Reading Comprehension: [OOA Symbol]

[prufrock5150Participant]

There’s so much we don’t know. Missing information. There is comfort, however, in knowing that information can never be truly lost.

Reading is a process of decoding, interpreting, and assigning meaning to information. Note that I did not say “value” – you may assign value to things however you wish, but meaning does not necessarily imply it.

Language is complicated. We receive information – let’s call it a message – and we are able to interpret its meaning based on our identity. We are bound by the frameworks we have acquired, and thus limited in our ability to interpret the vast (it’s not really possible to express how vast) amounts of information we are constantly receiving.

Some of this information comes through aural input: sounds, part of which is speech. In the grand scheme of things, however, that’s not where the majority comes from – the bandwidth is pretty low, after all, compared to sight, smell, and touch. It’s bound by linear time, for example – if you’re not there to hear it, you can miss the message.

Written language, however, is where human beings began to capture infinity. The Greeks didn’t trust it. Isocrates, for one, was well known for his opposition to writing things down; he felt that we would lose the performative aspect, and ultimately lose our memories. Of course, he was a huckster who would recite his “Encomium of Helen” to convince people in the agora of things they didn’t think they agreed with, and turn it into a sales-pitch for joining his school. He was also quite correct, though: we have lost our memory.

In such a loss, however, there is also a discovery: we have, in ways we are only just discovering, finally learned how to read. We can recognize code in ways that were once reserved for the most esoteric and arcane sects of devotees. We have built machines to remember for us, and thus turned ourselves into organic computers, with access to information from throughout the entirety of spacetime. Here, for example, is a massive storehouse of occult knowledge that one could peruse in a decade or two: https://mega.nz/#F!AE5yjIqB!y7Vdxdb5pbNsi2O3zyq9KQ
Here is another: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BwLJ8mj-ZuoGc0NKUEtoLTBmQXc&usp=drive_web#list
And here is a manual that even synthesizes several major occult belief systems into a useful guide set to the tone of RPGs: https://www.scribd.com/doc/293366596/The-Psychonaut-Field-Manual-Third-PDF-Edition-by-Bluefluke-d8rjuxc

Clearly, you can see there’s more information here than can be dealt with in one lifetime. This seems unfortunate. However, one of the things we’ve forgotten – which we had to, in fact, lose our memories to be able to understand – is that the boundaries of a human life are an artificial construct made up of the arbitrary limit of an identity: you.

What will die when you inevitably shuffle off this mortal coil? Your ego. Your physical presence. Your existence in this particular dimensional stage. But your information cannot die – it just becomes that which no longer belongs to you. In that sense, the act of sharing information brings us closer to death. Maybe this is what Bowie meant by the line “Everybody knows me now” in Lazarus (Blackstar) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-JqH1M4Ya8https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-JqH1M4Ya8].
Stephen Hawking lost a bet with Kip Thorne on this issue, and had to purchase a year’s subscription to Penthouse Magazine for his bad faith (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorne%E2%80%93Hawking%E2%80%93Preskill_bet) – to his credit, it is a paradox which cannot be resolved through naked observation [insert rim shot here].

So, this brings us to the ideas of reading, and the idea of how we make sense of the dizzying infinities in which we construct our ramshackle realities. It also brings us to the OOA.

That symbol. Dafuq, man? This is the question that haunts us all, right? It can’t just be me. Again, there’s so much we don’t know about it. Is it a rune? Is it a diagram? Is it making reference to some ancient script? It does look sort of like the Arabic representation of quite a few Islamic prophets, but that somehow doesn’t feel right…

If you read the aforementioned Psychonaut Field Manual, you will find the concept of a sigil. Of course, it might not be a sigil. It might not be anything. But then again, nothing is anything unless an observer collapses the wave function, so as an observer, I find the concept of a sigil a particularly useful metaphor for talking about how the hell to read this thing.

We have to deconstruct it by first going over how to make a sigil. First, you start with a name of a spirit you want to conjure. Then you write it in whatever language you’re using, and you break apart the letters into all the little lines and circles that make them up. Then, you combine like terms, so to speak, and form a symbol that looks cool. There are complex rules that I’m definitely skipping here, but I’m a shitty warlock, so that’s okay. I’m just going for the concept here.

Now, let’s take a look at the OOA logo again: http://imgur.com/qUmbAAT (even though we’ve all memorized it and mentally tattooed it on the inside of our eyelids). It’s helpful to always look at something as if it were the first time you were ever looking at it. This is called “decontextualization,” and it’s something from the Russian Formalism school of Literary Criticism, and if it’s good enough for Dostoevsky, then it’s probably worth a shot, right?

Deconstructing the logo like a sigil, we see first of all that it’s possible to discern letters and a number. Some Os, and maybe a Y, and a C-shape, and is that an I? Is it Cydonia? Are the OOA fans of Muse? One thing is obvious – it’s not Anoch, or if it is, it’s not English. This is where your particular framework of acquisition might come in handy, if you recognize any characters from your particular set.

But let us not be dismayed by the confusion: we must press on. If we treat it like a sigil, then we have to accept the fact that we aren’t really supposed to know the name on which it was based. It’s an obscurantist art, sigil-making, after all, and what we are left to do is make meaning of it. Look at the arrangement. Look at the shapes. Let it speak to you in that inaudible voice of truth. After all, if it cannot be objectively understood, then it must be understood subjectively. Only you can determine its meaning.

So please reply to this thread with your thoughts and ruminations of what you think it means and how you “read” it.

I’ll go first, to clear up any worry you might have about sounding too crazy.

