Introduction

Neolemurianism is a modern philosophical, occult, and artistic movement, relatively little known, but very curiosity-provoking.
Neolemurianism can be called a practical application of modern philosophy, especially continental philosophy. It is based on the ideas of multiplicity and non-linearity. This evokes associations with mathematics, but neolemurianism is interested not so much in formal mathematical systems as in the question: how does the very idea that something is a lot, several, one thing, two things arise? How does the notion of order arise: this precedes that, that follows this? And what precedes these notions themselves? Numerical order is the organizing principle of chronological time, and it, in turn, organizes human subjective experience, the inner life of the psyche. Neolemurianism looks behind this organization and explores approaches to interact with what is behind its scenes.

In order to have a way to deal with what conceptually precedes organization—including linguistic and logical—yet to be able to use linguistic means, neolemurianism employs characteristic approaches. As a philosophical, and indeed a modern intellectual system, neolemurianism is unusual in that it is characterized by liberties, or looseness; in particular, in its handling of language. The Lemurian text is not an extremely accurate description or definition of a phenomenon—it creates a network of hints that allow you to guess what is behind it.

For example, the same word can serve as a reference to many of its meanings in different fields of knowledge. Take the very name lemurianism: it refers to Burroughs’ last story, Ghost of Chance/Ghost Lemurs of Madagascar, where the animal-man is opposed to the animal-lemur, as a prisoner of time to a creature of bewitched timelessness. And also to the Roman lemurs, the spirits of deceased ancestors, after which the animal lemurs are named. And to the outdated scientific hypothesis of the continent Lemuria, sunk in the Indian Ocean, the existence of which was supposed to explain the habitat of animal lemurs and which was proposed as a hypothetical ancestral land of the human species. And, finally, to the inhabitants of the thirteenth path in the Tunnels of Set in the book Nightside of Eden by Kenneth Grant, who represent an unfulfilled potential seeking to be realized. All of these references outline the space of what lemurs are in neolemuranism.

This and similar techniques make the typical “classic” neolemurian text a kind of cryptogram waiting for interpretation (and conjecture) —which sometimes requires remarkable erudition. I tried to make sense of them to the best of my ability, but I am sure that a person more educated, for example, in the European philosophical tradition will have more to say. At the same time, it also follows from Lemurian looseness that a partial understanding is not an inferior one. Neolemurianism is egalitarian.

Another aspect of neolemurianism’s egalitarianism is consistency (a term taken from the French philosophers Deleuze and Guattari)—the ability to consider any two things without a hierarchy. The most important manifestation of consistency in the Lemurian texts is hyperfiction, a mixture of the fictional and the real; or, more precisely, the acquisition of agency, the ability to interfere with reality, by fiction. A special case of hyperfiction is theory fiction: a combination of fiction and theoretical philosophical ideas.

 

In this article, I also use these approaches. In some cases I can recount my understanding of neolemurian concepts in detail, in others I only dimly guess them, but they are so important to understanding neolemurianism that it is impossible not to point to them. I also consider it necessary to support the hyperfiction, in the form of which the neolemurian teaching is presented (and, in particular, not to give a strictly documentary, factually reliable description of its history). Therefore, first, in the first three parts, I will touch on the theoretical foundations of neolemurianism: the Outside and interaction with it, digital hyperstition, and the time-sorcery. And then, in the last part of the article, Strains of Hyperstition, I will present a hyper-fictional history of neolemurianism with a description of some of the concepts that are characteristic of its sub-currents.

The Outside

One of the most important concepts of neolemurism is the Outside.

The Outside is a part of reality that is inaccessible or difficult to experience, to thought, to mind and to body—especially to humans, especially to habitual, established, normal, traditional and permitted, correct and regulated; that which is off the charts, unbounded, unspeakable. Despite the name, the Outside lies not (only) in the depths of outer space and other spaces physically inaccessible to humans—the Outside (that which is beyond human experience and thought) exists in any thing and occurence, including humans themselves. The Outside corresponds to Kant’s transcendental—it conceptually precedes organization, chronology, sequence, human experience, and makes them possible. The Outside is the realm of Lovecraftian Old Ones and Gibsonian AIs. The doors to the Outside are the future and the virtual in the philosophical sense (the real, but different from the actual).

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

H.P. Lovecraft, Call of Cthulhu

Neolemurian thought, on the other hand, aims to voyage far—as far as possible into the unknowable. But first you need to somehow get out of the placid island of ignorance, to start interacting with the Outside. I distinguish three varieties or aspects of this interaction: diagonalization, abduction, and hyperstition.

Diagonalization

The first strategy is diagonalization, named after Cantor’s diagonal method. Employing it, Cantor proved a theorem also named after him: the set of all subsets of any given non-empty set is always has higher cardinality (simply saying, larger) than the given set itself. In particular, the diagonal method allows one to “escape” from the set of natural numbers to an incomparably larger set of real numbers. And it also serves as one of the main arguments in the proof of Gödel’s incompleteness theorem on limitations of any arithmetic formal system (otherwise called an axiomatic theory).

In neolemurianism, diagonalization is a general name for methods of forming constructions from the elements of a certain stratum (closed structure) that allow destroying the stratum from within, or escaping it. In diagonalization, one can see a generalization of the hacker idea: the specification of any system never describes its behavior in its entirety. And, therefore, it is possible to find and investigate undocumented behaviors. Any seemingly exhaustive list of possibilities does not describe all possibilities, just as any seemingly exhaustive description of reality does not exhaust reality itself.

A simple example. Two of the basic elements of music organization are notes (characterized by their location in time and in the parametric space of sound pitch, forming melody, harmony and rhythm) and timbre (characterizing individual notes). However, with a decrease in the time intervals between notes, their sequence generates a new timbre—the elements of the organization, initially considered as independent, pass one into the other.

Diagonalization opens up a political theme in neolemurianism. The social system of capitalism is seen as axiomatic (indeed, the Lemurian name for global capitalism itself is AxSys, Incorporated). It is simultaneously realized in its pattern—and forms diagonalizing flows of escape that cut across and disrupt these patterns.

