Kything 003
Hecate Statue in Antalya Archeological Museum, Turkey | Photo 304965434 © Evren Kalinbacak | Dreamstime.com
“What is Life if not a little detour on the Alone’s journey to the Alone?” — A variation on Plotinus’ seminal conclusion at the end of the Enneads
The Ouranian Chronicles series (henceforth the OC) offers readers a kind of travelogue of humankind’s exploits. One could also say the work seeks to make sense of the “little detour” that brought us to this world, and of the reasons why we took it—but that may sound too philosophical or poetic to be accepted at face value. I admit, writing the untold story of humanity’s journey from roaming wildling to world citizen and beyond is an ambitious endeavor—possibly too ambitious. No one has attempted such an eggheaded project of late, and perhaps for good reason. It is a bit much.
Still, I felt the story had to be told, if only to justify my own presence in this world. But how to tell it without sounding like an overbearing nerdy know-it-all? The solution was to take a literary approach: not quite fiction per se, more like a platform for testing dicey thought experiments, while bringing the plot to life through a host of memorable characters. One of the work’s peculiarities is its penchant to cover not only actual locations and times, but also imaginary ones. I mean places or states that first have to be imagined before they can become accepted as true. Imagination is very important. Without it we could not predict the consequences of our actions. Foreseeing what might go wrong, so that a proper course correction can happen, is the plot’s golden thread. This is suggested even by the main protagonist’s byname, Kayin the Ariole, an old designation for “seer” or “soothsayer” (when “sooth” still meant “truth”).
If the OC were a James Bond or Jason Bourne story, the series might be mistaken for a debriefing that follows a reconnaissance mission—one that, tragically, had to take a speculative turn. Why speculative? Because the ordering of time is involved—and our peculiar way of dealing with this illusive subject.
“Time Rush” by Mark Final | Adobe
Time forces us to carry out mental activities that are very distinct from each other, and can be neither substituted nor exchanged: Remembering, imagining, and experiencing. We remember the past, imagine the future, and experience the present—by recording it as it unfolds. The OC refers to this activity as “chronologizing.”
To provide a complete picture of the temporal landscape surveyed by the series, I had to divide it into three equal parts:
Book 1, Masks of God, reports on the past,
Book 2, Soul Engineer, focuses on the future, and
Book 3, Brotherhood of Shadows, takes on the present (with some aspects of the future thrown in).
I structured the work accordingly. The first book acquaints us with pivotal events in history that may have slipped under our communal horizon as a species. The second book appeals to our imagination by showing us what things may come, affording us the time to lay a course to a more desirable future. The third book shows us how to be judicious about our experiences, so that they are worth remembering and repeating. After all, who we are depends on what we remember. As does who we shall become.
With the OC’s scope thus outlined, I will now focus on the overall thought-experiment carried out by the work, which is essentially dualistic. The reader is introduced to a two-world format—one Real, the other Ideal—which is then explored by the story’s protagonists in a number of adventurous ways. And yes, there is love, war, assassination plots, rescue missions, tragic sacrifices, and acts of redemption—with lots of cliffhangers—all the ingredients of a conventional novel.
While the work’s intellectual setup is borrowed from the Neo-Platonist philosopher Plotinus, the OC offers a substantially updated version taking into account many recent cosmological discoveries, including the so far unresolved dualistic conflict between macrophysics and quantum theory (which the OC humbly seeks to reconcile—using literary means and provocative thought experiments, rather than advanced mathematics, theoretical physics, string theory, and the like).
“Duality” Photo of Metapontum © Arnold Hermann
Per the OC, there is a First World, apart from ours, inhabited by the First Selves—comparable to Plotinus’ First Men—self-ruling, benign Rationals who reside in the Ideal. But here is the twist: The First Selves are also explorers. However, the worlds they seek to survey are not directly accessible to them. The discrete conditions of the respective self-contained systems are too different to be compatible. If, for example, other realms do not share the same temporal continuum, they are not subject to the same arrow of time.
