phosphor.space / star heart codex / thoughts / facet maps

Mapping: the Basics

Making Mind Maps

Ultimately, Crystal Vision is a cognitive technique for describing reality. To use Crystal Vision, you take an object, idea, person, work, place, event, emotion, or pattern, and ask: which Elemental is most visible here?

This question has no answer without context. The same thing can belong to different Elementals depending on what you are comparing it to. This is not a flaw in Crystal Vision. It is the point of Crystal Vision. An object does not carry only one meaning. It has many sides. In Codex terms, this usually means the object has a resolution higher than base-12. The Codex calls these sides Facets. A Facet is a contextual face of an Elemental.

The Elemental remains the same, but its name changes depending on where it appears. Light, Truth, White, Star, and the White Voice are not randomly chosen synonyms. They are each different Facets of Elemental 1 (E1). Each Facet reveals the same Elemental in a different context.

Seeing a cat in Crystals

For example, take the object [cat]. Ask yourself 'what Elemental is a cat?'

First you need to determine the context of your question, because all the following answers are true:

• Cat is a living entity.
• Cat is an animal.
• Cat is a mammal.
• Cat is a domestic animal.
• Cat is a nocturnal animal.
• Cat can be a religious symbol.

All the answers above are true, and each context will give a different Elemental mapping.

• Cat is a living entity.
  The context could be universal -- what kind of thing are we dealing with in the broadest sense?
• Cat is an animal.
  Within the context of living things, cats belong to the animals (and not bacteria, plants or fungi).
• Cat is a mammal.
  Within the context of animals, cats are mammals (and not reptiles or insects).
• Cat is a domestic animal.
  Within the context of animals, cats are domestic (and not wild).
• Cat is a nocturnal animal.
  Within the context of animals, cats live mostly at night.
• Cat is a religious symbol.
  Within the context of human culture, cats can be seen as religious symbols.

Now that we have the context, we can start mapping the Elementals.

• Cat is a living entity.
  E4, because Life is the First Song of Moonlight.
• Cat is an animal.
  E9, because animals are defined by multicellular structure, mobility, and coordinated bodily sovereignty.
• Cat is a mammal.
  E4 again, because mammals have a strong Love relationship with their mother in general.
• Cat is a domestic animal.
  E4 again, because although mammals are domesticated, we did that mostly for companionship.
• Cat is a domestic animal.
  E2 could also fit if you adopt the cat only to get rid of mice in your home and you treat it like a Stone.
• Cat is a nocturnal animal.
  E8, because the night is dark and full of Icy terrors.
• Cat is a religious symbol.
  E12, because the mystical aspect is represented by the Elemental of Void.

So, which one is right? All of them. And perhaps you might even disagree with my mappings. From Crystal Vision we learned that [cat] is incredibly high resolution -- it is not universal at all, there are no cats on Mars! The rule was: the less universal something is, the less accurately we can describe it with our Elemental base-12 system.

Crystal Vision is semi-subjective in this exact sense. It is subjective because the observer chooses the context of comparison, and the context is highly subjective itself. But it is not purely subjective because once the context is chosen, some mappings become stronger than others. For example, if your context is "Cat is a living entity," the Dust Elemental makes much less sense than the Water Elemental. If the mappings of [cat] seem a bit random, please keep reading. I will provide more maps below to really cement the Elementals.

The Codex’s Facet Map

Here are the Facets of the most important Codex concepts neatly aligned. To show that something is a Facet of something else, I use a triple slash '///'.

• E1 = Light /// Truth, White, Star, the White Voice
  E1 shows where something becomes clear, pure, central, visible, or true. It is the first illumination.
• E2 = Stone /// Stone Coin, Tower, Fortress, Trust, Good
  E2 shows where something becomes stable, reliable, held, protected, or morally grounded. It is the first weight.
• E3 = Eye-1 /// Beauty, Flower, Mirror, Information, Message, Forum
  E3 shows where something is seen, shown, exchanged, admired, or communicated. It is the first opening of perception.
• E4 = Water /// the First Song, Love, Blue, Pool, River
  E4 shows where something flows, receives, loves, softens, embraces, or carries feeling. It is the first emotional body.
• E5 = Fire /// Red Voice, Fire Wall, Red, Beast, Crimson, Crim Crimson, Flame, Arena
  E5 shows where something burns, fights, desires, acts, risks, hungers, or becomes bodily intense. It is the first force of life.
• E6 = Earth /// Earth Coin, Knowledge, Machine, Better, Garden
  E6 shows where something is cultivated, improved, learned, organised into function, or made useful. It is the first working intelligence.
• E7 = Eye-2 /// Peace, Idea, Compass, Clearing, Flat Horizon
  E7 shows where something becomes calm, spacious, conceptual, oriented, or peacefully understood. It is the second sight.
• E8 = Ice /// the Second Song, Ice Trap, Black, Chaos, Crystal, Cave
  E8 shows where something freezes, hides, traps, penetrates, fractures, or becomes difficult to escape.
• E9 = Gold /// Golden Voice, Wisdom, City, Storm
  E9 shows where something becomes grand, wise, sovereign, collective, radiant, or charged with consequence. It is power after experience.
• E10 = Dust /// Dust Coin, Order, Pyramid, Diamond, World Tree
  E10 shows where something becomes structure, hierarchy, law, architecture, inheritance, or world-order. It is the ultimate form.
• E11 = Eye-3 /// Air Current, Vision, Radical, Sky, Crystal Vision
  E11 shows where something becomes visionary, aerial, future-facing, radical, unstable, or able to see through surfaces. It is sight surprise.
• E12 = Void /// the Third Song, Transcendence, Purple, Droplet, Mist, Temple, Cloud, Ghost, Maze, Stardust, Timesight
  E12 shows where something dissolves, transcends, haunts, completes, vanishes, returns, or becomes impossible to hold directly. It is the final threshold.