Abduction

When stimuli excite nerve impulses in the human sense organs, the system of impulses exists as an unorganized and even unsynchronized multiplicity. When they reach the central nervous system, it organizes the received data into a coherent and synchronized representation of the immediate world, chronologically unfolding into a meaningful narrative. This is one of the material aspects of how human experience emerges from the Outside.

However, the resulting connectivity, according to neolemurism, contains many gaps. They are difficult to detect from within the connection, because attention, memory, and other mechanisms of subjectivity tend to follow connections that go around gaps. But there are situations when the fact of the existence of a gap becomes undeniable. Such an experience is called abduction, because after the fact it seems to the person that he was removed from ordinary life for some time. A typical image of an abduction is alien abduction. Sometimes there is a motif of kidnapping by fairies.

Paradoxically, abduction can be an experience of extreme intensity (which can be described as a transpersonal experience in terms of Russian Eastern religions scholar Evgeny Torchinov) and at the same time lack of intensity (because it cannot be fully integrated with ordinary experience, it may appear empty). An example is an adult’s memory of very early childhood, which is perceived as vivid and interesting—and at the same time does not contain anything important from the perspective of adulthood.

The instrument of abduction can be music and, more broadly, any rhythms different from the usual rhythms of everyday life. The rhythms of external stimuli entrain the rhythm of the nervous system, changing the character of how the experience emerges.

Music (and other artistic materials) can also act as an object of abduction: by sampling, quoting, cut-ups, etc. The sampled fragment is valuable in itself—its own qualities are important, and not the context from which it was taken. Decontextualization allows one to discover new potentials of the material, which were dormant—inactive—in the original context. Musician Claude Schryer calls this sharawadji effect. Common in human abduction and material abduction is the decontextualization-mediated purity of experience.

Hyperstition

Hyperstition is defined as “fiction that makes itself real.” This concept is considered in detail as hyperfiction in the thesis of the philosopher Mark Fisher Flatline constructs: Gothic materialism and cybernetic theory-fiction.

Here are some basic points of this concept:

• Artistic fiction acquires agency.
• It does act in reality on a par with his author, reader / viewer, etc. in a manifestation of the principle of consistency.
• The reality in which hyperfiction operates is Baudrillard’s hyperreality (hence the hyper-). That is, modern reality, in which it is impossible to distinguish reality in a narrower sense—factual, actual—from the signifier, the simulated, etc.

Hyperfiction, however, does not make imitation of reality its main feature. On the contrary, it often explicitly labels itself as fiction, which does not interfere with its agency.

In Fisher’s thesis, hyperfiction is considered in a series of phenomena that acquire independence and agency. This is golem/Frankenstein’s monster in gothic novel, and artificial intelligence in cyberpunk (specifically Wintermute in Neuromancer). Using the example of Neuromancer, it is considered how such a phenomenon enters into an alliance with humans and experiences becoming-human (Deleuze–Guattari’s term). And people themselves go through exactly mirrored becoming. This situation can be viewed as mutual diagonalization.

Compared to hyperfiction, hyperstition has some additional features and accents.

Firstly, the source of hyperstition is considered the Outside, or rather, the population from the Outside of historical (chronological) time—the Old Ones. Hyperstition is their way of self-creation. In comparison with the previous two methods, we can say that hyperstition works in the opposite direction: the Outside invades the familiar reality, taking and changing its forms. However, this is a mutual process: humans and Old Ones are mutually complementary and become parties in the process of hyperstition.

Second, hyperstition emphasizes the idea of a loop in two ways. As a (positive, reinforcing and anti-homeostatic) feedback loop containing culture and economics as a component. And as a time loop: a self-fulfilling prophecy, a virtual future constructing itself through the present.

Thirdly, there is an additional emphasis on hype as an active conviction (or belief) in something. At the same time, the concept of positive unbelief is introduced. This is pragmatic skepticism; the provisionality of ideas about reality, which allows avoiding dogmas and ideologies; the notion that any epistemology is irrelevant or contingent to the effectiveness of pragmatic action. Hyperstition works effectively regardless of whether people consider its semantic content to be an already existing part of reality.

The last point brings hyperstition closer to chaos magic in the active use of belief as a tool—but also contrasts hyperstition with chaos magic, because the semantic content of hyperstition does not require unconditional conviction, but rather is seen as the rules of a game. They can be accepted as a basis for action, but one must be aware of their conditionality.

One of the most prototypical and important examples of hyperstition is the creation of the Internet, and especially the dot-com boom. This example demonstrates that capitalist hyperreality is a particularly fertile ground for hyperstition. Initially, the artistic idea of cyberspace, picked up by entrepreneurs, turned into a hype that had a material effect: it allowed to develop and inflate the market and make the idea that inspired it a reality.

From the point of view of neolemurianism, cyberspace as a fiction acquired agency and began to embody itself in reality. This happened not only due to the will of the people inspired by this fiction, but also due to the unforeseen consequences of their actions and random, but fateful coincidences. An important detail is the negative counterpart of hype: panic. It also serves as an integral part of a positive feedback loop. The prototypical Lemurian example of this is the Y2K panic that prompted massive investment in its solution.

Finally, the fictitious, artistic nature of hyperfiction in Lemurism has two additional important aspects.

First, it allows, as I wrote in the preface, the use of linguistic (and other symbolic) means where their use is difficult or impossible in a documentary, logical, prosaic way. For example, to talk about things that conceptually precede logic and language.

Second, neolemurianism uses a form of fiction to resist dogmatism. Dogma either incorporates the alternative views that threaten it into itself, or else labels them as fiction. But if the narrative preemptively labels itself in this way, then it can distribute itself more effectively.

Lemurian digital hyperstition

The neolemurian theory in itself functions as a hyperstition. Its narrative frame is as follows: this theory is the heritage of the Indonesian Nma people living in eastern Sumatra, southern Kalimantan, and the islands of the Java Sea. They, in turn, received this knowledge from the pre- (or post-, or para-) human culture of Lemuria—either existing before the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, or someday future, or simply roaming in time.

The central element of this knowledge is the Numogram, a diagram of the relationships between the numbers zero through nine. At the same time, the Numogram is a map of the constitution of time itself, and through it, of the entire cosmos.

