The Interplay of Human Perception with Noncorporeal Intelligences

Title: The Interplay of Human Perception with Noncorporeal Intelligences 

Author: Master Aaron Meighen, Master of Studies 

The Grey School of Wizardry

Abstract

This paper examines the historical understanding of the relationship between human perception and noncorporeal intelligences, or spirits, treating the spirits as ontologically real for the purpose of analyzing the mechanisms of their perception. Drawing upon pre-modern sources from classical antiquity through the early modern period, the paper establishes a recurring pattern that spirit encounters are structured interactions mediated primarily by the human imaginative and cognitive faculties. By integrating these historical perspectives with the Spiritual and Psychological Models of Magick from the Grey School of Wizardry, the author proposes an operative model wherein noncorporeal influences are processed by the human mind, which then translates subtle impressions into consciously perceptible forms heavily conditioned by the perceiver's culture, beliefs, and biases. The paper addresses possible objections and concludes that this model accounts for the variety observed in spiritual experiences without reducing spirits to mere psychological constructs. Suggestions for further research and inquiry are identified. 

Introduction 

Across many pre-modern cultures and intellectual traditions, encounters with spirits have been treated not as private hallucinations but as structured interactions between noncorporeal intelligences and the perceptual, cognitive, and symbolic faculties of the human mind. Whether prized or shunned by the value system of a given people or culture, such interactions were widely interpreted as authentic and valid interactions between human beings and external forces or beings. 

It was relatively late in the arc of human history that the growing rationalism and materialism of the Age of Enlightenment began to supplant, in certain intellectual circles, traditional notions of metaphysics and cosmology. While Enlightenment thought was diverse and not uniformly materialist, its dominant epistemic standards increasingly marginalized explanations not founded in the observable physical world.

In the threefold classification of the stages of a society articulated by Auguste Comte, a belief in spirits belongs to what he characterizes as the first and most primitive stage. It is in the third and terminal stage that he describes society as reaching its apex by replacing such beliefs with objective understandings of facts and data derived from observations, experimentation, and the scientific method (Comte, 2000, 27-31). 

Early Dutch Enlightenment thinker Adriaan Koerbagh, in his 1668 “A Light Shining in Dark Places,” made a formal rejection of the existence of biblical demons as literal beings, instead pointing to diseases, natural disasters, human psychology, and other naturalistic explanations as being suitable secular explanations for devils and their activities. Explaining his position, he stated that “It is true that I deny that there are such evil spirits as the clergy say there are, but I have not denied that there can be evil thoughts by which someone can be assailed as if by evil spirits, because thoughts spring from the mind.” (Olmo, 2009, 280). However, it is worth noting that his rejection was not based on scientific reasoning as we understand it, but because he argued that a belief in meddling evil spirits was a superstitious affectation of the Church to undermine the sole and absolute authority of God in order to bolster their prestige and power as exorcists and spiritual mediators. 

As the scientific method evolved and advanced over centuries, the dominant methodological norms of the scientific community came to regard the topic of spirits as unscientific in the sense that it cannot be falsified (Bunge, 1998, 178). Carl Sagan’s influential skeptical work “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark” clearly argues that science does not admit the existence of things lacking physical evidence, as such has been established as the proper domain of scientific inquiry (Sagan, 1997, 253), which includes spirits of all descriptions. 

In the remainder of this article, we will return to first principles to reassess our assumptions and presumptions surrounding the existence of spirits and the possibility of human interactions with them. In doing so, we will arrive at an understanding that permits the meaningful analysis of reported encounters with noncorporeal intelligences and refine our approach to that understanding through the framework of the Three Models of Magick (Kingsley, 2023).  

A Word on Scope

The present paper adopts the methodology of bracketing the ontological question of whether spirits exist in order to analyze and understand the probable mechanisms of perception and cognition involved in reported encounters with such beings. Within that framing, spirits are treated as real agents that are not reducible to mental fabrications for the purpose of modeling human experience - i.e. ontologically real within the analytical framework of this paper. 

Methodology

This paper adopts a historical-hermeneutic reading of sources whose analysis is synthesized into a cognitive model to explain human perception of spirits. It is not presented as empirical proof but as a proposed conceptual framework for practice, scholarship, and further research. 

