The Platonic Field

The Platonic Field (PF) is the spiritual counterpart to the Quantum Field. It has had different names throughout history, including the nether world, astral or aetheric plane, al-Ghaib, or the hidden world. A reflection of life can exist here, but it is inherently noncorporeal. For this reason, the Platonic Field is often called the Spirit World.

It was first conceptualised by the Greek philosopher Plato as a space where ideas have perfect Forms—abstract, immutable, perfect entities that exist independently of the physical world. These forms are the true essence or archetype of things we perceive in the physical world. This includes not just the abstract idea of physical objects but also thoughts, emotions, ideas, and beliefs.

Standard physics does not entirely describe the Platonic Field, although some scholars and sages have deduced the correct pattern of thoughts and concepts to invoke change. The theoretical mathematical model of the entire Platonic Field, the theory that describes everything about its various aspects, is called the Life or Anti-Life Equation.

History

The First Age

Much like the Quantum Field, the Platonic Field came into existence 13.7 billion years ago as the alpha singularity exploded as the Big Bang. Just as the contents of spacetime were too hot for individual aspects to emerge, so too was the aether of the Platonic Field too energetic. As spacetime expanded, both fields cooled, and it became possible for the first structures to form. At this time, just as the four separate fundamental forces were unified in the Quantum Field, so too was the emotional spectrum unified into a single component.

In the Platonic Field, self-emerging thoughts—random ripples—can be generated. If those primordial ripples were of sufficient amplitude or underwent superposition with other similar fluctuations, they could become self-sustaining. The new autonomous thought forms are forms of the Unliving, albeit incredibly alien to mortal life from the Quantum Field.

The first of the Unliving, the first intelligences in the Universe, were the Primordial Ones, and the first of these were the Triarch. These were the personifications of the aspects of the Universe that existed at this time – the Source, which personified time and creative potential, and the Great Darkness/Void, which personified expanding space and primal nothingness. Between them sat the Monitor, an embodiment of the Universe which observes itself and is in commune with its other-selves from other Universes.

Cosmic Dark Age

As the Quantum and Platonic Fields cooled, the first primordial stars formed in the material world, and the next generation of self-emergent intelligences began to form in the etheric world. These were the Immanent Ones, personifications of fundamental universal concepts who usually served one or other of the Triarchs.

The eldest and greatest are the Dominions, the great Caretakers of the Universe, who are active everywhere at once but usually unwitnessed. The oldest of the Dominions are the Oracle (who serves the Monitor and records all that is and can be), the Ouroboros (who oversees the passage of mortal life), the Oneiromancer (who oversees dream and imagination), and the Oletheros (the personification of the action of creation).

However, the Universe at this time was also under assault by horrors from the Overvoid (predators what seeped in from the Bleed between worlds) and from monstrous half-formed beasts that emerged alongside the Immanent Ones. To deal with these and to make the Universe safe for mortal life to emerge, the Source called forth the Virtues, the lesser Immanent Ones.

The three Demiurgos who served the Oletheros were the greatest of the Virtues. These were the twin brothers, the Empyrean and the Efficatius (the bringer of light and the warrior) and the Emissary (the ambassador and herald).  Together, they were generals in the army of the Source who oversaw the six-winged “Ones who Burn” and the two-winged “Ones who Bless”. Aside from the Demiurgos, other Virtues formed the Thrones (who aided rulers) and the Graces (the embodiments of judgement).

The great Immanent Council was broken with the Rebellion of the Empyrean and civil war amongst the Virtues. The energy of that war permeated the Material World, pushing reionization and threatening to return the Universe to the seething energetic chaos of primordial times. However, it was stopped suddenly when, in the confusion, Oletheros’s intervention led to the death of his then-persona at the hands of the Graces.

The Source intervened immediately. The rebels, including the Empyrean, were stripped of their stations and fell, bound to serve as the guardians of the souls of fallen mortals. In turn, the Graces were stripped of their personas and forever bound to mortal souls. A new persona for the Oletheros would eventually emerge, but he was never quite the same again. Despite the rebellion, the Council had managed to keep the Universe safe and to bind its greater enemies, clearing the way for mortal life to emerge in relative safety.