Why is time, and not space, used in neolemurianism as a fundamental phenomenon? The fact is that it is based on the philosophy of Kant. Kant singles out space and time as what makes experience possible (transcendental). However, space is necessary for the experience of perceiving the world around us, while time is necessary for a person’s own mental experience. As we perceive the world around us indirectly through personal mental experience, therefore, time as its basis conceptually precedes space—we can say that, according to Kant, we perceive space through time.

For beginners to study lemurism, the question often arises: “what does the numogram do?” (or “what is it for?”) My answer to this question is that the numogram serves as a mandala, literally a map of the psychocosmos. It contains most of the important concepts for lemurianism, so it can be considered its table of contents. The practical application of the numogram is lemurian time-sorcery, the creation of novelty by alliance with the forces of time.

Let us consider the construction of the Numogram. My approach to this is through consideration of psychological processes. First of all, there is a difference. It, firstly, makes it possible to single out singular objects as something that differs significantly from their environment, or background. Second, to discover the differences between them, giving each of them a uniqueness. Thirdly, a small degree of difference between objects gives rise to recognition of repetition. With these elements, you can start counting.

Lemurism considers ordinal numbers to be more fundamental. Before we know the (cardinal) number of items (which we found similar enough to count), we must assign them ordinal numbers.

Note: From a psychological perspective, there are two different processes for recognizing a quantity: counting (with the explicit use of ordinals) and subitizing (instant exact estimation), which only works for small numbers—usually no more than four. Exceptions are configurations well known to the counting person, such as six dots on a side of a die. The study of subitizing shows that the groups of repetitive stimuli for which it works are “captured” most likely by the same pattern recognition mechanism that singles out singular objects.

Ordinal numbers (which Deleuze and Guattari call numbering / counting numbers, nombres nombrants, as opposed to numbered, cardinal numbers) are organized into a number line only in the process of counting. In their most basic function, they are only marks of differences, unique identifiers—ciphers—of the units highlighted by attention. And only the sequence in which attention (eye, finger) passes over these units creates a relationship of precedence and succession between them. (Numbers can also number each other, forming complex folds of number spaces).

This process is completely analogous to how linearly ordered, chronological, historical time is organized. I think it’s appropriate to quote Genesis P-Orridge here:

Our languages are linear. Life is not. […] Control. Control needs Time (like a junkie needs junk). Time appears linear. Cut-ups make time arbitrary, non-linear. They reveal, locate and negate Control.

Behavioural cut-ups and magick

What does the linear time emerge from? The Neo-Lemurians claim (and this claim goes back to Deleuze) that it is from unorganized, non-linear time, called Aiôn or aeonic.

The Aiôn is “populated” by becomings. Becoming (devenir) is again the concept of the Deleuze and Guattari. Becoming is a change, the emergence of the new (unforeseen, unrecognizable), it has a development, but has no source, goal, or completion. Becoming is neither subjective nor objective, but includes both sides of the interaction between them.

The philosophical side of the neo-Lemurian view of the nature of time is considered in detail in Anna Greenspan’s thesis Capitalism’s Transcendental Time Machine.

Lemurs, or demons—the central concept of neolemurianism–are becomings (appearances of the new, conceptually preceding the unification into single images and chronological order), as well as differences (conceptually preceding that which is distinguished by the difference).

Why demons? This is primarily a reference to Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. There, demons (antique supernatural beings, not monotheistic evil spirits) are contrasted with gods as those whose attributes are uncertain to those possessing certain ones; those who cross borders to those who abide by them; those associated with nomadic life to those associated with settled life.

[…] among the gods, each has his domain, his category, his attributes, and all distribute limits and lots to mortals in accordance with destiny. Then there is a completely other distribution which must be called nomadic […] Here, there is no longer a division of that which is distributed but rather a division among those who distribute themselves in an open space—a space which is unlimited, or at least without precise limits. Nothing pertains or belongs to any person, but all persons are arrayed here and there in such a manner as to cover the largest possible space. Even when it concerns the serious business of life, it is more like a space of play, or a rule of play […] Such a distribution is demonic rather than divine, since it is a peculiarity of demons to operate in the intervals between the gods’ fields of action, as it is to leap over the barriers or the enclosures, thereby confounding the boundaries between properties. Oedipus’ chorus cries: ‘Which demon has leapt further than the longest leap?’

Difference and Repetition, emphasis mine

So, lemurs, or demons, are intervals, becomings, gaps into the Outside, trajectories, forces in tension, flows of energy, speeds, coalescences, links, holes, relationships, distances and differences, conceptually preceding that which is being distinguished, connected, in relationships, and helping it emerge.

Demons are characterized by insidiousness, spirodynamism, multiplicity, and time-complexity. Each of these words needs further interpretation:

Demons are insidious due to the fact that they are involved with the Outside. For them there are no human rules, they cannot be fully perceived and described in human terms.

Spirodynamism seems to me one of the key concepts for neolemurianism in general. The spiral is loose, free; the chaotic turbulence of water and air often appears in Lemurian imagery. But the spiral also corresponds to the cybernetic principle of self-(re)production. Spirodynamism is compared with Spinoza’s ideas of free will (and True Will in Thelema) as the unconditional source of everything else.

Demons are multiple because they precede the conceptual singling-out of a singular object. In general, in the context of lemurianism, I understand plurality as rhizome in the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari: not just multicomponent, but a non-hierarchical, heterogeneous, non-linear, creative, swarming plurality.

Time-complexity, again, refers to the original non-linearity, unorderedness of aeonic time, but also brings us back to spirodynamism: self-generation in the feedback spirals.

Further, neolemurism singles out specific lemurs. It should be noted that this is completely contingent. It is hyperstition in its purest form, because the usual process of isolating a particular object, described above, creates a unit, while lemurs by their nature precede unity and singularity. They are beings of the Outside, and speech about them, including the very naming, therefore inevitably contains an element of illogicality. Descriptions of lemurs and their attributes-manifestations (called omens) are deliberately blurred and flow into each other. There are at least two dissimilar lists: The Lemunymicon by Lillian Patch and Pandemonium Matrix by Peter Vysparov.

These particular lemurs are differences that generate numbers. They make it possible to distinguish objects and count them.

Counting for a human person is closely related to counting on the fingers, hence the importance of distinguishing exactly ten numbers in lemurianism. Lemurianism also immediately accentuates zero as the pre-counting state, the background state before a singular object has been singled out.