For argument’s sake, let us imagine a Type V or Omega civilization on the expanded Kardashev scale—adopted by astronomers and cosmologists as a hypothetical gauge for detecting alien civilizations. (I make this allegorical comparison elsewhere.) The highest form of a civilization, or Omega, is considered capable of managing a multiverse. Nevertheless, as per the OC, such a civilization would be unable to enter individual systems without messing up their internal laws, while conceivably losing their own Omega status. The simple fact of joining a specific time stream could have many adverse effects, also because it would lead away from the Ideal as a permanent state.
Still, the First Selves needed to explore, to survey firsthand the worlds under their care. They had to come up with a workable solution without compromising their state.
In the end it came down to a question of measure or proportion: how much of the First Selves, of their true nature, had to be “suspended” or “lessened,” so that whatever remained could be adapted for operations inside a foreign environment? Without abandoning theirs, of course. Consider what happens when we put on one of those deep-sea diving suits for exploring the ocean’s floor. We severely limit our range of motion and other liberties, while having to depend on a feeble lifeline linked to the top. Conversely, we can now explore a domain that otherwise would be detrimental to us.
In similar manner, the solution the First Selves adopted was to bring about a greatly modified but equally reduced version of themselves—referred to as their Second Selves. It is these narrowly focused “Seconds” that were dispatched to our realm—a realm that became known as the Second World.
And that is how we, the Second Selves, ended up here, sent to explore this foreign domain, to see whether we could make it our own. At least temporarily. We are a “specialized” version of the Firsts, suitably adapted for a physical existence.
This would explain the epistemic limitations we experience on our Homo sapiens mission: As “downgraded” Seconds, we are equipped only with the knowledge capacity a corporeal existence requires. Likewise, our memory faculties are substantially impaired given that we are consigned to organic vessels suffering from an inbuilt expiration date. On the bright side, if the local vessel passes away, the memories of a Second’s physical time in this realm are faithfully retrieved by the First World, and so retained by the Original Self. Nothing is lost. (A setup that might have comforted Blade Runner’s Roy Batty, when, dying, he lamented how all the wondrous events he had witnessed “ will be lost in time like tears in rain.”)
“Lost in Time” | Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty in Blade Runner (1982) | Photo source unknown
Incidentally, the “uploading” process is conventionally known as “life review,” characterized by the flashing of images of a person’s life when the death of the body is near.
The integrity of one’s experiences remains true even when the Self assigns subsequent extensions of Itself to additional organic vessels, so that the explorations of the physical realm can continue. This relocation activity is mistakenly referred to as “soul-transmigration” by those who only vaguely remember why they are here. Whereas those suffering from a case of total First World amnesia dispute any form of recurrent or continued existence.
This twofold scheme might seem complicated at first, but it reflects quite faithfully many of the ideas proposed by the various philosophical schools, particularly those in antiquity. To create a working synthesis among some partially conflicting teachings and beliefs was not that much of a challenge, since the dualistic basics—the difficulties that had to be overcome—have been debated since the dawn of philosophy. Far more difficult was linking the two disparate realms together, without losing them, or losing the connection. One encounters the same problem when trying to join two universes. This is the oldest stumbling block in philosophy, and why the ancient thinkers were so obsessed with questions pertaining to Like and Unlike, Same and Different, etc.
Clearly, for the metaphysical scaffolding to work, a connection between the First and Second Selves, respectively, the Two Worlds, had to be put in place that was logically consistent with either one. This link must serve two very demanding masters—as a “go-between” capable of maintaining a bond between two disparate realms, without violating the individual laws and restrictions of either, nor being corrupted by them.
Functionally, the link must both unite and separate; bring together while keeping apart. Not an easy feat. One metaphysically workable but otherwise iffy solution has been in development for thousands of years: the unique role the soul plays in the body, not as entity, but as connection. Connection is one of the oldest soul or spirit functions, strangely forgotten by most modern teachings and religions. Only certain spirit-healer and shaman traditions remember such tasks.
Many late-classical systems, including certain Gnostic movements and Neo-Platonic models, accepted the idea of the soul’s intermediary function, to say nothing of older philosophical teachings and texts that often looked to the soul when an intermediate position needed to be filled—especially the one between the intelligible world and the physical realm.