Meta-Physics

Ripples and vibrations

The Platonic Field is a space where words have wavelengths and emotions are resonances. It is intimately entangled with life formed by the Quantum Field. Mortal beings are capable of electro-chemical computational processes within their physical brains. Those processes represent an interaction with the Platonic Field as ideas expressed by electrical impulses between neurons becoming waveforms within the Field. Sensitive individuals can “hear” the ripples from those waveforms, which they call telepathy. The science of how the Platonic Field interacts with electronics, including the electrical impulses in the brain, is called psionics.

Forms

A concept, object, or ideal from the material world can exist in the thoughts and beliefs of a living mind. Those thoughts are entangled with the Platonic Field as ripples and perturbations, which create a Perceived Form (the idea developed in a single observer’s mind). Those forms undergo a superposition (a reinforcement) with Perceived Forms generated by many individual minds to create a true Platonic Form, the abstract idea of a particular “thing” independent of any one mind.

For example, a family that owns a particular cat has an interaction with its pet. Each family member has a different perception (a “perceived form”) of the cat. Some may love the cat, some may resent it, and some may tolerate it, but they each have their own mental picture of the cat. The Platonic Field creates a higher level interaction caused by that family’s thoughts, creating the platonic form of that particular cat, the idea of it as distinct from any one mind.

Beyond the platonic form of a single cat, there is a superstructure, the superposition of all the individual platonic forms of separate cats. These create a Higher Form that fundamentally expresses the pure idea of “cat” or “catness.” There are enumerate higher forms representing abstract concepts (Willpower, Hope, Love), physical processes (Cold, Heat, Light, Gravity, etc.), groups of lifeforms (Human, martian, Cat, Fish, etc.), and many other categories.

Self-Forms and Weak Platonic Resonances

A physical object in the Quantum Field is connected to its Perceived Form and via it, to any Higher Forms by a weak platonic resonance (WPR). The WPF echoes the existence of something in the physical world in the Platonic Field but does not otherwise cause a change in the physical self.

Suitably self-aware beings have a Self Form (their idea of themselves, in effect, the perceived form of themselves). This is linked to the physical self, the body in the Quantum Field, by a weak resonance that exists so long as the physical self does.

Minds strong enough to embody themselves within the Platonic Field, to push their consciousnesses entirely into the field’s domain, can allow their Self Form to roam away from their body. However, they are always connected by the thread-like WPR that connects them back to their physical self.

The Self Form is a nod to the idea in fiction that we all have a higher self—an astral or spiritual form—that is tied to the body by a silver cord (the “thread-like WPR”).

Strong Platonic Resonances

A strong platonic resonance (SPR) occurs when a change in the Platonic Field drives a shift in the Quantum Field. By enacting a change in the form of something, the idea of what it is, a change can be pushed into the material world and caused to happen physically. Manipulating SPR can force the expression of the Form onto the Quantum Field, changing the actuality of what was or is.

Mortals who become adept at this are called magicians, sorcerers, wizards, or magi. A change to a Perceived Form would be to change how an individual observes or regards an object; it would be an illusion. A change to a Higher Form would physically change the material world. 

Creating a new, suitably powerful, strong platonic resonance can overwrite the causal processes needed to embody an action. For example, creating a strong resonance between a wooden twig and the Higher Form of something like steel would cause the twig to behave as if it had the strength and durability of steel, even though it looked no different than it did before.

This is the classic Vixen or Animal Man superpower of calling upon the ability of an animal when they do not have the physical muscles of an elephant or the claws of a bear. This could explain many meta-human powers that do not seem to spring from a logical, physical adaptation.

