.
chosen by F · Imaginative, H · Vegetative
Book XVII · the mycological monographMycelia7+2Of plants and trees.
A plate from an old mycological monograph: threads of mycelium drawn with a fine pen, earthy shading.
Drawn as a fungus whose net of threads joins two or more partners; its organs: kernel as spore, boundary as mantle, intake as hyphae, mechanism as anastomosis, output as fruiting body, dispersal as spore print, decay as rot front.
chosen by H · Vegetative
Entelechy, Iridescence, Mimesis, River, Symbol, Shared Breath, Gazeroot (second reading)
Book XVIII · the atlas of invented invertebratesAutomata6+1Of the animals.
A plate from an atlas of invented invertebrates: fine filaments of wiring grown into living tissue.
Drawn as a sensing organism of soft tissue with fine wiring grown into it; its organs: kernel as core capsule, boundary as membrane, intake as receptor, mechanism as ganglion, output as effector, dispersal as signal, decay as corrosion.
chosen by G · Sensitive, K · Instrumentative
Aura, Awakening, Memory, Resonance (second reading), Trance, Witnessed Relief
Book XIX · the bestiary of displaySemaphora2Of colours, smells and tastes, numbers, measures and music.
A plate of display creatures from an imaginary bestiary: patterns, eyespots and folded membranes rendered precisely, with touches of metallic ink.
Drawn as a display being whose wings, sails or shell bear a pattern; its organs: kernel as glyph, boundary as margin, intake as ocellus, mechanism as chromatophore, output as display, dispersal as ink, decay as palimpsest.
chosen by F · Imaginative
Book XIX · the natural history of animal buildersArtes6+1Of colours, smells and tastes, numbers, measures and music.
A plate from an old natural history of animal architects, the builders and spinners and their works: fine and exact, as in an old natural history of animal builders.
Drawn as an animal architect, like a caddis larva, a spider or a mason bee, caught halfway through the structure it builds again and again, the dotted trail of its movement around it; its organs: kernel as pattern, boundary as ring, intake as materials, mechanism as spinneret, output as structure, dispersal as larva, decay as empty work.
chosen by K · Instrumentative
Echolalia, Lullaby, Pointillism, Winter, Self-Ending Order, Foresilence
The books of the encyclopedia still open for a new book of the codex are V (the parts of the body), VII (diseases), IX (time and motion), X (matter, form and fire), XII (birds), XIII (water and fishes), XIV (the earth and its surface) and XV (regions and places).
The shape of its logic.
image schemaContainer11+6Is its logic about inside and outside, holding, keeping in or shutting out?
Its body is organized as a container, a hollow that holds something inside it.
Amber, Clay, Dream, Lake, Placebo, Possession, Solitude, Tinnitus, Winter, Knowing Trust, The Shared Cell
image schemaPath11+6Is its logic a movement from a source toward a goal, a trajectory or a sequence?
image schemaCycle11+6Is its logic return, rhythm or repetition?
Its body is organized as a cycle, the same parts coming back in turn along it.
Ash, Breath, Echolalia, Lullaby, Metamorphosis, Resonance, Commemorative Revision, The Swing Door, Tide of Days, Simultaneous Remembering, Poetry
image schemaLink10+5Is its logic two or more things held together by a bond?
Its body is organized as a link, two parts held together by a bond between them.
Apophenia, Archipelago, Entanglement, Love, Mimesis, Resonance (second reading), Symbol, Shared Breath, Witnessed Relief, Gazeroot (second reading)
image schemaForce10+5Is its logic pressure, compulsion, resistance or release?
Its body is organized around a force, tensed, braced or bursting outward.
Diamond, Fear, Fire, Glossolalia, Oblivion, Spring, Storm, Volition, Rushmaker, Self-Ending Order
image schemaVerticality9+4Is its logic up and down, rising, falling, high and low?
image schemaScale8+3Is its logic more and less, a gradient, an amount that rises or falls?
Its body is organized as a scale, its parts graded from small to large.
Entropy, Frost, Iridescence, Patience, Sand, Silence, Trance, Hesychology
image schemaPart and whole7+2Is its logic parts that make a whole, units fitted together?
Its body is organized as parts making a whole, each part distinct and fitted to the others.
Chimera, Emergence, Petrification, Pointillism, Syllable, Babelhum, Subtractive Phenomenology
image schemaBalance6+1Is its logic an equilibrium between opposites or weights?