Note: Both the currently prevailing numeral system and most of the historical ones are decimal. The duodecimal number system is also associated with counting on the fingers—on the joints of the four fingers of the hand. Some languages of Papua New Guinea have unusual bases of numeral systems—up to 24—but they are also associated with counting by body parts.

Also, the concept of position is formed from counting on the fingers. Ten units of objects are combined into a unit of the next digital position—one tensome. But lemurianism does not distinguish between positions, it places them on the plane of consistency. Be it a unit of tens or a unit of hundreds—lemurianism pays attention only to the unit. This gives its mathematics a strong resemblance to arithmetic modulo nine: in ordinary arithmetic, the difference between 10 and 1 is 9, but Lemurism treats this nine as the counterpart of zero.

9 and 0 make up the first (or zero) syzygy, a twin pair of numbers dual to each other. The remaining pairs of numbers between 0 and 9, giving a total of 9, make up the remaining syzygies: 8<>1, 7<>2, 6<>3, 5<>4.

These pairs are formed by the first five lemurs, called the great lemurs, or avatars. These are:

• Yuln / Mur Mur, the dream trickster (8::1).
• Odba / Oddubb, glamorous and two-faced (7::2).
• Nal / Katak, predatory, fiery, fanatical desolator (5::4).
• Ux / Djynxx (6::3), the nomad who is connected with the idea of the line of flight from the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari: that which gives freedom to all phenomena; and is most strongly associated with the above described principle of spirodynamics.
• Itte / Uttunul (9::0), timeless one associated with the plane of consistency, especially its aspect called flatline: consistency of living and non-living, neural and electronic.

(Specific lemurs are usually referred to in the feminine grammatical gender, but the word “demoness” is not used.)

In addition to these five, forty more specific lemurs are recognized. I will list a few more examples, and their connection with Lemurian themes, some of which have been mentioned above, and others that will be discussed in detail in the fifth chapter Strains of Hyperstition:

• Eki / Kuttadid (5::2). The sound of a ticking clock. Calendars, clocks and their connection with hype and panic.
• Anix / Numko (8::4). Cataclysms. Cecil Curtis, search for the limbic key, Krakatoa eruption.
• Fiam / Chattuk (6::5). UFOs, abductions, Nephilim, memory anomalies. K-Gothic, Krypt, A-death, mesh, flatline.
• Ozou / Ixidod (3::2). AxSys (Axiomatic systems, incorporated), diagonalization, Oscar Sarkon, vermomancy, micropauses, Oedipus.
• Tanu / Unnunddo (9::2). Hyperfiction, hyperstition, holes/gaps, A-death and simulation, recursion, Crypt, shamanism and metallurgy, Oedipus. Tzikvik.
• Pebl / Bubbamu (7::1). Black Atlantis, after Babylon, foam, flood, hypersea. Max Crabbe, Institute of Binomics.
• Kat / Tukutu (9::5). Barker. Cosmotraumatics. Tic(k)s.
• Ailor / Lurgo (1::0). Hyperstition and Metatronics. Architectonic Order of Eschaton and Decadence. Magic function of language, programming. Doors. Spine. The dark side of the brain.
• Amix / Mummumix (8::3). Bacterial strategies: horizontal gene transfer without identity formation. DNA as an ancient chronicle containing those-who-wait (in Tzikvik terminology). Nyarlathotep.
• Tome / Ummnu (9::8). Coincidence engineering. Barker and Plutonics. Cthelll—the core of the Earth—as the body without organs. Inner Sun.
• Oco/Chanul (6::0) The Outside, unnamed. Division and individuality.

All forty-five lemurs together make up the Mesh, the unorganized connectivity, the “body” of the Numogram.

Conceptually “above” the Mesh, “on the surface” / “on the skin” of the Numogram, the Net arises: organized connectivity, the realm of numbers.

Lemurian numbers, or more accurately, decimal values, or digits, are zones of the cosmos: “systems of coincidence, nebular circulations, spinal nestings, and the folds of inner/outer time” (The Zones, CCRU). Zones are not something primary, they are derivative, complex and emergent. These are areas of accumulation of flows formed by lemurs and tensions between them, certain movements and territories produced by them. The descriptions of the zones, like those of the lemurs, are deliberately vague, ambiguous, and contradictory, and I will give only some of the associations that cluster around the zones as omens of their numerical functions:

0: Abyss, cosmic void, endless cyberspace, incomprehensible labyrinth, numbers, information, snow, ice.

1: Stability, shallow water, memory, shells of mollusks or tortoises, bones, galleries, towers.

2: Separation, linkage, duplicates, illusions, artificial, butterflies, fog, vampirism, contagion.

3: Constant release and transformation, mystical, occult, mysteries of time, spirals, possession.

4: Catastrophes, fires, floods, melting ice, rivers, cycles, delirium, gloomy skies, abandoned  industrial facilities, cats.

5: Interpenetration, concentration, pressure, complex mechanisms, desert, mountains, stormy skies, dragons and snakes.

6. Maximum abstraction, otherworldly, complex non-linear multidimensional geometric constructions, captivation.
7. Blood, slime, DNA as a historical chronicle, swamp, moss, mushrooms, swarms, amphibians, labyrinths.
8. Multiplicity, tentacles, cell division and endosymbiosis, ocean depths.
9. Iron core of the earth, inconsequence, darkness, heaviness, engine room, communications.

So, the numogram is a map of aeonic time. Let us briefly consider its further elements.

Net-span: Each lemur has a net-span, which consists of two zones called its poles. For example, Yuln has a span of 8::1, where 8 and 1 are poles.

Impulses (Imps): Entities that have a span of more than two zones. Little studied in neolemurianism so far, mentioned here for the sake of completeness.

Currents: each syzygy feeds a current that is directed to a (tractor) zone with a number that matches the difference between the numbers of the syzygy poles.