Review of Historical Perspectives and Literature 

1. Ancient and Classical Foundations

Ancient and classical sources articulate a belief in spirits as agentive (noncorporeal yet possessed of agency) realities filtered through human faculties. The Homeric Hymns (c. 7th–6th century BCE) describe repeated epiphanies of gods who appear differently depending on the mortal perceiver’s readiness, emotional state, or ritual orientation. Gods and other spirits are treated as real agents, but human perception of them is mercurial. In the Hymn to Demeter, for example, Demeter first appears as a feeble old woman, but later discards that visage to appear in her full glory, an experience which strikes the woman viewing her into a stunned state. 

So saying, the goddess changed her size and appearance,

shedding her old age, and she was totally enveloped in beauty.

And a lovely fragrance wafted from her perfumed robes.

The radiance of her immortal complexion

shone forth from the goddess. Her golden hair streamed down her shoulder.

The well-built palace was filled with light, as if from a flash of lightning.

She went out of the palace, and straightaway her [Metaneira’s] knees buckled.

For a long time she [Metaneira] was speechless. She did not even think of

her treasured little boy, to pick him up from the floor (Harvard University, 2018).

Likewise, the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite first describes how the titular goddess appears in a gorgeous mien when Anchises first sees her with an attitude of love born of her beauty, and later in a more terrible form when he fears her after learning of her divinity (Harvard University, 2018). 

These sources indicate a perspective that manifestations of divinities maintain their identity but are variable in appearance, suggesting an early implicit model of perceptual translation. Whether these scenes are taken as describing the literal and physical metamorphoses of divine beings or as narrative descriptions of the limitations of human perceptions, the principle remains that the manifestation of the spirit is conditioned by the human observer.

Moving on to Plato’s Symposium, we see an emphasis on mediation as the central mechanism of communication between divinities and man, with an intelligence assigned to the task of that mediation. 

Diotima describes Eros as a daimon, intermediate between gods and mortals: 

“He interprets between gods and men, conveying and taking across to the gods the prayers and sacrifices of men, and to men the commands and replies of the gods; he is the mediator who spans the chasm which divides them, and therefore in him all is bound together, and through him the arts of the prophet and the priest, their sacrifices and mysteries and charms, and all, prophecy and incantation, find their way (Plato, Symposium 202d - 203a; Jowett, n.d.). 

From this, we see the beginning of a conception of ontological gradients (i.e., levels of being that mediate between divinities and human understanding) through which any communication with spirits must pass in order to be intelligible to human beings, establishing a sort of proto-cognitive model of spirit communication. 

Iamblichus, when writing “De Mysteriis”, explains in Book II Chapter X that, when falseness or incorrectness arises in ritual encounters between humans and spirits, the cause is attributable to technical error with the method of communication. Chapter XI further elucidates that the human mind is not responsible for interactions with the gods but, in connection with ritual purity and moral condition, are relevant variables. To quote: 

Hence it is not even chiefly through our intellection that divine causes are called into actuality; but it is necessary for these and all the best conditions of the soul and our ritual purity . . . (Iamblichus, De Mysteriis II.1 1, trans. Clarke, Dillon, & Hershbell, 2003, p. 115). 

Thus, we see a sophisticated conception emerging where the gods and other noncorporeal intelligences bridge the gap to communicate with humans, whose psychological faculties and ritual activities condition the perception of the manifestations of the gods. 

2. Late Antique and Medieval Sources

Book I of the Corpus Hermeticum opens with the statement that “my mind was meditating . . . my thought was raised to a great height, the senses of my body being held back,” immediately prior to experiencing a vision of the spirit Poimandres, who is identified as the nous, or mind, of God. This encounter is not understood or presented to be imaginary, in the sense that it is unreal, and it is framed as occurring when the proper mental conditions are met. Shortly after, the viewpoint figure remarks that “I saw in my mind the light . . .,” further enhancing the experience as being an interior vision (Corpus Hermeticum I.1; Copenhaver, 1995, p. 1). Thus, in Book I we identify a model where contact with divine intelligence is real, genuine, and meaningful but the mode in which that contact is received is potentially purely noetic and requires the suppression of ordinary thought and sensory processing. 

Standing as one of the most famous examples of the Solomonic tradition of grimoires, the Lesser Key of Solomon both presents the existence of the spirits it catalogs as being real and active within its ritual framework, but with forms and appearances that are conditional and subject to modification. Marbas, for example, is described by saying that he “appeareth at first in the form of a Great Lion… afterwards… he putteth on Human Shape” (The Lesser Key of Solomon, 1904). This motif is not unique to Marbas - other spirits, such as Raum, have similar descriptions of shapeshifting. While not explicitly stated in the text, a plausible explanation is that this phenomenon is a result of shifts in the perception of the human performing the rituals. The elaborate system of ritual purification, preparation, regalia, incense smoke, and litanies of prayers and invocations arguably form a medieval system responsible, in part, for stabilizing the experience so that the perceptions are both consistent and repeatable; this is the interpretation of some modern metaphysical practitioners who have practically experimented with these rituals (Runyon, 2023, Chs. 1-3). 

