THOHT WORKS -Book I
UNITING THOUGHT
WITH MEASURE AND ART
Edited 12.26.2022
This project comes from a desire to bring ideas together in a private little imaginary room where they can get to know each other without losing too much face. Just as the site is a record of an open-sourced virtual think tank, this is a record of defining the principles of the meditating computer project and one of its major goals: bringing a sense of measure to our inspirations and ideas.
This method is scrawled on a digital blackboard so I wont lose touch with the roots of the project. This is part of the site will likely always be under construction, mainly because the science part will likely have plenty of updates. The concepts are offered as an antidote for some of the common pitfalls of thinking big, so I suppose that might get to be a pretty long list. Instead of going haywire in this fashion, I am playing a game of matching ideas to bodies in the solar system which resonate with them the most. To do this I am concentrating on the biggest masses in the solar system each as representatives of a certain power in our local cosmos, wherever that may apply. Since many of their qualities overlap one another, I have elected to simply start from the sun and work my way out. The closest to the Sun gets to be the Keeper of a Power, unless there are other bodies which are much more representative of that quality when compared to the rest.
—
Some prefer fiction, myth or music for their inspirations.
Others delight in reason, and a clearly expressed idea.
Still more prefer an image or a well laid string of words to amplify their comprehension.
So I have rather enthusiastically tried to bring all of these to a measure of this adventure fraught with many a blind alley and plenty a dead end.
The contents can be explored in different ways or in a different order.
At the base of it is a project of exploring the patterns of the cosmos in an open visual and musical language which allows science and math to lend a hand to art and whatever it is we do. It is a part of a deeper project of creating a multifaceted lens through which to view the peculiarities of the Cosmic Order with ideas from Music & Mathematics.
In the first part you will get a myth of the god of the mind. The Second Part is the digital blackboard which brings together both old and freshly updated ideas to the matter at hand.
In some sense this is a part of a larger project to use the solar system as a pattern that helps us to understand our experience. It has been termed received wisdom in other languages to use such a pattern as the solar system in spiritual diagrams for contemplation, learning, social reform and creative and spiritual pursuits. In some ways using the term “received wisdom” conveys the power of such a tool kit and environment of mind to provide a sturdy foundation through time for things which our reason may balk at and our science may be unprepared to adequately understand. Our perennial wisdom which may change tongues, temporalities and locales, is the medium which stands with these powers which are billions of years old and are timeless when compared to our brief lives on earth.
A short tale
of
THOHT
In some of the earliest civilizations we know of, there was a God of the Mind…
With Words, this God was said to have re-created the World.
Both the World and the God of the Mind were forever changed.
Words developed into a complex written and spoken Language of the Mind which could travel through time to later generations.
And so the experiences of countless beings were put into myriad volumes of thoughts which became the substance of the Mind. In this form, countless beings could digest and process experiences they never had. THOHT was therefore a vaccine for the eternal chain of Follies that is the life of an animal who is young in experience and years. And though these may chain the young in rules of thought and thumb, they may yet be a help to whoever break them.
And so a Cultural Power of thought was created. This power is here abbreviated as THOHT.
So the Power of THOHT and the Word was spread throughout many beings and cultures and vast Roadways formed in the Realm of THOHT. And since these Imaginary Roads were so often traveled by so many beings, that the Highways of THOHT bled out into the real world in the works of these beings who built a whole Culture and Temple of THOHT out of the Environment they were in.
But even then, much of our experience can not be found so easily along these Main Highways of THOHT. So the work of THOHT to put a word to each and every thing, and to tend this PERENNIAL CULTURE of THOHT continues to this day.
Many beings forget the way the world was before THOHT came of age around here. And there is a great potential of using the power of THOHT to glamorize beings into thinking that there is only one way to do anything—which is the way they will likely show you. And so the nature of THOHT can easily be forgotten. THOHT is a thing sustained by a whole culture, and made in a game which matches parts of our experience with words in a creative and customary fashion. Language need not be about absolute truth, because at the very least it preserves a bit of the flavor of experience through time and generations.
THOHT
HOUSE
an open-research root tantra
or
Primary Source Maps
for thinking very big, very small,
and anything in between
The primary work of THOHT is a simplified and ground level practice of being aware of the various pitfalls, limitations and powers of language based thought. So what follows are one example of an offering of axioms or maxims or proper thoughts to ponder and help define a ground floor for the WORKERS OF THOHT to get a flavor of the type of work done.
Each THOHT WORKER should make his or her own set of Axioms or Maxims to start the journey of experiment and experience.