[prufrock5150Participant]

As promised, here goes:
Here’s what I see when I read the OOA logo:

1) An anchor: This is stability, that on which you can rely. It is the sum total of all that is physical law; the equations and lemmas that form solids from quantum uncertainty. It’s there, but not only is it not everything – it’s off to the side and disconnected from the larger part.
2) A Venn Diagram: Circles are a paradox. They represent a resolution of the infinite by way of creating a limit. Their area is unquantifiable numerically (as pi is an irrational, non-repeating, infinite series), and yet we can clearly see that they have a boundary. By observing that boundary, we create their existence. Two overlapping circles, then, represent the degree to which we categorize and organize information by analogic and Aristotelian thought (by noting qualities which are unique to two things and which are shared by both), and yet are unable to precisely define things because they are paradoxically unquantifiable.
3) The number 2: This is the binary. The binary is a lie. All rational thought can be expressed by a binary, and it rests on a central principle: the law of the excluded middle. This law holds that in logic, a statement can be exactly either true or false, and not both. The binary is useful. Represented as a 1 or a 0, this binary allows for algorithmic processing of information, and is the advent by which you are reading this sentence. However, the binary itself is an invention, and is not itself true. One popular binary which humans have comfortably relied upon for their entire development as a species is the binary of self/other. You think you have a concrete and stable self, and that there are other people who are not you. However, if this were absolute in its expression of truth, the logical extension would lead toward solipsism, as you would thereby be the only self capable of defining and observing the entire universe around you. Each person would solely be their own universe. This is a paradox. It is both true and false. We resolve this paradox by stepping outside of the binary and recognizing that there is a larger, shared middle that is formed by the entirety of information that forms the boundaries of our selves, and that these boundaries are formed by temporal limits upon the spacetime continuum. We can only begin to step outside of this system of information by acknowledging that the linearity of time is a useful metaphor of organization, but not an objective reality. There is no beginning and no end. Both are the same. There is only the one singularity.
4) The connecting swipey-snake thing: This forms a link between the Venn Diagram and the Number 2. This is a path. This is your path. Think back through your life, and remember all the times when you thought “if it weren’t for x, then y would have never happened.” Revel in it. Really explore the causality at work. Were it not for this wildly improbable series of events, this would not be happening right now. Cosmologists call this “The Anthropic Principle,” and it’s a helpful tool for staving off the crippling existential doubt that comes from recognizing how utterly unimportant you feel in the face of such a vast and complex universe. It’s also a method by which you hopefully recognize that there is no such thing as a coincidence, and that randomness is an expression of our inability to see the strange attractor that forms a pattern throughout all existence. Of course, you can only see the whole thing from the outside. I think the OOA wants us to go outside.

[Susie JParticipant]

Go outside, @prufrock5150. And not just to have a cigarette. 🙃

[MuthilocedSpectator]

Good job, @prufrock5150.

[LucusParticipant]

Just found this @prufrock5150 give me a few days to weigh in. Still wrapping my mind around your pic and the strange attractors. I actually have a book called chaos theory in my library. It may be time to dig it out.

[DlimerParticipant]

Before I read your description, I’d like to get your thoughts on what I saw. I actually saw a singularity. It combines everything and everyone. Nature, life, inanimate and all forms of being. the male and female symbols tied together in the form of wedding bands can be just a way of saying man and woman are one but not limiting it so much to one man and one woman. the form of the micro Greek symbol shows how we are individually part of a whole. The part that looks like an anchor also looks like a hunting/fishing arrow which can show how fear affects us all as one even if what happens only happens to one. Here is one thing that I have thought of and I got the idea from a book by Raymond E Feist. In Christianity or most religions, there is an outside antagonist called the enemy. but, because the enemy has no physical form of it’s own, it must act through others. Therefore, the enemy is insignificant simply because it can not act unless we accept its request and instruction to follow what it lays out. The true enemy is the one that does follow to do despicable or harmful things to others in the group. The symbol also denounces, in my perspective, the idea of; race, color, nationality, religion or anything that separates us. I’m sure I made this more simplistic than it should be.

[prufrock5150Participant]

@dlimer – Simplicity is not detrimental when it manages to communicate truth. Your truth is paramount, and you express it with beauty and depth. Thank you, and I look forward to seeing more of your words.

[Anonymous]

Good job!

[LucusParticipant]

[DaelaParticipant]

I really like this.

[NosnevetsParticipant]

More please go. This is amazing.

[prufrock5150Participant]

A newfound eight-fold path, perchance? 😉

[LucusParticipant]

I’ve been thinking about this all week. But it’s hard to pull myself away from the lifetime of enlightening information you have posted here @prufrock5150. Some real interesting and mind blowing stuff. It’s funny you knew I watched Mr. Wynn Millar for that quantum grammar stuff. I read the links you shared and was really confused until I finally recognized a math symbol I used this year when I started to learn how to write math sentences. Then the whole idea blossomed and I understood the concept much better. Thanks for the clarity.

[LucusParticipant]

1. We all begin here anchored in the traps of society. We must leave this place to find our path.
2. After wandering for awhile we find a focus point which inevitably leads each to their path.
3. We begin to understand the messages and begin to see that we are sleepy. There is more. A glimpse into the fourth state.
4. Most begin to experience the fourth and fifth states of consciousness here. One of most difficult part of the journey starts here.
5.Something inside of us dies here. We consciously make a decision to change our process of thought. This reformat the ego essentially killing it.
6.This is the resurrection of the spirit. We are born again here. Givin our second life. We become intimately aware and willing to control our own consciousness. This is discussed in many religions.
7. This is the highest point of our individual path. The closest we can come to the divine without proper teaching. The greatest risk for madness comes in this section of ascension.
8. The joining together of Oracle and Aspirant. Our initiation and indoctrination does not begin until we reach this point. The point of enlightenment is shared here. Mandorla/Vesica Piscus

[Anonymous]

SO….. not a penis being circumcised?

[Author]

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