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The Conatus
Inherent to all things is a drive for survival: to retain what one has, but at the same time to improve. We call this drive the conatus, a more elaborate form of willpower. The complexity of this force is that not only can it be understood as perseverance or inertia, but also as a strong desire, displacement and incurrence in change. While it is found in everything, it is most potent in aeon hosts—for the aeons themselves act as a sort of fuel to the hosts’ willpower. What’s important to note here is that the conatus isn’t activated solely out of want; a host in danger will experience its intensity as a sign of their aeon’s protection.
The conatus will often determine the quality of its user’s act; this is particularly true in alchemy. An alchemist extends their conatus to their craft, allowing for it to either maintain its consistency or aspire to a greater limit. My casting of a fireball, for example, encounters two problems: the struggle to keep its form or the drive to surpass it. Both problems share the common root in what dictates their process: in other words, it’s a matter of intensity. The fireball is either too weak or too strong; the conatus mediates this difference.
The case that interests us is how the conatus behaves within aeon hosts. Theory has it that a host must experience a strong surge of conatus in order to meet their aeon, and once this happens, the aeon will power their host. This surge exposes the host to the limits of their body: near death experiences, a strong flow of emotions or a great showing of will power are only some examples of this. Though these are not (perhaps) intended experiences, they open the door for aeon hosts to summon their conatus at will later on, granting them amazing abilities.
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Astral Map
The oldest magic this world knows is that of denying oneself. We’ve all seen it, how shamans, witches, mages and the sort call upon the gods to take over their bodies to reach their goals—be it for the power to smite their enemies, to achieve a longer life or to speak with the dead. Likewise, there are other less ambitious feats to denying oneself, such as leading an ascetic lifestyle or to reach clearer levels in meditation. The Bible gives us Jesus as an example in denying oneself: this is termed Kenosis, and it refers to “acting despite”, “rejecting”, “emptying” Jesus’ person of his divine attributes without separating himself from his status as God—as difficult as that is to conceptualize. We’ll borrow this term as a reference to denying oneself.
To the Nomads, kenosis is primarily used to connect oneself with nature, which would simultaneously imply a denial of oneself. Their idea of nature, however, is quite broad: it includes not only wildlife and flora, but literally everything as a network or a mesh—the divine mesh we’ve called the Rhizome. In that sense, they’re not reaching a pure-bodiless connection, but a soup of objects, each of which hosts a world of their own. This personal world that traces the most immediate connections to oneself is what we’ll call an Astral Map, and it reflects the depth to one’s person. Call it an inventory of connections, filled with both small and great intersections alike. They can be present-personal relations with friends, memories of past lives or even awareness of alternate selves. In a way, one’s Astral Map can also chart one’s future.
When performing kenosis, the Nomads obtain a tridimensional POV of their Astral Map—with their sight acting as a floating point that can move about their constellation of connections. It is their belief that a life well lived is one that exhausts the horizon of their Astral Map with as many connections as possible, for these will serve the lineage of future Nomads; be it to make them wiser, stronger or overall more apt to preserve their people. Of relevance to note is that aeon hosts already have an overwhelmingly large amount of connections in their Astral Maps due to their respective aeon, launching most of them to discover what those connections are instead of forming them like the Nomads do.
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Psionic Field
Also called a workshop by alchemists, a psionic field refers to the mind’s reach outside of the body. It expresses itself as a radius with its user at its center and its range may vary. Once extended, the user’s will is expected to permeate what objects are in its path; if the user’s will is capable of besting the will of nature, then rearranging the eidetic and telletic components of the targeted objects should be possible. If nature’s will (or conatus) proves stronger, then the objects remain the same. This could also be said when two users extend their psionic fields and they make contact: more often than not, the fields cancel each other out, as nature’s will overwhelms them both once the clash weakens their initial momentum. If the users are skilled, then the exchange between fields can subsist without being pushed away by nature’s will.
Psionic fields emerge once the mind manages to affect the eidetic particles outside of one’s body. It has been argued in earlier writings that the driving hypothesis of most abilities presented is that of a mind that manipulates the structures of objects, given that both thoughts and objects share an outline—a concept of form—with their difference being the malleability of thoughts. Therefore, if that wall between the mind and the world could be lifted, then the form of those objects should bend to the mind’s power (in this case, ‘will’.)
The distance of the psionic field’s range from its source can also determine the potency of what is being manipulated. In cases of small spaces or in the presence of many users, for example, a common option is to layer the field over the source’s body in a second-skin-like fashion. This enables for concentrated manipulation either of the user’s own body or of personal artifacts. As an added note, most psionic fields require a catalyst for their expansion once the user finds themselves capable of their projection; these leads us to discuss the concept of Regalia, which are personal tokens that symbolize a sort of seal to the fields. Once activated, the fields extend. That is to say, psionic fields are not in constant use but this does not mean that cases in which they are don’t exist.
Likewise, there are cases in which one’s self-mastery overcomes the need for a regalia-activation, as can be seen with wise men that hold no attachment to earthly possessions. Speaking in an overarching sense, psionic fields constitute the space of the mind that conditions thought-activity, which is nourished by perception, projections, representations and will. Depending on the clarity of mind presented by the individual will be what determines one’s mastery of this phenomenon, which in itself is capable of going so far as to mold surrounding realities.
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Geisteswissenschaften
"Sciences of the spirit."
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