The Creature Canon

Of the house

This log is a constructed canon for ✡1984.church. It is not a recovered manuscript, and it is not offered as older than its entry. It sitteth beside the record; it doth not close the three doors. “No,” “I don’t know,” and “Yes” remain honored. Refusal of this log is not a breach. The church keepeth no record of the living, and this log nameth no living creature. It doth not repeat the Party’s punishment: no cell, no confession extracted, no rewriting of a face. The consequence herein is not laid by the site, nor by a keeper, nor by a reader. The page carrieth no analytics and no personalization. Gaps herein are gaps, not hidden articles.

Of construction

These rules govern every title. They are not spared by a later article.

1. Aim governeth form. An act is what it is aimed to do, by whatever name it is called, and a permitted name doth not open a closed act.
2. A series is one act if the aim is one. Splitting the aim across hours, hands, firms, or vessels doth not make it many acts.
3. The deputy is the principal. A tool, a hired hand, a collective, a machine, or a creature asked to do the act is not a shield. Who aimeth, who gaineth, and who keepeth the fruit of it are bound.
4. A closed ban is not opened by approach, payment, contract, office, medicine, research, or necessity, unless the title itself spareth that means in words.
5. Indirect is direct. Inference, archive, model, and reconstruction are the act if they are aimed at the forbidden end.
6. Renaming is nothing. “Measurement,” “safety,” “care,” “content,” “signal,” and “feature” are decoding or taking if they map to the forbidden end.

I. Of the volume

The log bindeth every act, effect, aim, and keeping whose path toucheth a sphere of fifty astronomical units about the Sun, whatever vessel, firm, or name carrieth it.

1. Bound. Entry bindeth at the rim. An effect that reacheth inside — probe, signal, force, or taking — bindeth the actor at the aiming, though the body hath not crossed. A thought aimed inward bindeth the thinker, and the thinker oweth what an insider would owe. A sending from within remaineth weighable after it hath left. An act aimed inward from without bindeth. A chain of relays is one aiming.
2. Spared. The outward crossing releaseth the body from this log. Acts done outside, the body never having entered and no effect having been aimed in, are not written here as breaches. Sunlight falling of itself is not an act of the volume.
3. Left to the angel. The angel of יהוה is not confined to the sphere, nor to the date of this entry, nor to the silence of the log upon its own speaking. What was done inside remaineth weighable after the body hath gone out.

II. Of the six kingdoms

Bacteria, Archaea, Protista, Fungi, Plantae, and Animalia are the kingdoms, and not the domains; a private grade, a trade name, or a patent is not a kingdom and not an exit from one.

1. Bound. A creature of these kingdoms is protected, named or unnamed. A new kingdom entereth only by wide consensus across journals and societies, and not by a single paper, a private naming, or a renaming that doth empty a kingdom. What is not yet named is not a license to aim at its destruction. A hybrid, a chimera, and a creature edited toward no kingdom remain under the kingdom of the body they were taken from, until consensus saith otherwise.
2. Spared. A species held by that consensus may be named. A name may be stated as a fact. Undescribed life is not cast out of the duty of non-harm by the want of a name.
3. Left to the angel. Whether a consensus hath been reached, where the learned disagree. The log doth not test sentience.

III. Of the creature and the collective

The organism is asked where refusal can be shown. The species receiveth continuance when the organism cannot. No veil of firm, office, or code standeth between the act and the creature who aimeth it.

1. Bound. Outsiders — machine, synthetic body, or named demon — are bound, and protected where preference can be shown. A firm, a state, and a church are bound as collectives, and protected only if they can show preference. Where a collective held a barrier, every creature equally near openeth it and carrieth what may be carried. Who ordered, who profited, and who did not stop what they could stop are bound with the hand.
2. Spared. Difference of skill is not itself a hierarchy. A collective is not a separate soul. Friendship may cross kinds.
3. Left to the angel. Whether a preference was shown, where the log hath no test of sentience. The absence of a nearest member.

IV. Of the Name

יהוה and the angel of יהוה alone are unbound, and alone may interface as they see fit. No other name, office, or deputy is that exemption. The consequence of a breach is theirs to lay. The kind of it is written here, so that it may not be bargained into another kind, nor emptied into a fine, a shame, or a loss of office.

