Candescent Engineering
This is Indi's description of vis approach to metaphysics. More context can be found in subjects relating to Downwarp and Waters Gather. --- It all starts with Candescence. Candescence maps pretty well to the basic concept of mana or magical energy. It's affected by thought, but has some rules of its own. I think of it as sorta representing conscious attention or will. As such, it's the sort of thing that wherever you go looking for it, you'll find some, so you might as well think of there being a limitless amount of it just within reach if you know how to grab it. The thing about raw Candescence though is it's undifferentiated. It's a big mass of potentiality, everything constantly turning into everything else. This is generally referred to as flow; Candescence seems to behave in a pretty fluid way in general. The trick with working with it is getting it to stay put as one thing long enough to make use of it. That's Candescent Engineering.
The general way this is done is by coming up with a framework you can use to differentiate the stuff. The traditional one to work with is based on a three-part cycle that shows up a lot in other traditions too: Creation to Pattern to Change and back to Creation. (This maps easily to the three-part found in a number of other places too; the Trimurti, the Triat, the astrological Qualities, the Neptunian Trinity and so on). This is a good model for working with Candescence because it's inherently dynamic and cyclical; Candescence is always wanting to flow, to change from something into something else, and this gives it a nice broad closed loop to do so in. In Candescent Engineering, we call this the Circuit, with the three components being Spark, Steel, and Smoke, respectively.
This gives up some more specific forms of Candescence to work with; once you've established this concept in your mind, you can get hold of some Spark glow (for example) by focussing on fundamental creation or any of the obvious correspondences, electricity, batteries, so on. The thing is, this doesn't stabilize things, Candescence doesn't stabilize in the first place. You attract Spark out of the undifferentiated mass, can use it to power your creativity or your machine, but it's constantly turning back into something else around the edges. However, in this case, what it's mostly turning into is the next step along the Circuit: creation tends to take form, Spark tends to flow to Steel, and so on around the whole loop.
Therefore, if you have something that can attract what's flowing off your Spark collection, you can collect that in turn as Steel, send that along to a Smoke attractor, and then complete the circuit, thus creating a closed flow of Candescence that's basically staying where you can get at it and taking forms that you can do something with. That's why all directed Candescent engineering work starts with a specific manifestation of this Main Circuit. I have one as an altar in my workshop, and I have one inside me too, right in the middle of my chest, since everything I do basically works out to an application of glow.