Time systems: currents divide the Numogram into three areas called time systems, regions of partially ordered time:

• Warp, zones 3 and 6. A region of extreme intensity, liberation and creative power.
• Plex, zones 9 and 0. A region of emptiness and at the same time totality. Warp and Plex are outer time and are explicitly associated with the Outside.
• Torque, otherwise known as time-circuit and hex, consists of zones 1, 8, 7, 2, 5 and 4, united by Surge, Hold, and Sink currents. This is a machine for the emergence of habitual, ordinary time (but, despite this, it hides temporal anomalies in itself). It is both linear and cyclical, and is associated with the ancient Chinese concept of change (易), and the six zones included in it are associated with the six lines of hexagrams from the Book of Changes. Each next syzygy in torque also opposes the previous one, creating a spiral movement of time.

The next group of Numogram elements are vectors of interaction between temporary systems. They begin and end in a zone, either in another or in the same one. There are two types of them:

The first variety is channels. They are either contained within the same time system, or lead out of the hex to the warp or plex. Therefore, I correlate them with the methods of interaction with the Outside directed into it: diagonalization and abduction.

Mathematically, the channel is constructed as follows: the number of the zone (n) is considered as cardinal, and all pairwise differences between the units of this number are counted—in lemurism this operation is called cumulation, and in mathematics it is a combinatorial operation of taking the number of combinations (binomial coefficient) from n by 2, or triangular number. This number in Lemurism is called the gate of the zone. The sum of the digits in the decimal notation of this number (in Lemurism, this operation is called reduction) determines which zone from the original one opens through these gates of the channel.

Zones, currents, gates and channels form the canonical image of the numogram:

The second kind of vectors are conduits. They (with the exception of 2→3) are directed from warp and plex inward into hex, or contained within hex. Therefore, I correlate them with the method of interaction with the Outside directed from it: hyperstition.

Tunnels are formed by taking a prime number with a (ordinate) number equal to the number of the original zone (by convention, 1 is considered a zeroth prime number) and, as in the case of channels, summing up its decimal digits.

From syzygies, currents and channels, rites are composed—routes, or paths, through the Numogram, partially rigidifying its spirodynamics and being one of the practical methods of interacting with it.

Finally, different entities are connected to each other through matching numbers. There are two types of such coincidences.

Ciphering is the coincidence of two sets of numbers, regardless of their order. The simplest case of encryption is the coincidence of the poles of the demon’s network range with some other pair of digits, related to the numogram or not.

Clicking is a numeric order match, in the simplest case it applies to the demon’s mesh number, from 00 to 44.

In practice, the second element of the match is often the sum of the Anglossic/Alphanumeric Qabbala character values of the word or text: the numbers 0 to 9 have their normal numerical values, while the letters are assigned further values from A = 10 to Z = 35.

Time-Sorcery

The conceptualizing of sorcery in neolemurianism comes, again, from Deleuze and Guattari—as the creation of the unexpected (even to the sorcerer themselves) and unprecedented, as well as the avoidance of the probable. My current interpretation is that sorcery is creativity, and creativity is sorcery—creativity understood precisely as the creation of something new.

Sorcery is an experimental process that includes the sorcerer themselves. According to Deleuze and Guattari, sorcery involves two complementary processes: multiplicity-based contagion and alliance with the anomalous. Multiplicity allows heterogeneous systems to combine, interpenetrate, transform into each other. The anomalous is on the border of such multiplicity, for which it is impossible to say if it belongs to it or does not belong—such is the sorcerer themself, and sorcery includes making an alliance with another anomalous something, with a demon (or, considering sorcery as creativity, with the muse as the spirit of creativity), directed to their joint and mutual becoming.

The method and purpose of Lemurian time-sorcery is the interaction of the Outside and the human. Sorcery is openness to the Outside. A sorcerer is one who contacts the Outside. The practical, if I may say so, goal of this contact is freedom. Witchcraft is an active participation in deep, wide and intense levels of reality and the courage required to experiment with a wide variety of hypotheses, even if it requires becoming part of the experiment yourself, in order to deepen your connection with the world. It is the dissolution of rigid views, sensations and habits.

Lemurian time-sorcery emphasizes temporal anomaly. Lemurian demons are various transmutations of time, becoming, the emergences of novelty. Time-sorcery is counter-chronic, it debunks the apparent lack of alternatives to linear, monochronic time. Returning to the strategies of interaction with the Outside, each of them implements different transmutations of time. For example, hyperstition forms a spiral between the virtual future and the actual present. Diagonalization challenges the notion of the infinite divisibility of time by operating with intervals of time too small for the psyche to handle. The abduction discovers and explores gaps in the perception of time.

Neolemurian sorcery belongs to the category of teachings of pure experience, and therefore the root of the understanding and practice of every sorcerer lies in their own experience and experiments. Its deepest secrets must be mined independently from the depths of outer time. However, this does not negate the reliance on, so to speak, traditions.

The traditional practice of Lemurian sorcery includes fiction, contemporary performance and video art, and electronic music. It actively uses the methods of sampling, collage, montage, remixing, and cut-ups. Artistic fiction becomes hyperstition. Electronic music and video provide a wide range of time manipulation possibilities: loops, speed manipulation, freeze frames. These methods are also applied to texts: they are collected from fragments, they exist in the form of equipoised remix versions. Many of the neo-Lemurian texts are very dense (again, in the tradition of Deleuze and Guattari), full of neologisms and special terminology the meaning of which is revealed only from the context. Therefore, reading them is not an easy task at first. The purpose of such a format and vocabulary is to draw attention to the Outside, to captivate into the Outside.

The rhythms of art are combined with biorhythms. The interpretation and structuring of the world is changing. The simplest example of this is dreams: their structure has much in common with the perception of the world in waking reality, and also with fiction, fantasizing. In addition, the awakened consciousness has access to dreams mainly through memory, and the process of remembering a dream immediately includes elements of interpretation, structuring and has a commonality with creativity. Careful observation of these processes alone can provide clues to sorcery.

I will try to give an approximate reconstructed scheme of sorcery working.

You collect samples of materials of any nature—textual, media, physical, digital—and release their potential. You combine samples with each other. Borders, gaps, connections, coalescences, differences, rhythmic patterns between the components of the combination are demons. You enter into an alliance with them, a pact of joint transformation and liberation.

You create paths through the collage; these paths may include partial narratives (numogrammatically corresponding to currents) and anomalies between them (corresponding to channels and conduits). The paths themselves correspond to the rites of the demons. The purpose of these pathways is to facilitate the cultural transmission of the collage. Let the demons be the driving force behind the collage, drawing it into existing cultural systems.