Thomas Aquinas, great Doctor of the Church and titan of medieval theology and thought, was explicit in Part I Q50 of his “Summa Theologica” that human faculties cannot directly apprehend and process the existence of angels, but must understand them “in our mode” (Aquinas, 1274). This claim may be read in the light of an anticipation of a more general principle that cognition processes objects of knowledge that exceed it by translating it into forms more suitable for the knower. 

From the Homeric Hymns to Medieval theology, a model for spiritual contact and communication emerges that hinges on a cognitive interface but which does not reduce the spirits to mere psychological constructs. 

3. Renaissance and Early Modern Thought

In the natural philosophy of the Renaissance, which inherited Medieval psychology (Schmitt et al., 1988), imaginatio was understood to be a vital mental faculty that processed and combined sensory information to form internal pictures or ideas, linked to Neoplatonic thought as articulated by Ficino in a way that allowed it to act as a vessel for divine insight (Cocking, 1991, 1, 8, 105-106). This functioned as a channel for artists to receive inspiration and create beauty inspired by the divine and numinous. It worked alongside other internal senses of cognition and fantasy to bridge the gap between perception and intellect. 

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa makes reference to this mental faculty as the medium for “hearing” spirits in his “Three Books of Occult Philosophy” in Book III, Ch. 23:

. . . so Angels, so Demons speak: and what man doth with a sensible voyce [voice], they do by impressing the conception of the speech in those to whom they speak, after a better manner then if they should express it by an audible voyce. So the Platonists say that Socrates perceived his Demon by sense indeed, but not of this body, but by the sense of the etheriall body concealed in this: after which manner Avicen believes the Angels were wont to be seen, and heard by the Prophets: That instrument, whatsoever the vertue be, by which one spirit makes known to another spirit what things are in his minde, is called by the Apostle Paul the tongue of Angels.

Previously, in Book I Ch. LXVI, he writes that “For our mind can through imaginations, or reason by a kind of imitation, be so conformed to any Star, as suddenly to be filled with the vertues of that Star, as if it were a proper receptacle of the influence thereof” (Agrippa, 2000).

In these Renaissance perspectives we continue to see the development of a model of human-spirit interaction that relies on human mental faculties such as cognition and imagination as the primary medium, which in turn receives impressions from noncorporeal entities that become sensible to conscious awareness. 

The aforementioned Ficino made one of the most explicit exegesis of this philosophy. In his view, imagination was the fulcrum of the interplay between humanity and celestial beings or principles, as seen in his statement that “Our spirit, if it has been intent upon the work and upon the stars through imagination and emotion, is joined together with the very spirit of the world and with the rays of the stars through which the world-spirit acts” (Ficino, 1989, 351). Later, in Ch. XXII of Book III, he goes at length to describe how various personality and behavioral traits make one more or less receptive to the influences of certain spiritual forces or intelligences, categorized according to the order of the seven classical planets. 

Thus, in these Renaissance thinkers we see the treatment of imagination not as fantasy but as a mediating faculty through which noncorporeal intelligences impress forms and influences upon human consciousness, with the clarity and perception of the personal experiences of such influences conditioned by individual personality, morality, and inclination, representing the ongoing development of ancient, classical, and medieval opinions on what exactly happens during interactions between spirits and human beings. 

Across these sources, three recurring claims can be identified: 

• Spirits or noncorporeal intelligences are treated as real beings with agency. 

• The nature and clarity of spirit communication is modulated by the recipient’s moral-psychological state and/or ritual operation.

• Human apprehension of spirits is proportionate and potentially unique to the recipient’s capacities and may therefore vary between individuals. 

The operative model proposed in the following section formalizes these claims in a manner consistent with the Grey School of Wizardry’s Models of Magick. 

Defining an Operative Model of Human Interaction with Noncorporeal Intelligences 

Having completed a review of literature and sources relevant to the discussion, we now proceed to the task of quantifying the relevant observations that we will take into consideration. 

To summarize: 

• Encounters with spirits are a common, if not ubiquitous, aspect of human experience. 

