Glossary
Anchor—The sensory stimuli that prompts the recall of a memory, behavior, or experience.
Conditioning—Learning that can be easily forgotten or changed. Ordinary learning as opposed to imprints.
Consensus—A group decision-making process in which each participant has input and the decision is adjusted, added to, subtracted from, and modified until all concerns are addressed.
Default network—A network of brain systems that link up and process memories when conscious attention is not otherwise directed. These parts of the brain are responsible for daydreaming, spacing out, and transderivational search, among other things.
Embodied metaphor—The tendency to create metaphors in terms of the human body.
Epistemology—The basic set of presuppositions that we use, usually outside of consciousness, to create and navigate our world.
Evocation—The act of moving an idea, state, feeling, quality, or memory into a metaphoric position outside the body.
Ideomotor response (IMR)—Subtle or not-so-subtle movements and changes that our bodies make in response to thoughts, often involuntary and/or outside of awareness.
Imprints—Behaviors that are learned in a very deep, permanent way, upon which our general preferences and direction in life are based.
Initiation—A ritual or rite that marks and/or creates deep neurological change.
Inner Babe—Our internal concept of an ideal partner.
Invocation—The act of drawing an idea, state, feeling, quality, or memory into a metaphoric position within the body.
Magick—A means of first perfecting the self so that the things that one may do will be done with power and effectiveness.
Memetic entity—A consciousness based in information, transmitted or communicated by humans, rather than through genetics or biological reproduction.
Memory reconsolidation—The tendency of the brain to change or re-tag a memory each time it is called up from and replaced to long-term memory.
Meta-Magick—Magick used to understand the processes of magick itself.
Meta-programs—Overarching mental tendencies around which other behaviors may be formed, a concept from NLP.
Mind-state—The totality of experience of consciousness at any given moment or in any particular state.
Mirror neuron—A cell in the brain, usually responsible for motor functions, that also responds when we observe motor functions in others.
Neurogenesis—The ability of the brain to grow new cells.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)—The study of the structure of subjective experience; a field of practice developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, influenced by the work of Alfred Korzybski, Gregory Bateson, Milton Erickson, Noam Chomsky, and others.
Neuroplasticity—The ability of the brain to change and re-form neural pathways.
Ritual frame—Behaviors and symbols that mark out a period of time and everything within that time as being dedicated to a particular ritual goal.
Science—A method of inquiry that uses experimentation to test hypotheses and form theories.
Self-flex—The ability to identify with “selves” of more variety and scope than the singular “self,” and, at will, to suppress the “self” part of the brain to a greater or lesser degree.
State-dependent memory—The tendency of the human mind to sort memory and experience by state, making it easy to recall happy memories when you are happy, sad memories when you are sad, and to forget your car keys when you change state.
State entitiy—A representation or metaphor for an internal state of consciousness, often created by externalizing a feeling or energy flow.
Submodality—The subcategories within in each sense. For instance, visual submodalities may include brightness, color, location, size, and focus; auditory submodalities may include volume, pitch, rhythm, tempo, and so on.
Swish pattern—An NLP anchoring technique that associates a resourceful image of the self with the perceptions related to given situation.
Syncretism—The tendency of religions and entities to adapt to changing circumstances by incorporating elements of other religions and entities.
Theory of mind—The ability of our brains to model and make predictions about the consciousness of others.
Timeline—A (usually) linear symbol of time used to bring states and resources into past memories and future projections.
Transderivational search—The tendency of the mind to quickly sort through a range of options when attempting to make sense of words and other sensory experiences. Transderivational search appears to be mediated by the brain’s default network.
Woohoo—The indefinable property that lets our brains represent some experiences as powerful, important, or pleasurable. Woohoo is the subtle difference between ordinary and exciting, the factor that makes just another stranger into your friend, your teacher, or your lover. Woohoo is what turns an activity into a passion; it’s what changes noise into song, foot movement into dance, travel into adventure, procreation into eros, and biological processes into a life worth living. Woohoo is the measure of intensity. It’s what continues to draw your attention, moment after moment.