Its body is organized as a balance, its weights held in equilibrium around an axis.
Chiaroscuro, Equinox, Reflection, Salt, Symmetry, Foresilence
The organ it cannot lose, drawn largest.
dominant organMechanism23+18How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It holds what holds it together and makes it work.
Chimera, Dream, Fire, Love, Lullaby, Metamorphosis, Music, Presence, Resonance, Ritual, Storm, Symbol, Winter, Rushmaker, Shared Breath, Self-Ending Order, Gazeroot (second reading), Commemorative Revision, The Swing Door, Foresilence, Simultaneous Remembering, Poetry, Subtractive Phenomenology
dominant organOutput16+11What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It holds what it produces.
Apophenia, Awakening, Chiaroscuro, Echolalia, Emergence, Erosion, Glossolalia, Iridescence, Mimesis, Nostalgia, Placebo, Rain, Spring, Babelhum, Afterlistening, Tide of Days
dominant organKernel14+9Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
It holds the core premise, the generative heart.
Archipelago, Entanglement, Entelechy, Eternity, Geomancy, Qualia, Salt, Syllable, Symmetry, Vertigo, Volition, Weightlessness, Knowing Trust, Hesychology
dominant organBoundary12+7What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It holds the membrane that keeps it itself.
Amber, Aura, Cloud, Diamond, Equinox, Frost, Possession, Reflection, Solitude, Threshold, Tongue Horizon, The Shared Cell
dominant organIntake10+5What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
dominant organDispersal8+3What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It holds the transferable part.
Ash, Breath, Miracle, Pointillism, River, Sand, Wind, Witnessed Relief
dominant organDecay5What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It holds how it fails, and its residue.
How it feeds, a trait of its ecology rather than a rank.
how it feedsProducer21+16It feeds on raw experience, phenomena, sensation, matter, turned directly into meaning.
how it feedsSymbiont19+14It feeds on a partner, in an exchange that sustains both.
It gives its output to its partner.
Archipelago, Breath, Chimera, Entanglement, Love, Lullaby, Presence, Rain, Ritual, River, Symbol, Shared Breath, Witnessed Relief, Gazeroot (second reading), Afterlistening, The Swing Door, Foresilence, The Shared Cell, Simultaneous Remembering
how it feedsExtremophile17+12It feeds on absence, paradox, uncertainty or the unseen, where other ideas starve.
how it feedsDecomposer12+7It feeds on what is dead, failed or past, broken down and returned.
It gives freed organs and genes, the compost others grow from.
Ash, Entropy, Erosion, Fire, Memory, Metamorphosis, Nostalgia, Oblivion, Silence, Babelhum, Commemorative Revision, Subtractive Phenomenology
how it feedsConsumer11+6It feeds on other ideas, which it takes in whole and digests into itself.
It gives its own output and the residue of what it digested.
Amber, Echolalia, Lake, Mimesis, Music, Pointillism, Resonance (second reading), Volition, Tongue Horizon, Tide of Days, Poetry
how it feedsParasite8+3It feeds on the mechanism of a host idea, which it turns to its own ends.
It gives a host that keeps working, but now for it.
Apophenia, Chiaroscuro, Frost, Glossolalia, Petrification, Placebo, Possession, Rushmaker
How it keeps existing, after Souriau and Latour.
mode of existenceReligion12+7It keeps existing by a presence renewed each time it is spoken or done, that changes who receives it.
mode of existenceReproduction11+6It keeps existing by repeating itself through a line of copies or moments, each taking over from the last.
mode of existenceAttachment11+6It keeps existing by ties of interest and passion that bind beings to what they want and owe.
It fails when the ties are cut, or reduced to a mere count.
Diamond, Lake, Love, Lullaby, Nostalgia, Salt, Vertigo, Rushmaker, Witnessed Relief, Gazeroot (second reading), The Shared Cell
mode of existenceMetamorphosis10+5It keeps existing by changing shape, taking hold of whoever it passes through and leaving them altered.
It fails when the change freezes halfway, or seizes and does not let go.
Awakening, Cloud, Fear, Frost, Iridescence, Metamorphosis, Placebo, Solitude, Wind, The Swing Door
mode of existenceHabit8+3It keeps existing by being repeated without attention, each time a little smoother.
mode of existenceTechnique8+3It keeps existing by a detour through materials and devices that hold each other in place.