The most prominent example for such an inter-world intermediary is Hecate, the three-faced Goddess of Crossroads. The Chaldean Oracles (an influential 2nd century AD work) assign to her not only the function of World Soul—in a refurbished version of Plato’s tripartite Timaeus setup—but, as the text’s cosmic gatekeeper, she serves also as the conduit for the souls/intellects allotted to this universe (I have written a separate academic study on the goddess and her role as cosmological intermediary titled “Soul as Interface: Hecate, the Cosmic Gatekeeper”).
Statue of Hecate Epipyrgidia by Alcamenes of Athens | Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden, Netherlands | Photo 239746389 | Hecate © N. Rotteveel | Dreamstime.com
According to the Oracles, Hecate regulates everything that passes from the outer realm or metakosmos of the so-called First Father—the home of the Ideal—to our local Second Father, or Craftsman, who manages this world. But she not only relays the thoughts and intentions of the First Father to our realm and its Caretaker—she also conveys communications from “Here” to “There.” Imaginatively, the Oracles liken Hecate to a membrane between universes. Indeed, one could compare her functions to those of a modern airlock or a decompression chamber. The goddess not only controls what comes in and out from each respective domain, but she “converts” what is being “transferred” to match the conditions of its destination (conceivably, this is where the tailor-made limitations of the Seconds become implemented).
The triune setup also determines how we perceive our world. As an intermediary, Hecate is responsible for “manifesting” (showing us) a perceptible version of our Second World—in the form of an “experienceable overlay” that makes this realm accessible to the external First Selves—or, to be more precise, to their substantiated or “avatar form,” a.k.a., the Seconds—since the First Selves cannot interact with this universe directly. In other words, this is why we see the world in the macro format familiar to us, otherwise known as stars, planets, oceans, clouds, forests, mountains, flowers, etc., while the Firsts can comprehend our world strictly as pure data—as in, units of information—essentially by means of the basic constituents our universe is made of, if “perceived” from beyond the macro layer.
“How we see the world vs. how it is seen from the outside” | Photo source unknown
Therefore, the term “experienceable overlay” refers only to the sensible range available to the Second Selves for observation and interaction. A kind of abridged or thumbnailed version of the world around us—I don’t want to say “cookie cutter” though the temptation is great—yet readily explorable. This interactive range does not say much about the universe as such, not even on a quantum information level which remains largely unknown to us (potentially made up of unobservable stuff like dark matter, dark energy, and who knows what else). We are talking here only about the limited range of the macro world impacting our senses. Or to return to Plato’s Cave analogy: we are seeing only the shadows we are meant to see. And Hecate’s role would be that of the projectionist who casts the shadows on the cave’s wall, without which we would see nothing. That is one of her principal interface functions.
Conclusion: While the thought-experiment I’ve offered is based on allegorical comparisons, it does provide us with a conceptual access key that would fit both realms. If my decades in philosophy have taught me anything it’s that there has to be a definable crossover point between disparate systems, or realms, be they micro and macro, quantum and classical, sensible and intelligible, this universe or another—even mind and matter or, in terms of AI, mind and machine, materialism and whatever its counterpart may be, panpsychism, etc. I would go so far as to say between atheism and theism, but then I would alienate people on both sides. I will limit myself to stating that there must be an intellectually detectible intermediary “attached” to any supposedly “closed” or “self-reinforcing” system or arrangement, regardless of what we call it. We live in a world of wannabe absolutes, not actual ones.
(The OC has its own crossing-over point governed by a nameless “intermediary,” whose identity is revealed by the end of Book 3. Yes this is a teaser. Sorry.)
“Crossing Over to the other World” by Cassius Ramsey (in Midjourney) | Enhanced by Arnold Hermann
My purpose for revealing the inner mechanics of the OC’s Two World setup—including its novel distinction between First and Second Selves—was to provide food for thought. And to hopefully stir interest in a project more than a decade in the making. Sure, I could say more about Second Self’s "mission," but then I would have to answer questions like:
“How did we get here exactly?” and, more importantly, “how do we get out”?
I trust readers of the OC will discover the appropriate answers in the work itself.
Arnold Hermann,
July 06, 2024
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