• The perception of spirits occurs through the mechanism of the human psyche, particularly its imaginative faculty. 

• The use of the imaginative faculty as the medium of perception is normal and expected - it does not represent an aberration of reasoning or perception. 

• The perception of spirits through the imaginative faculty may vary even if the underlying agent is treated as ontologically constant. 

Furthermore, we will draw heavily upon the Spiritual and Psychological Models of Magick as espoused by the Grey School of Wizardry. Summaries of the respective Models are below (Kingsley, 2023). 

• Psychological Model of Magick: Proposes that magick operates by modifying a person’s consciousness, awareness, perceptions, emotions, and attitudes. 

• Spiritual Model: Proposes that magick operates by engaging with a broader metaphysical spectrum of reality, incorporating the agency of noncorporeal intelligences - otherwise known as spirits - and/or “forces” or “energies” that defy the precise physical and scientific usage of these terms.

From these principles and Models, we propose the following framework for explaining human perception of spirits. 

Firstly, it is recognized that spirits are noncorporeal. Thus, any impression or depiction of shape, size, gender, hair, skin, or eye color, or any other physical trait cannot be an inherent aspect of their identity. These factors arise in the imagination as a result of impressions received from the spirit’s presence and its influence upon the one perceiving them.  

When a person perceives something, they don’t directly receive knowledge of the thing itself - instead, sensory input is transmitted and processed by neural systems before it becomes conscious experience; the present framework proposes an analogous process for interpreting non-sensory cues attributed to spirits. 

A similar process occurs when humans encounter spirits. Their presence makes an impression on us through virtue of its proximity to us and our minds dutifully processes those impressions and turns them into an image our conscious mind perceives. This image created to represent the spirit depends heavily on the individual’s own cultural influences, beliefs, biases, and mental imagery. For example, many people “know” what an angelic spirit looks like via cultural osmosis - wings, flowing robes, serene expressions, gentle light, etc. As a result, when encountering a spirit that is “angelic” in their perception, their mind uses that image as a shortcut to produce an image of what is being perceived. Culture shapes belief, belief informs perception, and perception reinforces culture. Thus, representations of spirits can become culturally stable over time despite their noncorporeal nature. The same explanation applies to other senses. What is smelled, heard, or felt in a spirit encounter will generally also be instances of the mind creating forms to render sensible the much more subtle impressions received from said spirit. By “impressions” and “subtle impressions” is meant non-sensory cues attributed by practitioners to proximity to the spirit (e.g. shifts in attention, emotions, mental imagery, auditory-like mentations, or inexplicable knowledge or insights). The current proposal does not claim a physical carrier for these cues but acknowledges that they are perceived and rendered into experience. 

It must be recognized that the subjective nature of imagination as a medium creates a possibility where individual practitioners may overextend, misinterpret, prejudice, or otherwise compromise their imaginative faculty and thus damage the integrity of that medium. There must be a limit or limits that define when a given experience or perception is valid in order to prevent excessive conceptual drift or the confusion of purely spurious mental or emotional processes with a genuine act of communication with a noncorporeal intelligence. 

Simultaneously, the question naturally arises as to how a practitioner may discern between the expected variations in perception due to cultural conditioning and other factors and those which cannot be validly accounted for by the mediation of the imagination. While the topic resists empirical falsification, it is desirable to establish internal standards, thresholds, or exclusion criteria that would help distinguish meaningful engagement from a kind of self-reinforcing fantasy. 

To that end, the following list of criteria is proposed as a set of metrics by which the validity of a given interaction with or perception of a noncorporeal spirit may be evaluated: 

1. Does the perception or experience accord broadly with other recorded interactions or perceptions with the same spirit? 

2. Does the spirit respond to ritual forms, symbology, or other magickal practices that are attested by one or more traditions or cultures? 

3. Does the perception or experience seem to agree with the known and accepted laws or principles of physics and logic? 

4. Does the spirit make statements or pronouncements that can be independently verified? 

5. Does the experience or perception display traits associated with mental or psychiatric disorders or hallucinations? 

6. Does the experience or perception coincide with the use or abuse of substances or medications with known effects of impairing or altering perception or cognition? 

An affirmative response to the first four criteria supports its validity, while an affirmative response to the last two criteria calls its validity into question. 

As a baseline, short-duration perceptions of noncorporeal entities, or communications with the same, that maintain an awareness that one is experiencing something outside of normal cognition, which occur in response to intentional or targeted magickal techniques, and which do not result in harmful effects upon major aspects of one’s life cannot be qualified as pathological. 

