Animalis is the gritty edge where matter strives to persist and scale — from a sponge’s churn to a human writing open-source code in a library. A living pulse, it becomes quiet in death, but for now, it fuels many crafts like JJ's candles, prints, and the ideas that enchant the everyday, empower our freedom, and ignite a freethinker’s renaissance. Magick, in JJ's practice, is a physical tool for dissecting the nuts and bolts of existence, not a mystic practice. Lee Cronin’s assembly theory, for instance, serves as a magick tool of physicalism in the scope of biochemistry, a quantifying lens of life that helps us see the molecular steps about various forms. Assembly theory is a molecular looking glass, a magick map of the fine lines between the animate and inanimate, forms from forms. It's not woo-woo; it's a rigorous method that seeks to precisely measure how matter organizes into sponges, parasites, or poets versus rocks and ash. These tools help us capture clarity in the occultism of questions like "what is life? what is death?" and use first principles to decoding the mechanics of such wonders like animalis without leaning on sacred fluff.
Magia Animalium
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Animalis — Latin for “breath of life” — captures what sets a sponge, parasite, or person apart from rocks or stardust. Science, like Lee Cronin’s assembly theory, measures molecular complexity, defining life as matter that self-organizes at scale to metabolize, reproduce, and self-regulate. Sponges pulse nutrients through porous cells, no nerves needed. Parasites thrive by rewiring host biology with cunning DNA. Humans spark ideas and tools via neural cascades. Rocks, contrarily, are static mineral grids. Stardust is inert cosmic ash. Life’s signature is dynamic activity: enzymes firing, membranes adapting, systems looping. These processes are built from the same atoms as non-life but driven with processes that endure creatively and at-scale. Dead forms are dormant and fall silent, their chemistry has stalled. Life is animated and capable of self-transformation.
Magia animalium means the magick of animals. Jangled Jester’s physicalist magick rejects mysticism in favor of form and function’s raw mechanics. Magick has historically sought to decode transformation and how existence changes. Magick is a study of what's real, not necessarily what is supernatural or sacred, but treasures as simple as our handcrafted soy candles and their purpose of ambience. An Appalachian animistic coven once challenged me: does everything hum with life? Do JJ's candles? No. Life’s a rare, messy chemistry, but not a universal essence. The Secular Occultist’s Handbook of Physicalist Magick observes life’s vibrant activity and sets it apart from inanimate and dead matter. Likewise, magick is distinguished into sects of willful practices like Thelema and inert or inanimate magick of chaotic galaxy meteorites without nervous systems. Objective observations that classify life from non-life using physical principles is a guide to agnostics and atheists that encourages practical, art-and-science-based exploration of curiosity, creativity, and critical thought.
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