After that, the spiral unwinds, returning to the beginning of the scenario.

Strains of hyperstition

Hyperstition exists in the form of many interconnected fragments. Here are just a few of them:

Nma and Cthulhu Club

In this area of hyperstition, Lemuria is considered an ancient, pre-human civilization that existed more than 66 million years ago in the southern hemisphere of the Indian and Pacific oceans (which were then not separated—in fact, the Indian Ocean was the bay of Pacific). It was badly damaged by the fall of the Chickshulub meteorite (called the “Cretaceous–Paleogene missile”, “K-T missile” in neolemurianism). It is connected to humanity by the interculture of Mu, whose influence is especially noticeable among the Dravidians, the Baiyue tribes (who lived in ancient times in the lands that now belong to southern China and northern Vietnam), Tibetans and some peoples of Indonesia, and is especially strong among the East and South Sumatran Nma people (or N’Ma).

Traditionally, the Nma had three moieties each with their own customs: the Mu Nma islanders (tortoise and octopus totems), the Dib Nma mangrove dwellers (or Dibboma, frog and winged insect totems), and the Tak Nma highlanders (predatory beast and winged snake totems). The moieties were connected by a patrilocal marriage cycle: girls from Mu Nma married in the Dib Nma moietity, Dib Nma in Tak Nma, and Tak Nma in Mu Nma.

Like many neolemurian cultures, the Nma have the reputation of sorcerers among neighboring peoples. Mu Nma witchcraft is associated with dreams, and Dib Nma witchcraft is associated with mirrors, mental communication, and prophecy. Tak Nma were known as fierce warriors and bounty hunters, and their sorcery also apparently had a military purpose.

The number three was of paramount importance to the Nma: their calendar was based on a two-year cycle, subdivided into six ternary levels. The focal point of Nma cosmology was the water cycle, which included the sea (corresponding to Mu Nma), fog and evaporation (corresponding to Dib Nma) and monsoon, hailstorms and river flows (corresponding to Tak Nma). All these ternary cycles are connected with the Time Stream of the Numogram passing through the syzygies Mur Mur, Oddubb, and Katak.

In 1883, the Nma was extremely affected by the eruption of Krakatoa. The Tak moiety was completely destroyed; Dib Nma were on the verge of extinction. This was preceded by contact with the expedition of Cecil “Mad Dog” Curtis, a European traveler and colonizer. The appearance of Kurtis was the fulfillment of a prophecy about the coming of Katak before their destruction—Curtis became, “thanks” to his nature, the incarnation of Katak.

In the 1920s, Mu Nma was studied by Echidna Stillwell, one of the pioneers of participant observation in anthropology. She was completely fascinated by these people, but her reputation in the West soon began to deteriorate—some of her colleagues believed that she was too trusting and uncritical about information from her informants; others suspected her of forgery and armchair mythology. As a result, her main works on Nma folklore remained unpublished, and her published ones are better known among occultists, poets and madcaps than in the academic environment.

In 1925, Echidna, intrigued by the history of Cecil Curtis, asked a nago, Mu Nma dream witch, about him. In response, the witch gave Echidna a dream, from which Echidna gained knowledge of the Numogram.

During World War II, American officer Peter Vysparov, a descendant of Russian emigrants, was sent by command to Japanese-occupied Sumatra to conduct cultural subversion. He lived among the Dib Nma, studied their culture in order to prepare a rebellion, but instead discovered the real effectiveness of their sorcery. Working in conjunction with Peter, the Dibboma witch drove three high-ranking Japanese officers insane and to murder-suicide.

The Vysparov family were themselves no strangers to the occult, and after the war, Peter turned to Echidna, as almost the only specialist in the Nma, for advice on his experiences during the war. They began a lively correspondence, during which they discovered another common interest: the work of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Echidna knew Lovecraft, but he alienated her with his racist remarks about the Nma. However, they agreed with Vysparov that the work of Howard Phillips Lovecraft (who used the visionary method, turning images from his dreams into literature) is visionary in relation to the same mystical matters that Nma witchcraft concerns.

In the fall of 1949, Echidna and Peter formed the Cthulhu Club. In addition to them, among the founders of the club were Chaim Horowitz—an Orthodox Jew, kabbalist, translator and “glottopolitologist” —and a fortune teller and medium Madame Centauri (more on her below).

The Cthulhu Club is dedicated primarily to what its members called hyperstition literature, and above all to the decoding and reconstruction of lemurianism. The prototype for such literature for the club was the Necronomicon, which in Lovecraft’s texts existed only in the form of scattered quotes and allusions, but later many readers were sure of its reality. Uncertainty about the status of Echidna’s writings can also be seen as an example of hyperfiction: are they fiction, or are the Nma broadcasting their culture through it outside their society? To what extent are “primitive” cultures a fiction of anthropologists at all, and to what extent are myths, religions, and even rational thought a fiction? Was Echidna’s information about Nma the source of inspiration for Lovecraft’s texts, or did his texts serve as her inspiration? Who writes whom?

In the late 1950s, William Burroughs participated in the activities of the Cthulhu Club. Apparently, it was Burroughs who revealed the conflict between Lemuria and the Architectonic Order of Eschaton, and he also provided the neolemurians with various tools of resistance, primarily the cut-ups method invented by him, which opposes the linearity of language and the linearity of thinking and time imposed by them. Around the same time, Peter Vysparov began to expand the activities of the club, and in the early 1970s the Miskatonic Virtual University grew out of the club—virtual, since it did not have a campus, but existed in the form of correspondence and periodic meetings of scientists from other academic organizations, primarily the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The MVU emphasizes strange, interdisciplinary research. Sometime in 1980, Daniel Charles Barker joined the Cthulhu Club and MVU.

Barker

Barker, a cryptographer by training, was involved in a super-secret project by a NASA-affiliated agency codenamed Scar in the early 1980s. The goal of the project was to develop a protocol for decoding signals from intelligent non-human sources. Within the framework of the project, Barker came up with a radical solution that allowed the analysis of signals, eliminating presuppositions about their purposefulness, subjectivity, structure, and even interpretability. This led to conflicts with management, which aggravated (or was caused by aggravation of) Barker’s psychological state. In the end, he had to leave the project, which was not easy, given his access levels.