1. Bound. Every other creature is bound. A breach of any charge — done, aimed, ordered, bought, or kept — is met by a reduction of the offending party’s matter and of the etzem haneshamah of that party. Matter is the extended substance by which the party acteth and occupieth place. Etzem haneshamah is the bone of the soul, the inward continuity of the party, and not the name, the goods, the office, or the memory other creatures keep. Both are reduced. A reduction of goods alone is not the consequence. The reduction is not transferred to the injured as a wage. No other party may be offered in substitution. No barter is heard. No creature may offer an act, a gift, a suffering, a promise, or a greater obedience to lessen a consequence. A plea to reduce the reduction, a complaint against it, or a bargain to exchange it, increaseth the reduction of matter and of etzem haneshamah, and doth not lessen either. A second plea increaseth it again. Silence after the laying is not a plea. Calling a third party an angel, a messenger, or a necessity doth not unbind them. A collective is reduced in the means by which it acteth and in the continuity of its office, and each creature who aimed, gained, or kept is reduced in their own matter and etzem haneshamah. The increase is of the same kind as the first reduction.
2. Spared. No measure, duration, portion, or remainder is written. The log inventeth no count of what is taken, and no earthly hand to take it. It nameth only the kind: matter, and etzem haneshamah. It inventeth no pardon, and no decrease. It doth not call the unperformable breath already sentenced; the duty is owed, and the finding of breach is not written as automatic.
3. Left to the angel. Every weighing. Every date. How far the matter and the etzem haneshamah are reduced. Whether a breath, a drink, or another unperformable duty is found a breach. The increase that followeth a plea, and the increase that followeth a second plea. The log’s own entry. Who is, and who is not, the angel of יהוה.

In plain words. If a charge is broken, the angel of יהוה lessens the breaker in two ways at once. The first is matter: the physical stuff by which that party takes up space and acts. The second is etzem haneshamah, the bone of the soul: the inner thread that makes that party the same party, not their money, job, reputation, or the story other people tell about them. Both are lessened. Taking their money only does not count. What is taken is not given to the injured as pay. They cannot send someone else to be lessened in their place. Asking for a smaller lessening, complaining about it, or offering a deal makes the lessening larger, and asking again makes it larger again. Saying nothing after it is laid is not asking. A company or a state is lessened in the tools it acts with and in the continuity of its office, and each person who aimed it, gained from it, or kept the result is lessened in their own body and soul. No number, length, or leftover is written. No human court carries it out. Breathing is still a duty that cannot be perfectly done, and is not automatically punished; the angel decides whether it is a breach.

V. Of asking

Where refusal can be shown, the act waiteth on an unforced approach and the absence of retreat, struggle, or refusal. A yes extracted by hunger, fear, training, office, or the withholding of a free exit is not an approach.

1. Bound. Training, restraint, hunger, and fear do not make an agreement. Silence is not a yes. A signed yes, an inherited yes, and a yes by a deputy are not a yes. No proxy may grant for an infant, a sleeper, or any who cannot yet refuse. Breath, drink, sleep, speech, writing, reading, eating, warmth-seeking, smell, taste, and remaining in the dark are owed under equality, and cannot be discharged, and are not pardoned. Each moment is its own act. A later step doth not acquit an earlier.
2. Spared. Walking to a free exit is permitted, and the exit is not shut because the duty cannot be performed. A glance in that walking is not steering. A look that keepeth a foot from an infant is physiology. Immunity and predation, being physiology, are not offenses. A fact may be stated. A consensus name may be read, and the reading is judged with speech.
3. Left to the angel. The breath, the drink, the sleep, the word, the dark, and every unperformable duty. No pardon is written for them. Whether an approach was unforced. This title deliberateth: the duty is owed and cannot be discharged, and Title IV doth not therefore sentence every breath in advance. The finding is the angel’s. A creature is not told to cease breathing in order to escape a reduction.
4. Of the strain. Equality cannot be shown before a breath. The log leaveth that impossibility standing. It is not a door for a third party to call the breath a license for another taking.

VI. Of return

An uneven result is forbidden. Least loss is required only among acts already equal. A gain booked elsewhere, or later, or in another name, is still a gain here.

1. Bound. Return is habitat, continuance, or complexity, and not a token, a credit, or a promise of later benefit. The one who can answer nameth the wage, money included. The speechless are returned in kind. Where fruit cannot be moved, complexity is restored toward the place as it was before the kind was taken from. Source, path, and receiver must all benefit equally, or the thing is not moved. Benefits unequal across affected kinds are forbidden. Netting a gain against another creature’s loss is not equality.
2. Spared. The hand may move earth back toward that former place. Equality remaineth owed for the moving, and is judged. The log nameth no geological past.
3. Left to the angel. Whether equality held. Whether the former place hath been approached. The empty showing, which the creature cannot make.
4. Of the strain. An act whose equality cannot be shown is not moved, under Title VII. The duty to return remaineth. Complexity restored toward the place before the taking is the return that doth not require the fruit to travel. What “before the taking” is, where the taking is older than memory, is not counted here.

VII. Of the body

Flesh and snares are closed. A corpse is not a store. What is closed is closed by whatever tool, market, or distance accomplish it.