Here are 5 Celestial Bodies and 5 Axioms. The axioms should help to ground our understanding in an awareness of the limitations of language based thought. For each medium of art there are such limitations as those recorded here, and so making those axioms for whatever medium you study is a part of THOHT WORK.
As part of an effort to connect any contemporary mode of work to the perennial tradition, the very old form of cosmic union—the solar system is used as a THOHT TREE or a conceptual diagram which forms the background and foundational form of all THOHT.
Adding modern science to this old world spiritual mixture brings specific properties of the particular power in focus.
The axioms themselves are a part of an effort to not let language fool us into thinking our knowledge is complete or authoritative unless it is along very specific Lines of THOHT with very specific limits. Hopefully this will inspire a more creative quality of learning and exploring, and a very fascinating way to measure ideas with art so that the art is a actually a form of science rather than being solely a slave to cultural fashions and whims.
1
Sun - Sol
The Power of Highly Polar matter (H+) and energy to Sustain itself through Complexification into more Neutral Forms of Matter (H to He).
The Power of larger matter to hold smaller matter in continuous orbit.
The Power of Atomic Fusion in lighter elements to release a massive amount of energy in excess of what is needed to sustain itself as a burning star.
Axiom 1:
The Glamorous & Creative Power of the Word
to create Perennial Culture
Written and spoken language is a demonstrable form of communication which transforms our experience and creates a type of consciousness which is transmittable through time and across generations.
HARMONICS of the SUN
by Time
1.4
range of solar plasma cycles from equator to poles
= 35 days / 25 days = 1.4
This is also very close to the logarithmic distance between the Earth’s two temporal cycles, yr/solar day.
2
MERCURY - THOHT
The Power of Cyclic Contiguity.
(by continuing to be nearest the sun)
The Power of Flexible Synchrony or Wide Bandwidth
(by its eccentric orbit).
The Power of the Second Harmonic
(as evidenced by Secondary Harmony or a solar day/year ratio of 2 to 1, called the spin orbit ratio).
Axiom 2:
The History of Language (the complete written record of all languages) is a Record of the
Development of Linguistic-based
Cultural Consciousness
Written words are a verifiable record of our expanding and changing cultural awareness, with new experiences come new words, as when Adam was said to have invented the first tongue. This might be called the Eternal Adamic State of Language. It is likely that it takes quite a long while for any culture to create words and ideas which adequately explain their experience. This is because there is structure and complexity at all levels which we are entirely unaware of and haven’t yet found words for, if our literature is taken to be a record of our conscious awareness.
It should also be said that the third power of Mercury is a shared power which is first evidenced in Mercury by its very strange and nearly perfect ratio of 2 to 1 when you compare the solar day length to its year length. This “Power” is placed here because the algorithm we are following here is to start from the center, the Sun, and Mercury is the next closest. All bodies considered here have a particular ratio of day and year length, but Mercury’s is different from almost all other planets except Venus. Both Venus and Mercury share the quality of being close enough to the sun where tidal locking forces come into play and year and day length ratios become very close or a small factor of difference between them when compared to the rest of the solar system. The only other bodies in the solar system which show tidal locking qualities of a similar level are Moons.
HARMONICS of the planet MERCURY
by Time
2 : 1
Solar Day/Year = 176 days / 88 days = 2 / 1
This is perhaps a large part of how wide spread the use of octave length 2 is in many cultures of Earth. The second Harmonic is a very traditional conception of music and harmonics.
by Distance
1.51739 : 1
max distance / min distance to the Sun = 69.8/46 = 1.51739
This is a very close musical measurement to 2^(3/5), or 1.5157. It is also slightly larger than a perfect fifth, 2^(7/12).
3
VENUS
The Power of matter and energy to create a strict, very polar and inflexible harmony.
(polar by rotation, strict and inflexible by orbital circularity)
The Sustainable Power of “Countercultural” Rotation
(based on Venus’ rotation counter to the Solar winds and its own orbital direction)
The Power of complex matter to bond and change their shared nature in myriad ways in favorable conditions.
(as evidenced in the chemical complexity of Venus)
Axiom 3:
No Single Account or Map of Reality
is Best for all cases, times and places.
Not a Pyramid, or a single Tree of Knowledge, but a Forest of Perennial Empirical Wisdom is the Wild Kingdom of THOHT…
There is a Deep Deception in the idea of the Tree of Knowledge in that here is no one account or map of the universe or world that is best in all cases, times and places (so a pyramid scheme of a perfect knowledge superior to all others is not a great model in that respect). And so the Perennial Wisdom of the Creator was that though we are tempted to define good and evil for all beings, they are really just our early ideas about cultural cohesion and making sense of our experience in a cultural mode.