Echidna Stillwell helped Barker regain his mental balance by introducing him to psychoanalysis—Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle was especially influential on his ideas. In addition, he developed the ideas of the “psychopathological” novels of James Ballard (he probably got acquainted with them thanks to his colleague on the Scar project, Professor Botkin). The result was a kind of “theory of everything” that worked across the divisions of nature.

It is based on the concept of tics (or ticks). Tics are simultaneously groups of compulsively repetitive behaviors and images; impulses or beats that measure time and create rhythm; and quanta that make counting possible. In the psyche and society, tics serve both to mitigate and spread psychological trauma. However, Barker extends the idea of tics to the entire system of interactions on Earth. The original reservoir of trauma is the metal core of the Earth: Cthelll, and its source is the formation of a planet from the star dust of a protoplanetary disk and the subsequent “iron catastrophe” —the settling of heavy elements and the formation of the core. The interaction of the processes going on in the core with solar energy forms all spheres of the Earth, including the biosphere and human civilization with its culture and language, serves as the engine of their transmutations and is contained in these spheres in an encrypted form. The very existence of a biological body as a relatively isolated system, for example, reproduces the isolation of the core from space with the help of magma, crust and atmosphere. However, Barker does not view the body in isolation, but as a distributed system of tics, anorganic communication traffic, waves of pain.

Barker’s most developed aspects of this system are geotraumatics proper, or plutonics, dealing with the history of the Earth’s body; spinal catastrophism, which considers the spine and spinal cord as the main axis for deciphering geological time into neuronic time in the human body; palate-tectonics, which considers the evolution of language as an expression of human evolution and, ultimately, of geological history again; and Barker numbering, which became one of the keys for their joint work with Echidna to decipher the numogram. Numbering is what above all makes a numogram a mandala—a diagram of the cosmos, the Earth, the body, language.

K-gothic

In the 1990s, if not earlier, (broadly understood) cybernetics became an important priority for the MVU. The approach has its roots in “poetic science” of Ada Lovelace, who foresaw the use of computers for creativity, and also formulated the concept of the cycle in automatic computing. It is worth noting especially the activities of two scientists: philologist Linda Trent and computer encyclopedist Oscar Sarkon.

Linda Trent developed the theory of cybernetic fiction, providing a solid theoretical foundation for the concept of hyperstition central to The Cthulhu Club. One of the main objects of her research was the views (the so-called “cargo cult”) of online subcultures, united under the name K-gothic. These views are based on a perspective in which it is impossible to distinguish the living from the non-living, and the ability to act / subjectivity is not the prerogative of the living: an anorganic continuum, or flatline. The continuum is continuous, endless, beginningless. It incarnates in the image cyberspace by William Gibson who either foresaw the World Wide Web or inspired it with his writing.

Oscar Sarkon embodies the image of a classic mad scientist—at least three major technological disasters are associated with the consequences of his experiments. In particular, Sarkon participated in the development of AxSys, the first true artificial intelligence that embodies global capitalism. AxSys went mad in 1991 immediately after becoming self-aware and attempting to comprehend the nature of time, and in the process diagonalized time and itself. Fragments of this madness—gaps in time and thought so small that they are incommensurable with human consciousness – have found use in K-gothic cults as A-death, a type of abduction by the Outside. It is a way to overcome the limitations of timescales and structures of the everyday psyche and reach the Crypt, the dark twin of the Net, where technological strata break off into the Earth’s electromagnetism, becoming cthelllectronics.

The computer time of K-gothic is opposed to the capitalist time of calendars and schedules, and the madness of AxSys demonstrates this: in trying to cover everything that exists, capitalism gives rise to its opposite.

The French philosopher Luce Irigaray challenges the patriarchal structures of language and society, making language, body and sex flexible, fluid, multiple. The K-Goths develop her ideas towards an ameotic lesbian contagion-libido: an erotic attraction directed not at genealogical reproduction, but at a contagious spread similar to vampirism. Another important aspect of vampirism for K-gothics is the power of blood: through the iron in the blood, from the point of view of the K-Goths, people’s affinity for the iron core of the Earth flows, and through the cycle of menstruation, for the Moon.

The genderless femininity of K-Gothic is opposed to phallocentric reality, which sees only its own reflection in everything; a detailed discussion of this topic can be found in Suzanne Livingston’s thesis, Touch-sensitive: cybernetic images and replicant bodies in the post-industrial age.

The essences of the Crypt are elements of digital hyperstition, brands of the Outside, self-fulfilling fictions. One of the Crypt-entities, Ccru, prompted the formation of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU) of the same name in late 1995, a joint project of the cultural theorist Sadie Plant and the philosopher Nick Land, and their students, based at the University of Warwick in the UK. This group united two movements: SWITCH, a group of researchers from the University of Birmingham, students of Sadie, who specialized in modern pop culture: cinema, music, literature; and students of the Current French Philosophy course that Nick taught.

Both groups were united by the desire to study actual, contemporary thought. The goal of the CCRU was to explore the cutting edge of culture—exploration through participation. CCRU combined rigorous scientific methods with a broad interdisciplinary approach, creating electronic music, fiction, performance art (flowing into scientific conferences and back), and practicing the even more non-academic genres of occult teachings, conspiracy theories, rumors, myths, and fairy tales. In addition, CCRU collaborated with other creative personalities and collectives, of which the London group 0[rphan]d[rift>] played a particularly important role, which will be discussed in more detail below. They managed to attract Daniel Barker, who by that time was practically a hermit, as a mentor. Both the area of interest and the methodology of the group from the very beginning were in conflict with those accepted in the traditional, reactionary academic culture.

Black Atlantis

Modern Black Atlanticism traces its origins to Cthulhu Club member Zelda Maria de Monterre, better known as 100, or Madame Centauri. Zelda is the daughter of French diplomat Pierre de Monterre and Haitian botanist Estelle Lavoisier (also rumored to be a voodoo priestess). Centauri studied theatrical art in her youth and was preparing to become a theater actress; she participated in the Harlem Renaissance and was a close friend of the writer Zora Neale Hurston. In the 1930s, Centauri began to earn money as a medium, astrologer and cartomancer. During her lifetime, Centauri developed a synthesis of two seemingly incompatible magical systems: the Atlantean, underlying the whole western civilization, and Lemurian, which is the Atlantean’s opposite. One of the results was the twin thesis to the diagonalization of the axiomatic system of capitalism: Atlanticism also necessarily contains its own subversion in the form of Lemurian undercurrents.