Objections or Challenges to the Proposed Model of Human-Spirit Perception and Interaction In considering the proposal outlined above, the following objections or challenges are anticipated and addressed. 

1. Spirits Are Not Real and Thus Cannot be Perceived 

Rejections of noncorporeal intelligences often rest on physicalist metaphysics and methodological naturalism alongside the lack of widely replicable empirical protocols for evaluating such claims. No broadly accepted scientific consensus has established the falsity of all claims framed as spirit encounters, though many individual cases admit alternative explanations.

2. Spirits are Imaginary 

It is problematic to dismiss the existence of spirits as unreal because of the imaginary nature of their perception. As expressed in the review of historical literature and further articulated in the preceding section, imagination is the natural and proper mechanism for their perception. Imagination, properly understood in this context, represents a mediating and receptive faculty within the psyche rather than as a source of errors. 

3. The Existence of Spirits Has Not Been Proven

There is a challenge in applying the scientific method to the topic of noncorporeal intelligences - the method requires physical phenomena that can be directly measured, tested, quantified, and reproduced. That, however, is exactly what human-spirit interactions do not offer. As described previously, perception unfolds in the imagination according to the highly subjective and variable conditions of the human mind; the scientific method struggles with such nonempirical subjects. This, however, must be recognized in the light that the methodology of science is most effective when applied to its proper domain, and the present topic lies at least partly outside of it (Sagan, 1997, 253). This does not mean that the existence of spirits and communication with them is unreal, merely that it cannot be proven in the way that we are accustomed to having things proven and may of necessity rely on the Aristotelian approach of deducing an understanding by analyzing known facts. 

It is further worth noting that the fundamental existence of spirits, in terms of their nature and substance, is out of scope for this present article - it is merely the validity of human perception and interaction of such beings that are under discussion here. 

Conclusion

A review of pre-modern literature has established the recurring pattern of an understanding that human-spirit interactions unfold through the medium of the imagination, which clothes subtle impressions received from noncorporeal intelligences in forms perceptible to conscious awareness. When combined with the Psychological and Spiritual Models of Magick, a clear picture emerges of how and why so much variety manifests in the subjective perception of and experience with spirits despite treating the agents as ontologically constant within the model. This represents a more sophisticated approach to magickal workings that require interfacing with such beings that does not depend upon uncritical assent and which satisfactorily accounts for the observations listed in the section “Defining an Operative Model of Human Interaction with Noncorporeal Intelligences.” Further research and contemplation in this field is anticipated in order to refine this proposed explanatory framework as well as to attempt to define in more concrete terms the fundamental nature of what noncorporeal intelligences are. 

Appendix I: Criteria for Schizophrenia and Other Psychotic Disorders Per the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV-TR 

Per the DSM IV-TR, at least two of the following symptoms must be observed for a diagnosis of Schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders (Association & American Psychiatric Association. Task Force on DSM-IV., 2000, 297-302).

1. delusions

2. hallucinations

3. disorganized speech (e.g., frequent derailment or incoherence)

4. grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior

5. negative symptoms (i.e., diminished emotional expression or avolition)

As an additional criteria, the presence of these symptoms must significantly impair functioning in one or more major areas of life, such as work or personal relationships, and symptoms must actively be demonstrated for at least one month and effects must be observed for at least six months (with the exception of Brief Psychotic Disorder). 

Note: This information is for advisory purposes only and is summarized from the National Library of Medicine.

Appendix II: Clinical Definitions of Hallucination and Delusion

Medical professionals define a hallucination as “a sensory perception in the absence of a corresponding external or somatic stimulus and described according to the sensory domain in which it occurs. Hallucinations may occur with or without insight into their hallucinatory nature. The absence of insight into a hallucination defines it as a psychotic symptom, that is, a hallucination for which reality testing is impaired.” While hallucinations are primary symptoms used in the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders, it is noted that “their occurrence is not necessarily pathologic, especially if they occur with preserved insight, they are not associated with other disturbances of cognition, emotion, or behavior, and they do not compromise personal, social, or occupational function.” (Arciniegas, 2015, 715-736)

Arciniegas further defines delusions as “. . . fixed false beliefs; they are based on incorrect (false) inferences about reality external to, or about, oneself and maintained firmly (fixed) despite the presentation of evidence that obviously and incontrovertibly contradicts the belief.”

Note: This information is for advisory purposes only and is summarized from the National Library of Medicine. 

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