HARMONICS of the planet Venus
by Time
1.92419 : 1
Solar Day/Year = 224.65 days / 116.75 days = 1.92419
This is very close to 2^(17/18) or 1.92445.
by Distance
1.01302 : 1
max distance / min distance to the Sun = 108.9/107.5 = 1.01302
This is very close to 1.00, or prime harmony as the same note. In this case it indicates that Venus has a very circular orbit.
4
MOON
The Power of Primary Harmony to support the stability of and catalyze the complexity of another power (even as it can make it unsteady)
(as evidenced in the Moon’s very close to Prime Harmony in spin/orbit resonance)
Axiom 4:
Even Direct Experience of a God
cannot replace Empirical Wisdom
nor verify your opinion as fact
Socrates is famed to have said, “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
This is related to the idea of “knowing that you know,” which is sometimes termed absolute knowledge.
Our experiences and our ideas about them are likely only a very small fraction of what is possible.
HARMONICS of the MOON
by Time
1.080586 : 1
Solar Day Length/ Year Length = 29.5/27.3= 1.080586
This is very close to 2^(1/9), or 1.08006, but it also is just a bit larger a musical length than a whole tone or 2^(1/6).
by Time
1 : 1
Sidereal Day/Year Length= 27.32 days / 27.3 days = 1.00073
This is very close to 1:1 or Primary Harmony, the 1st Harmonic.
by Distance
1.1388 : 1
max distance / min distance to the Sun = .41/.36 = 1.138888
This is very close to 2^(2/11), or 1.13431, but it also is just a bit larger a musical length than a whole tone or 2^(1/6).
5
EARTH
The Power of matter and energy to form self-cultivating, reproducing Microcosmic Powers in a contained environment and under favorable conditions and in diverse forms of matter.
(They are termed microcosmic as the general entropic dynamic of the solar system is resisted in a contained environment as though it were another solar power in its own right.)
Axiom 5:
Absolute Knowledge is a province of Truistic Truth,
and Empirical Wisdom is for the real world.
Empirical Wisdom is based on the patterns of cyclic change in a complex ecological environment. Absolute truths or what could be called truistic truths (self-evident) can be of many kinds perhaps but the 2 types which stick out in my mind are custom and logic. Truistic truth would be ideas which are pretty circular and provable by definition—self-evident ideas. I think its possible we often want absolute truth to be the basis of our lives. But the idea here is that absolute truth is fairly hollow because its a thing which is true by definition. A mathematical proof—the other type—is usually considered most interesting when one equation can tie together many seemingly separate ideas into one.
What is fairly scary about this axiom is that it seems to imply that customary thinking patterns aided by mathematical models is pretty much all we ever really have to work with. In another sense this is why science is so exciting, because we can bring in more and more of the flavor of reality into our world views instead of only seeing what confirms the ideas we already have.
by Time
1.42578 : 1
1.4019 : 1 (as frequency)
Year/Solar Day = 365
Since there are 365 days in a year we use 365 as the resonance ratio to find the spin orbit ratio-which is the natural resonance ratio and a natural musical interval of the earth which is created and sustained by the orbit of the earth around the sun and the earth’s spin on its own axis.
This is then reduced to a number between 1 and 2 for octave length 2 to translate this ratio into a musical interval with an octave length of 2.
365/256 = 1.42578
This is very close to 2^(1/2), or 1.414. But it is not fully resonant (within 1%) until splitting up the musical universe into 23 parts (as in 2^(11/23) or 1.39306).
[Because measurements are very musically resonant if they are within 1%, you multiply any partitioning by 2 to get the percentage of coverage any dimension partakes of. This means that a musical cosmos split into 25 parts covers half the universe. It also means that the particular aspect of its music is not very unique or compelling musically because it is already so inclusive that most things can fit into that particular musical dimension. Even so it also means that it requires a higher level of complexity for it to be included in a musical dimension where there is a high degree of musical consonance. And since it is still very close to a very ubiquitous musical tone it still functions fairly widely as a Tritone harmonic which is the most dissonant of all Harmonics—harmonically polar or oppositional.]
by Distance
1.033990 : 1
max distance / min distance to the Sun = 152.1/147.1
= 1.033990
This is very close to 2^(1/21) or 1.03356, but also still very resonant with 2^(1/24), or 1.02930, which is very often used in the music of other cultures.