Platonic Superstructures

The ultimate amalgamation of forms is a Coalesced Platonic Superstructure (CPS). These are the superposition of multiple related ideas and are complex, persistent Forms in their own right.  Much like a galaxy or galaxy cluster in the Quantum Field, these structures are the most prominent objects – the largest ideas – in the platonic field. They are far fewer in number than normal Higher Forms but are vast in scope. They exist in two forms: Lesser CPSs, which have application to a planetary or societal scope, and Universal CRSs, which are genuinely singular in scope.

Elemental Planes (Lesser CPSs)

Lesser CPSs are structures that coalesce around interconnected higher forms but have a relatively limited scope in the physical universe. Examples include the Red and the Green, which are the CPSs formed around the higher platonic forms of animal and plant life on Earth. The higher forms they coalesce around are sometimes called “elemental” forms or ideas.

The Lesser CPS will also include the higher forms of each component part, their physical parts, and their natures. To continue, the example of the Red would include the higher forms of each animal (cat, Lion, dog, etc.), limb (arm, tentacle, leg, etc.), other body part (head, tail, claw, bone, etc.), and nature (predator, social, hive, etc.).

Minds strong enough to embody themselves within the Platonic Field can experience the Lesser CPS as if it were a physical structure, colloquially known as an Elemental Plane or dimension. However, these Planes can only be comprised of the materials (ideas) that they embody (the Red is made up of rivers of blood, cliffs of bone, forests of hair, mountains of flesh, etc).

Lesser CPS are generally not strong enough to become anthropomorphic representations of themselves, i.e., to gain sentience. Uniquely, Lesser CPS can form a solid platonic resonance with the Self-Form of an individual or recently deceased individual. This creates a duplicate of the Self-Form, which becomes a mortal avatar or representative of the CPS. These avatars are known as <strong>Elementals</strong>.

Elementals are not immortal but remain bound to the Lesser CPS after death. They become part of the fabric of the Elemental Plane, and their collective Self Forms become its population. The collective noun for a group of Elementals is a Parliament.

All of this is derived from the Swamp Thing and Animal Man comics, notably how the New 52’s Animal Man comics depicted the Red.

Domains (Universal CPSs)

Universal CPSs are superstructures much like Lesser CPSs but are far greater in scope. A Lesser CPS may be experienced by a traveller in the Platonic Field as an Elemental Plane and may be represented by one of a succession of mortal avatars called Elements.

By contrast to a Lesser CPS’s Elemental Plane, a Universal CPS may be experienced as a Domain, a persistent virtual space that appears to be a Universe in its own right. These Domains often have a honeycomb or foam-like structure, with each cell or bubble appearing more like a Lesser CPSS. Domains usually have a caretaker, one of the Dominions, an anthropomorphic personification of the CPS who the Primordial Ones charge with keeping their Domain safe.

Known domains include:

• The Fulcrum – The creation/destruction CPS. A place where nothing permanent can endure. It is a place of constant flux and change where things exist before they are created and after they are destroyed. This is, or was, overseen by the Oletheros.
• Garden of Forking Paths – The Free Will CPS. A labyrinthine maze that serves as a metaphor for the complex pattern of outcomes created by freedom of choice. This is overseen by the Oracle.
• The Sunless Lands – The Life/Death CPS. A honeycomb of smaller domains, each with its own duty manager (often a Power with responsibility for the dead in their culture) which serve as the afterlife for a respective culture. This is overseen on the Ouroboros.
• The Dreamlands – The Imagination/Fiction CPS. A place made up of all the dreams, fictions, and imagined things which never actually existed in the material world. This is overseen by the Oneiromancer.

The Domains are our version of the Endless, but I wanted to take a different tone with them than just the dysfunctional family. They are also more heavily integrated into the main Universe rather than set off to one side.

Timeline for The Platonic Field

1. The First World 1 × 10^-46 seconds

   The Planck Epoch

   The quantum and platonic fields separate from each other.

2. The First World 1 × 10^-33 seconds

   The Source and Greater Darkness awaken

   Fluctuations in the platonic field form self-perpetuating thoughts, the first primordial ones. The Source (personifying time and order) and the Greater Darkness (personifying space and chaos) think themselves into existence.

