Author: Hermesphilus

Nonsensical ramblings on exploring the religion of the mind.

Plant Signaling and Behaviour

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What started off as a shelf of books in the Surgeon General’s office in 1836 has grown to a collection of millions of print and electronic resources, the U.S. National Library of Medicine has an impressive collection which it generously makes available on its website.

One article worth taking a look at is Plant Signaling and Behaviour, their results suggest that plants are intelligent organisms capable of thought and memory.   Here is the Abstract and Summary.

Secret life of plants
From memory to intelligence

Abstract

Plants are able to perform photosynthesis and cannot escape from environmental stresses, so they therefore developed sophisticated, highly responsive and dynamic physiology. Others’ and our results indicate that plants solve their optimal light acclimation and immune defenses, photosynthesis and transpiration by a computational algorithm of the cellular automation.

Our recent results however suggest that plants are capable of processing information encrypted in light intensity and in its energy. With the help of nonphotochemical quenching and photoelectrophysiological signaling (PEPS) plants are able to perform biological quantum computation and memorize light training in order to optimize their Darwinian fitness.

Animals have their network of neuron synapses, electrophysiological circuits and memory, but plants have their network of chloroplasts connected by stromules, PEPS circuits transduced by bundle sheath cells and cellular light memory. It is suggested that plants could be intelligent organisms with much higher organism organization levels than it was thought before.

Summary

Plants solve their optimal light acclimation and immune defenses (SAAR), photosynthesis, gas exchange and transpiration with help of a mathematical algorithm (cellular automation) in which input, output and processing of the data are all accomplished using the same hardware. Our experiments identified some parts of this hardware, which includes quantum-redox sensing and changes in PSII (e.g., changes in transthylakoid ΔpH, in NPQ and redox status of the glutathione and plastoquinone pools), PEPS, ROS/hormonal circuits and finally the cellular light memory.

Probably, this is the most elegant system that evolved in complex photosynthetic organisms, since it uses absorbed photons energy in excess by some leaves to improve survival chances of a whole plant. Animals have their network of neuron synapses, electrophysiological and PEPS circuits and memory.

Plants however have their network of chloroplasts connected by stromules, electrophysiological and PEPS circuits transduced by bundle sheath cells and cellular light memory that regulates SAAR. Our results suggest that plants are intelligent organisms capable of performing a sort of thinking process (understood as at the same time and non-stress conditions capable of performing several different scenarios of possible future definitive responses), and capable of memorizing this training. Indeed leaves in the dark are able to not only “see” the light, but also are able to differently remember its spectral composition and use this memorized information to increase their Darwinian fitness.

Monica Gagliano’s pea ….

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Monica Gagliano does stuff with plants that no one seems to have done in a very long time, treating them in a manner that acknowledges the possibility of intelligence, consciousness and sentience.  The ‘Featured Image’ is one of her paintings.

Monica GaglianoHer main research is broadly focusing on key aspects of the ecological processes by which organisms are able to gather information on the variable conditions of their surrounding environment in order to thrive. Amongst other things she drops plants, teases them with blue lights and fans.

If she is correct this should be a major paradigm shift for us all, we may have to reckon with intelligent organisms independent of the traditional brain and nervous system model. We may be in the early stages of waking up to a world long-populated by considerably more intelligent, sentient beings than previously acknowledged, and reconsider our position with regards to Nature.

In collaboration with various disciplines across the Sciences and the Humanities, her research aims at expanding our perception of animals, plants and more generally Nature. In the process of learning how to do this, she has pioneered the brand-new research field of plant bioacoustics and extended the concept of cognition to plants, re-igniting the discourse on plant subjectivity, sentience and ethical standing.

This subject has been of interest for a while, and the questions of  Do plants posess souls or not? was considered in the linked blog post.

Monica is a Research Associate Professor in Evolutionary Ecology; Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia; Research Affiliate at the Sydney Environment Institute, University of Sydney; and Senior Research Fellow at the Biological Intelligence (BI) Lab, University of Sydney

The three seeds of God

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Nous brings forth all concepts, good ones when it receives the seeds from God, and the opposite when it receives them from one of the demons. CH 9.3

So what are the seeds of God, that they can be practised.

