Codex of the Synapse: Folio C3.4

Synapse Myths in Local World Cultures

- a running list in no particular order -

Divination as Pattern Language Reception -

Local-world divination myths, often determined by random physical events (e.g. throwing yarrow stalks, dowsing, and shuffling cards), may all be forms of the Ritual of Reception as transplanted to the adopted cultures of the Keepers in Diaspora. In using the I Ching, one can generate an image from a series of coin flips, a binary language of yes and no, presence and absence. The resulting series of heads or tales is a phase of pure formal information, like Pattern Language, independent of content. The denomination, nationality, or appearance of the coins themselves is immaterial. They are merely neutral representatives of randomness. The image, revealed by the simplest mechanics of chaos, is a translation of pattern into content.

The very concept of fate may be nothing more than abstract structures of the neighbor-worlds, imprinted into Pattern Language, and revealed and translated into the images and events of our local-world. If this is so, then the events of our lives (and not just our memories) are no more than interpreted signal from the Synapse.

Hasidic Folktales -

Rebbe Nakhman of Bratslev was revered among the early Hasidim for his bewildering, magical tales. The tales often concerned storytellers themselves, who might within the course of the tale, tell a story of their own, invariably about other storytellers. Soon the reader is lost in a spiral of recursion, in which the initial plane of the real, upon which the story begins has disappear, often never to be regained - the journey seems to be one-way. Through his narrative fractals, Nakhman seeks not to resolve any of the nested tales, but instead to reveal that no resolution can exist. The route to the divine - is an asymptotal journey.

It is probable that the Jewish tradition of the mezuzah, the tiny scroll from the Torah placed at the doorway to Jewish households, was a variant of Pattern Language Amulet, perhaps even derived from Keepers among the early Jews. The language of the Torah, like the Pattern Language, is thought to transcend mere descriptive narrative. The meaningof the Torah lies in its strucutre, as much as its content - in the myriad possible arrangements of its words, of the 22 Hebrew letters, and of the numerical values given to each letter. Even a fragment of the Torah is believed to reflect the pure structure of Creation, as any phrase of a fractal structure will reveal its totality.

The Bardo and the Synapse -

The Tibetan Bardo Thotrol, or Book of the Dead, maps and guides the course of wandering soul after death. The Bardo, translated as "gap", is clearly equivalent to the Synapse - a place between multiple worlds, which affords access to any of them. The goal of the Bardo's instructions, and of all Buddhist practice is, of course, to NOT enter any of the multiple worlds, but rather to return to a state of total emptiness, the so-called First State of the Keepers. The Bardo is quite clear in stating what one encounters on the journey is only the arising of projected images, which project yet other images, in a chain of dependency. In the Synapse, the arising of projections is called Pattern Language Decay, and similarly occurs as a chain of projections forming from projections, and so on. In both myths, all of these images, be they bodhisattvas or neighbor-world translations, ultimately arise out of nothing at all. \

Commentary on the Bardo describes it as an experience not limited to the dead, just as the Synapse experience is not limited to the Synapse itself. In both myths, the experience is described as moments in daily life of unreality, disorientation, or as the precipitous and sudden appearance of the infinite. For both the Keepers and the Buddhists, the implication may not be that the experience can occur outside of the Bardo/Synapse, but rather that the world is merely one of the projections within the Synapse.

The Keepers at times describe Pattern Language Script as the first image Pure Pattern Language forms in the Cycle of Reclamation. However, at other times, they assert that the first image is The Guide Entity. Perhaps they are interchangeable, both serving as an intermediary between Pure Pattern and fully cathected local-world. This uncharacteristic schism among the Keepers may reflect a division in the religions of their adopted cultures in diaspora, some faiths embracing the power of images as foci for the divine (Hindu/Mahayana Buddhist), while others abhor images in favor of script, or scripture (Judeo/Islamic).