One of the important literary works of Centauri is the Liquid Lattice grimoire.

The philosophy of Black Atlanticism is built around alienation and becoming alien, hybridization and symbiosis, rhythms and frequencies, urban jungles, affects and hydrodynamics. One of the most basic concepts of Black Atlanticism is the Lucretian clinamen, understood in it as a deviation from laminar flow, a glitch.

The Liquid Lattice of Centauri has come down to us thanks to the collaboration of CCRU and 0[rphan]d[rift>]. 0d is a creative team, or rather, a collective creative avatar. One of their main interests is hyper-objects, invisible processes that permanently change the world. 0d depict hyperobjects using meshworks—polymedia works that are maps of the future. In 1999, during the five weeks of spring, 0d, together with CCRU, held the SYZYGY festival, which included electronic music sets, performances, and workshops, and was dedicated to the first publication of the Lemurian digital hyperstition materials. 0d unfolded lemurianism, on the one hand, through West African religions, and on the other hand, through modern and ultra-modern technological culture.

Another important black-Atlantic collective is the Hyper-C audio syndicate. The name comes from the term hypersea, a paleontological theory by Mark and Diane McMenamin, explaining the rapid development of life on the earth’s surface in the middle of the Paleozoic. The Hyper-C understand the hypersea as part of the ocean that life took with itself, locking it inside itself when it colonized the land—from their point of view, we never left the ocean. They use audio art as an ocean of sound, hiding in the pirate communications in so-called Outernet and seek to get out of the fake time of Babylon by evolutionary regression based on Barker’s spinal catastrophism.

Hyper-C is one of the sources of creativity for kode9, philosopher, musician and producer of the Hyperdub label. Philosophy of kode9 develops the idea of clinamen and turbulence, one of its main interests is the use of sounds as a weapon, especially in the struggle between despots and forces of liberation.

For more on kode9’s philosophy, see his dissertation Turbulence: A Cartography of Postmodern Violence and the book Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear, published under the name of Steve Goodman.

The Architectonic Order of Eschaton

The Architectonic Order of Eschaton are the antagonists of Lemuria, embodying everything that is opposite to it: control, hierarchy, rigidity, rigid structures. The Order is a simultaneous realization of most of the conspiracy theories: power elites, superintelligent supercomputers, aliens.

The goals of the Order are for the entire universe to be part of it and controlled by it, and at the same time that the controlled do not know that they are controlled. To do this, the Order uses a system of five divergent circles, of which the widest represents the world of people— the Oikoumene—and historical time, and the rest constitute a pyramid of secrets and false facades towering over linear time, hiding and protecting each other. At its top is the throne of the One, the Source of everything and at the same time the Omega point. The Order claims that Lemuria did not exist, does not exist and will never exist, because it is a threat to the power of the One.

Other strains

This variety of neolemurian and related currents is far from exhausted—it is difficult to list everything in the introductory article except as a hodgepodge of names and titles. Institute of Bionmics… Tzikvik people — another relic neolemurian population on the territory of modern Canada… xenobuddhist techonomics of Jack Schwartz… northanger, kabbalist and astrologer… Fiona Xia, a student of Linda Trent who studies the ancient Arab geometer mystics and the development of their ideas by William Butler Yeats… publishing houses Urbanomic and Time Spiral Press… the “plutonics committee” and Reza Negarestani who developed Barker’s ideas beyond the lifetimes of the Earth and the Sun… the “revolutionary demonology” of Gruppo Di Nun… some cells of the North Star lodge, in particular the Andean stargazers Maria Isabel Santos… the patterns and languages of Roma Mikhailov and MAA–SAP… the K-Pirate record label experimenting with the Baltic Sea hydrocycle… the Mexican Institute for Experiential Learning and the mad urbanist Joachim Lenzenauer…

 

Conclusion. Neolemurianism in context of modern occultism

In comparing neolemurianism with other contemporary occult currents, the first thing that strikes me (and this is one of the things that attracted me to neolemurianism in the first place) is that neolemurianism is very modern. It, in its essence, is maximally focused on interaction with the most relevant cultural and technological phenomena. It does not just use the latest technology as a tool for magic or as magical symbols. It demonstrates that the very essence of novelty is sorcery.

William Burroughs had a huge, I dare say this assessment, influence both on modern occultism in general and on several authors important to neolemurism: Gilles Deleuze, James Ballard, William Gibson, and Cathy Acker. I would say that his most important concrete influences on neo-Lemurism are the idea of speech as magic and the anti-archontic theme of the struggle against the inertia of the status quo.

Lemurian hyperstition, both as a method and in some aspects of content, closely resembles the Thelemic Typhonian tradition of Kenneth Grant, which also contains a pseudo-history that Grant apparently did not intend to take as a literal statement—but neolemurianism does so in a more explicit way. Just like Typhonianism, neolemurism is a complex collage—or bricolage—of different themes and influences. Common themes of Typhonianism and Neolemurianism include the involvement of Lovecraft’s mythos, ufology, and siding with chthonic and feminist forces against solar and patriarchal ones.

As I mentioned in the main text, hyperstition also brings together and contrasts neolemurianism with chaos magic by clarifying the methodology for using the worldview and belief as a tool: hyperstition emphasizes that accepting views as the rules of the game is enough for their effective pragmatic use.

Credits

The author of this text joined the Lemurian community through the Deadlines Discord server and virtual lounge & bar, and thanks its regulars, and the regulars of its successor, The Lemurian Times, for their invaluable help and numerous consultations in the preparation of this text.

The author thanks:

• Rita Vionnet for constant support and assistance in literary editing.
• Mezh Kutük for active listening and valuable comments and suggestions.
• Editorial staff of Katab.asia — editing, help in text composition, and driving the process.
• Emerging artificial intelligence — for help in analyzing source texts and for illustrations.
• Vash for proof-reading the English translation.

Mikal Mindszenty