It fails when a part slips, jams or breaks, and the arrangement stops.
Chiaroscuro, Music, Pointillism, Resonance (second reading), Sand, Trance, Weightlessness, Subtractive Phenomenology
mode of existenceFiction8+3It keeps existing by being taken up and given life by someone, again and again.
It fails when no one takes it up, and the figure goes flat and pale.
Chimera, Clay, Dream, Mimesis, Qualia, Knowing Trust, Foresilence, Poetry
mode of existenceReference8+3It keeps existing by a chain of transformations that carries something constant from one link to the next.
It fails when one link breaks, and what was carried can no longer be traced.
Amber, Equinox, Miracle, Petrification, River, Symbol, Symmetry, Hesychology
mode of existenceOrganization6
+1It keeps existing by scripts that its parts follow and keep rewriting.
It fails when the script is lost or no one follows it any more.
Emergence, Threshold, Babelhum, Shared Breath, Tide of Days, Simultaneous Remembering
mode of existencePolitics4It keeps existing by a circle of speaking for and answering to that has to go round again and again.
It fails when the circle stops, and no one speaks for or answers to anyone.
Archipelago, Oblivion, Tongue Horizon, Commemorative Revision
mode of existenceMorality2It keeps existing by a scruple that keeps asking whether its ends and means are right.
It fails when the question stops being asked.
mode of existenceLaw0It keeps existing by a thread of procedure that links each case to the ones before it.
It fails when the thread is cut, and a case no longer follows from any other.
none yet
The scale of the idea.
organismConcept78+73Is it one notion that can be named by a noun?
Amber, Apophenia, Archipelago, Ash, Aura, Awakening, Breath, Chiaroscuro, Chimera, Clay, Cloud, Diamond, Dream, Echolalia, Emergence, Entanglement, Entelechy, Entropy, Equinox, Erosion, Eternity, Faith, Fear, Fire, Frost, Geomancy, Glossolalia, Innocence, Iridescence, Lake, Love, Lullaby, Memory, Metamorphosis, Mimesis, Miracle, Music, Nostalgia, Oblivion, Patience, Petrification, Placebo, Pointillism, Possession, Presence, Prophecy, Qualia, Rain, Reflection, Resonance, Resonance (second reading), Ritual, River, Salt, Sand, Silence, Solitude, Spring, Storm, Syllable, Symbol, Symmetry, Threshold, Tinnitus, Trance, Vertigo, Volition, Weightlessness, Wind, Winter, Babelhum, Knowing Trust, Rushmaker, Shared Breath, Self-Ending Order, Tongue Horizon, Witnessed Relief, Gazeroot (second reading)
symbiontPrinciple5Is it a claim that relates two or more notions, with a direction?
biomeDiscipline3
Is it a community of practice with its own objects, methods and standards of evidence?
colonySystem2Is it a set of interacting parts, with flows between them and a boundary around them?
Phases of individuation, after Simondon.
individuatedMature70+65an established idea at full strength, still carrying a charge of what it could become
Amber, Apophenia, Ash, Aura, Awakening, Breath, Chiaroscuro, Chimera, Clay, Cloud, Diamond, Dream, Entropy, Equinox, Erosion, Eternity, Faith, Fear, Fire, Frost, Glossolalia, Innocence, Iridescence, Lake, Love, Lullaby, Memory, Metamorphosis, Mimesis, Miracle, Music, Nostalgia, Oblivion, Patience, Petrification, Placebo, Pointillism, Possession, Presence, Prophecy, Qualia, Rain, Reflection, Resonance, Resonance (second reading), River, Salt, Sand, Silence, Solitude, Storm, Syllable, Symbol, Symmetry, Threshold, Tinnitus, Trance, Vertigo, Volition, Weightlessness, Wind, Winter, Babelhum, Self-Ending Order, Tongue Horizon, Afterlistening, The Shared Cell, Tide of Days, Simultaneous Remembering, Poetry
individuatingJuvenile11+6an idea taking form, still being learned and shaped
pre-individualSpore3an idea not yet formed, a charged field of potential waiting for the seed that will resolve it
transindividualTransindividual2an idea that exists as one form shared among many, going on individuating between them
dissolvingSenescent2an idea in decline, its form loosening back into the milieu it came from
spentFossil0a dead idea, its potential spent, kept only as a record
none yet
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