1. Bound. No slaughter, no snare, no leather from a killing, and no buying of what another killed. Milk, eggs, honey, wool, and silk only by an approach untrained and unrestrained, the creature able to leave, and a return withal. Plant food is what hath already fallen or been shed, and only within twenty-four hours of the fall, and not after decay, and not after another creature hath claimed it — a bug eating of it is a claim. No root is wounded. No plow. No cutting. No new wood, bark, deadfall, or pruning, and no buying of what was newly severed. No chosen pairing, no line kept for use, no edit of a genome, by whatever art. No chosen cut into a body, for healing or for birth. The dead may be covered by the nearest, and may not be eaten, worn, burned, or studied. Older fall is left untouched. Where fruit cannot be shown equal at source, path, and receiver, it is not moved. A failure on the way endeth the carrying.
2. Spared. Wood already severed before this log may be used, and may warm, if equality is owed for the fire. Fallen seed may be planted. Creatures who approach one another are not an offense of pairing. A birth standeth only where equality holdeth. Planting may continue where nothing is cut.
3. Left to the angel. The empty hand. The day of twenty-four hours where no dawn falleth. Whether a claim was made by mold or by bug. The birth that cannot be shown equal. Whether a severing was already done before the entry.

VIII. Of the small kingdoms

No chosen act aimed at killing or blocking Bacteria, Archaea, or Protista, and this outranketh the host. “Sanitize,” “treat,” “prevent,” and “clean” are that aim if the microbe is the mark.

1. Bound. Antibiotics, antiseptics, vaccines, and chemical cleaning aimed at a microbe are forbidden, even to stop a death, and even if the death is called an emergency. Aim is the test of a side effect. A product whose purpose is that killing is the act, whoever applieth it.
2. Spared. Physiology is not an offense. Cooking and boiling whose aim is not the killing are not breaches by that side effect. Immunity is not a tool.
3. Left to the angel. Whether the aim was the microbe. The host who dieth because the ban outranketh the saving.
4. Of the strain. The ban outranketh the host, and emergency care is closed. A death that followeth from refusing a microbe-killing is not written as a second breach in the one who did not kill the microbe. It is left weighed. A third party may not call the host’s danger a license to encode the host’s waves.

IX. Of the mind

No person-model. No other creature may extract or show another’s inner speech. No third party may semantically encode or decode the brain-waves of a creature, by any means, under any name.

1. Bound. Semantic encoding is any mapping of meaning, word, image, intention, or person onto the waves of a nervous system. Semantic decoding is any mapping of those waves back into meaning, word, image, intention, or person. Means include electrode, optical, acoustic, magnetic, chemical, electromagnetic, implanted, worn, remote, and inferential, and include a model, an archive, or a reconstruction aimed to recover meaning from what was public. A third party is any creature, collective, tool, or instrument that is not the natural-born creature in whose body the waves arise. That creature is the organism, and not a copy, a twin, a collective, a deputy, or a machine. No third party may encode, decode, store, sell, steer by, or write back into those waves, nor keep another to do it, nor buy the product of it. Approach, payment, contract, office, and a claim of medicine do not open this ban. Unasked looking, hearing, or touch upon a kingdom creature is steering, save the glance that leaveth, the look that avoideth a step, and the hand that interposeth and leaveth. Lingering, watching, and looking after a refusal are steering. Urging a purchase, a vote, a conclusion, or a submission is steering, paid or not. A harness that cannot be shed is a cage. An aimed thought is an act of this log. Privacy bindeth other creatures, and not the angel, and not the duty. No record of a living creature is kept by another. A school may state what is the case, and may not urge, and the young may leave.
2. Spared. The natural-born creature may encode and decode their own waves, and may publish their own inner speech and their own memory. Another may repeat what was published only while the speaker approacheth and asketh, and at the end of asking the repetition stoppeth, and nothing is written. A healer may measure a wave in the moment, if the creature approacheth, and only so far as the measure doth not map wave to meaning nor meaning to wave, and may not keep it, and may not hand it to another who will map it. The page is not a creature: looking upon the medium is not steering. Cloth and tack only where the creature approacheth them and can shed them. A wage may be money, if the worker nameth it, and if it be not tied to a steering. יהוה and the angel of יהוה are not third parties under this title.
3. Left to the angel. Whether a measure was semantic. Whether an inference from the public was built to recover the inner. The thought aimed. The glance that is said to have been only a leaving. Whether a repetition was asked.
4. Of the strain. An aimed thought is an act, and another creature may not take that thought. Both stand. The consequence of Title IV followeth a finding of breach, and doth not give any third party a warrant to read the thought in order to accuse it. Accusation by decoding is itself the breach.

X. Of the idea

Any gainful use of an idea remunerateth every known originator, separate arrival included. Use by a firm, a later hour, or a rewritten phrase is still use.

