Next Level Terminology

Aether:
According to the ancient Greeks, the pure essence where the gods lived and breathed. The perfect drug of which Trent Reznor preached.

Anarch:
Ernst Jünger said, "The Anarch is to the anarchist, what the monarch is to the monarchist." Minimalist rulership with maximum results.

Apophenia:
The experience of seeing patterns or connections in "random" or "meaningless" data. So, ultimately, all acts of perception.

Apotheosis:
The transmogrification to a divine form. How Jesus became Christ.

Architectonics:
The scientific systematisation of all knowledge. Having the world all sussed out.

Ataraxis:
The absence of stress or conflict. The rare state of the self-fulfilled mind.

Autochthony:
Originating in and of itself. The genesis of the self-crafted self-propelled wheel.

Axis mundi:
The cosmic pillar uniting earth and sky. A symbol latent in anything worth symbolizing.

Collective effervescence:
The atmospheric energy created by a festive gathering. The hidden link between a rave and a riot.

Élan vital:
The vital force which French philosopher Henri Bergson proposed drove the evolutionary process forward. "It's evolution baby."

Extended mind:
A view of the mind in which it encompasses relevant aspects of one's physical surroundings. The mentalization of reality.

Extropianism:
An evolving framework of values and standards for continuously improving the human condition. No way out but forward go!

Flâneur:
A person who walks the city in order to experience it. See Perry Farrell: "Way down low where the streets are littered, I found my fun with the freaks and the niggers."

Fnord:
The typographic representation of disinformation or irrelevant information intending to misdirect, with the implication of a conspiracy. The fjord of the mind.

Grok:
A verb that connotes knowledge greater than that which can be sensed by an outside observer. To understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. The process of overcoming the illusion of objectivity.

Homo ludens:
Playing human. The game of life in which the winners are those who know it is a game.

Homo sacer:
A person who is banned, may be killed by anybody, but may not be sacrificed in a religious ritual. The person is excluded from all civil rights, while his/her life is deemed "holy" in a negative sense. "This savage freedom I love."

Islomania:
A rare affliction of spirit: people who find islands somehow irresistible. The mere knowledge that they are in a little world surrounded by sea fills them with an indescribable intoxication. The metaphysical descendants of Atlanteans.

Katabasis:
Descent into the underworld. The way out is through.

Liminality:

The liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. One's sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. Liminality is a period of transition, during which your normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed, opening the way to something new.

Kenosis:
The concept of the 'self-emptying' of one's own will and becoming entirely receptive to God and his perfect will. Man is a vessel to be filled with illusions of the divine. Use your illusion!

Mythopoesis:
Tapping into the half-hidden cauldron of imagery that inspires national epics and faintly remembered nightmares. The creative repository of the soul.

Ouroboros:
The snake that eats its own tail. A symbol of infinity and self-consumption, not mutually exclusive terms.

Palingenesis:
The theory that the human soul does not die with the body but is born again in new incarnations. Also the doctrine that the will does not die but manifests itself afresh in new individuals. "Souls are recycled in the Death & Resurrection Show."

Paraverse:
A parallel virtual world geographically linked to the planet earth or other bodies in the physical universe. "Why live in the world when you can live in your head?"

Pataphysics:
A philosophy dedicated to studying what lies beyond the realm of metaphysics. The Ultima Thule of absurdity.

Profane illumination:
The process by which, sometimes but not always aided by dreams or hashish, a person perceives the most ordinary, overlooked objects of everyday reality – from obsolete train stations to out of place arcades – as uncanny, supernatural, and irrational. Marcel Proust: "The real voyage of discovery consists not of seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. . ."

Psychogeography:
The study of specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals. Utopia can be where we stand, if we will it.

Sublimation:
The refocusing of psychic energy away from negative outlets to more positive outlets. These drives which cannot find an outlet are rechanneled. The holy drain that filters us through to the sublime.

Surautomatism:
Any theory or act in practice of surrealist creative production taking, or purporting to take, automatism to its most absurd limits. The Big Sur of absurdity.

Telluric:
The meta-mystical energy currents flowing through the earth. Capable of powering mass hysteria, but not cities.

Trompe-l'œil:
An art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects really exist, instead of being just two-dimensional paintings. Also: reality as we know it.