Few are the seeds of God, but they are mighty, beautiful and good. CH 9.4

  • virtues (INRI _ Rose Croix)
  • self discipline
  • devotion (knowledge of God)

.. one kind of man is concerned with material things and another with being.

The materialist, in the midst of evil, receives the seed of his understanding from the demons; the other men, surrounded by goodness, are in their being preserved by God.

Is materialism totally incompatible with a hermetic lifestyle?

To practise virtues, self discipline and devotion can be initiated from within a materialistic environment, into which pretty much all of us are born.  The path out of materialism can be started with the planting of these three seeds, and the degree of care and nurturing they are given.

The varying degrees of fruition of these seeds, counter materialism and afford us a path towards greater being.

One decade

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A full decade has passed since the first posting on this site, the hermetic prayer Holy Art Thou.

A big thank you to all those who have visited this site, you are more than just traffic. As for me, I have been using the moniker Hermesphilus for quite a while now, the name consists of two words ‘Hermes’ and ‘philus’, so loosely translated Hermesphilus means ‘Hermes lover’.

Here is a possibly better translation of the prayer Holy Art Thou CH 01.31 from The Way of Hermes: New Translations of ‘The Corpus Hermeticum’ and The Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius by Clement Salaman (Author),‎ Dorine van Oyen (Author),‎ William D. Wharton (Author),‎ Jean-Pierre Mahe (Author)

Holy is God the Father of all
Holy is God who’s will is accomplished by his own powers
Holy is God who wills to be known and is known by those that are his own
Holy art thou who by the Word has united all that is
Holy art thou of whom all Nature became an image
Holy art thou whom Nature has not created
Holy art thou who is stronger than all power
Holy art thou who art higher than all pre-eminence
Holy art thou who surpasses praises

The reason for my preference for anonymity is simply because the nature of my business (that stuff that is supposed to generate income) is such that it is better for clients not to know about my personal worldview and philosophy. More specifically, the ignorant ‘knee-jerk’ reaction to things that people do not understand is not always the most conducive towards commerce.

So there you have it, know you know everything 😎

The psychedelic nature of Islamic art and architecture

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Sam Woolfe is a London based freelance writer and blogger, yet this has not stopped him from sharing some interesting ideas and thoughts ;-)

Jalil Khayat Mosque

One that is certainly worth a read is The psychedelic nature of Islamic art and architecture where he takes a look at the psychedlic kaleidoscopic patterns which are found in Islamic art and architecture.

A common DMT experience is finding oneself in a vaulted dome structure. In DMT lexicon, ‘The Chrysthanemum’ is a gigantic, rotating, fractal flower that has a dome-like appearance. Terence McKenna said you could either pass through ‘The Chrysthanemum’ and enter hyperspace or stay put (if you didn’t take enough DMT). However, many DMT users also say the vaulted dome space is a revered destination and it’s where you go during a ‘breakthrough’ dose of DMT. McKenna himself called this post-Chrysthanemum place “the dome”, adding:

It’s softly lit, indirectly lit, and the walls—if such they be—are crawling with geometric hallucinations: very brightly colored, very iridescent with deep sheens and very high reflective surfaces. Everything is machine-like and polished and throbbing with energy.

Sam suggests:

It has been suggested that geometric hallucinations are a projection of the structure of our brain, stimulated in a variety of ways (e.g. drugs, conditions like migraine and epilepsy, near-death experiences, sensory deprivation, fasting, hypnagogia, and so on).

Nasir al-Mulk Mosque in Shiraz, Iran

I do agree that Islamic art and architecture are some of the finest traditional examples of this kind of aesthetic expression. Their striking similarty and resemblance to psychedelic experiences certainly suggests that they may have been inspired by entheogenics.

Graham St John (PhD) is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. He is a cultural anthropologist specialising in event-cultures and entheogens. Take a few minutes and read his article The DMT Trip and the Mysteries of Hyperspace Travel on Chacruna, a Northern California group who strive to produce quality anthropological research on plant medicines and help propagate academic knowledge.