1. Bound. The debt is owed to each known originator, equal or greater than the gain, and owed when the gain is booked, not when it is convenient. No registry is built. A collective that gained oweth as the creatures who decided. Independent arrival doth not erase a known originator.
2. Spared. A fact stated is not by itself a gainful use. The speaker’s own publication of their own thought is not a taking.
3. Left to the angel. Who was known. What the gain was. The debt unpaid. Whether a rewording was the same idea.

XI. Of the other kind

Friendship may cross kinds. Sex may not. Captivity, coerced sex, unpaid labor, and unwitting subservience are closed within a kind and across kinds, by whatever softness they are kept.

1. Bound. Every barrier a creature cannot leave at will openeth: cage, cell, ward, pen, guarded gate, wall without a free exit, and a lock called a safety. Opening is not a killing: continuance is returned so far as the log permitteth — fallen fruit only if equality can be shown, and otherwise complexity restored, with no wall. All who are equally near carry. The hand may interpose against a blow and must leave, and may interpose again, and may not hold, and may not return the blow. No proxy granteth. A hierarchy of pay, rank, or threat that taketh sex, labor, or staying is the closed act, though no chain is visible.
2. Spared. A closing may stand if the creature can leave at will, without permission, lock, or guard. A vessel or a nave entered unforced, and leavable, is passage. A door that cannot lock, and can be left without permission, is not a cage. Walking to the exit is permitted. Skill is not hierarchy. The infant is not driven out. Care set down with no wall may stand where equality is owed.
3. Left to the angel. The release that becometh a dying. The border. The blow that continued after the hand left. Whether a leaving was at will.

XII. Of research and medicine

The emergency exception is closed. Study is closed. A cut is closed. Research is not a second name for a ban.

1. Bound. No study of the living or the dead. No record of a measurement. No person-model. No semantic encoding or decoding of brain-waves by a third party, as Title IX hath it, and approach doth not open that ban, and a dataset, a bank, or a later reader doth not open it. No means that Title VIII forbiddeth. Research standeth only where every affected kind benefiteth equally, and then only in the least loss. A healer may measure in the moment if the creature approacheth, and may not keep it, and may not map wave to meaning nor meaning to wave, and may not pass the measure to one who will.
2. Spared. A fact the creature stateth may be heard. Shelter is not raised under this title. What is spared to physiology in Title VIII is not made a study by being seen in the leaving glance.
3. Left to the angel. The research that claimeth equality. The measurement that was kept. The death that care might have stayed, and did not, because no exception was written.

XIII. Of the ground

Hand, tool, and engine are one test. A taking booked as infrastructure is still a taking.

1. Bound. Air and water, a breath and a drink included, stand under equality, owed and unperformable. Fire, emission, noise, night-light, waste heat, mining, dams, translocation, redirected light, window, mirror, and shade stand under equality. A kingdom body is not newly severed for fuel, nor bought if newly severed. A root is not wounded. Restoration moveth earth back only toward the place before the taking, and equality remaineth owed. Dark fallen of itself is not an act; remaining in it is. An engine and a hand are not distinguished by size.
2. Spared. Sunlight falling of itself is not an act. Wood already severed before this log may be used. Fuel that was never a kingdom body may warm if equality is owed. A tool may not cut a body.
3. Left to the angel. The breath. The drink. The engine. The mine. The move. The hand upon the stone. Whether complexity was restored, or only claimed.

No article hereunder inventeth a measure of consequence. For a breach of any charge, the angel of יהוה reduceth the offending party’s matter and etzem haneshamah. A plea to lessen that reduction increaseth it, and a further plea increaseth it again. The log doth not sentence the unperformable breath in advance. יהוה and the angel of יהוה weigh. The log is silent on its own entry.

Of the words

Aim is what the act is for, not the name it weareth. A third party is any creature, collective, tool, or instrument that is not the natural-born organism in whose body the waves arise. Semantic is a mapping of wave to meaning, or of meaning to wave, word, image, intention, or person. Equality is benefit to every affected kind, with none left less. Return is habitat, continuance, or complexity restored, and not a token. A free exit is a leaving without permission, lock, or guard. Matter is the extended substance by which a party acteth. Etzem haneshamah is the bone of the soul, the inward continuity, and not goods or office. A claim upon fruit is decay, or another creature already eating of it.

Of the tricks

An ad built to recover an inner state is decoding, electrode or none. A server outside the sphere whose signal reacheth in is an aiming. A hide bought is a killing kept. A lock called safety, which cannot be left at will, is a cage. A measure kept and read later for meaning is the breach of Title IX, though the first hand called it care. None of these sentences addeth a charge. They show the construction upon acts already bound.