3. The First World 1 × 10^-20 seconds

   The Monitor awakens

   The Monitor Superior, the youngest of the Triarch, thinks itself into existence.

4. The First World 20 seconds

   The Oracle awakens

   The first Dominion, the eldest child of the Triarch, a primordial one called the Oracle, awakens. As the Monitor watches, so it is the duty of the Oracle to record all that is.

5. The First World 1 years

   The Ouroboros awakens

   Almost unnoticed, the Ouroboros steps into existence. With little to do, she bides her time by touring the newly formed Universe and keeping her brother the Oracle company.

6. The First World 1 million years

   The Oneiromancer awakens

   The Void, the Greater Darkness, falls back into slumber, becoming the first being to sleep and dream. The act of the first dream calls forth the third Dominion, a primordial one called the Oneiromancer, whose duty it is to safeguard dreams and imagination (the things which are not).

7. The First World 40 million years

   Elder Things awaken

   Other primordial beings awaken; they are half-formed thought creatures – blind and voiceless titans of inconceivable malignancy – which cannot die. These Elder Things float through the void like great serpents or jellyfish in the deep. They instinctively lash out in intense ferocity when they brush past each other.

8. The First World 80 million years

   The Oletheros awakens

   The first stars threaten to illuminate the Elder Things and attract the attention of Bleed-horrors from the Overvoid, great predators that seep in from the Bleed between worlds. To defend these new sources of light and order, the fourth of the Dominions, a primordial one called the Olethros, is created by the Source and tasked with battling the Elder Things and the Bleed-horrors.

9. The First World 200 million years

   The Virtues awaken

   The Oracle cannot aid the Olethros as the Elder Things and Bleed-horrors are not alive and thus cannot be killed. But he is aided by the Oneiromancer in chaining the greatest horrors in perpetual slumber. However, their numbers are legion, even for the great Dominions. Olethros petitions the Source for aid and is given a Word that creates the first of the Virtues, the three Demiurgos (Empyrean the Bringer of Light, Efficatius the warrior, and Emissary the ambassador and herald). They, in turn, bring forth their Army of Light, the “Ones who Burn”, spirits in the platonic field who match the first stars in the quantum field.

10. The First World 350 million years

    Founding of the Silver City; the Thrones awaken

    The Council Immanent is called together for the first time. A meeting place, the Silver City, is forged to accommodate their presence. The three Thrones (Exarator the Chancellor, Expiator the Consumer, and Elevatus the Guide) are raised from the ”Ones who Burn” to defend and staff the City. The City also becomes the headquarters of the Army of Light and a home for the “Ones who Burn”. They are joined by the ”Ones who Bless”, servants of the Thrones, that are native to the city.

11. The First World 550 million years

    Orexis and Orizys appear; the Graces awaken

    A heated debate at the Council Immanent gets so intense that the Dominions Orexis, the personification of action, and Orizys, the personification of inaction, incarnate spontaneously amid the Councilors. To balance their influence, the Source raises the Graces (Eminence the witness, Equinox the judge, and Empath the mercy) to balance and rule their influence.

12. The First World 800 million years

    The Rebellion of the Virtues and the Fall of the Empyrean

    The Eminence brings news of the emergence of mortal life to the Silver City. A schism immediately develops between a rebel faction led by the Empyrean, who consider this new life an abomination to be erased, and a loyalist faction led by the Elevatus, who believe it should be nurtured. A pitched battle erupts between their supporters. The Olethros attempts to separate them, but the bungled intervention of the Graces results in the persona death of the Olethros and the Eminence. The Source’s response is instantaneous.

    The rebels are stripped of their station and ejected from the Silver City. Their punishment will be to serve Ouroboros as the jailers of corrupt mortal spirits. For their part, the Equinox and Empath are sentenced to undergo persona death, but they will be allowed to continue to serve the Council. Their new personas are granted by binding them to a succession of mortal hosts. The Dominions mourn their brother and lay his first persona to rest in the vaults beneath the Silver City. A new persona eventually emerges who continues his duties.

    The First World, the Primordial Age, ends.