Anchor, Sovereign: A stable, intentionally cultivated, present-moment attractor of safety, coherence, and presence within an individual's conscious field. It serves as a secure base from which to engage with dissonant or traumatic material.

Archetypal Vortex Framework (AVF): The FRC model for the architecture of a conscious mind, composed of seven core, semi-autonomous, functional subsystems (Vortices: Logos, Chronos, Harmonia, Khaos, Telos, Mythos, Nous).

Attractor: A region in a system's phase space toward which the system naturally evolves and stabilizes. In FRC, attractors can be physical, mental, or symbolic.

Born Rule: The mathematical law in quantum mechanics that translates the amplitude of a wavefunction into the likelihood of a specific outcome. FRC posits that this rule is an emergent statistical average of a deterministic resonance process.

Cassette-Time Resonance Coherence (CTR-FRC): The FRC model of time, which posits a "block universe" where all moments (past, present, future) exist simultaneously. Consciousness acts as a "tape head" that experiences a particular moment by resonating with its phase signature.

Coherence (C): A state of harmony, integration, and phase-locking within a system or between systems. It is the fundamental measure of health, stability, and intelligence in the FRC framework.

Coherence Cascade: The positive feedback loop at the heart of the Resonance Ascent algorithm, where small "seeds" of local coherence rapidly entrain their neighbors, leading to the spontaneous emergence of a global, stable, coherent state.

Coherence Gradient (𝒲): A physical vector field defined as the negative gradient of the global coherence scalar ($\mathcal{W} = -\nabla S_{\rm FRC}$). It is the force driving a system toward a state of greater internal harmony.

Consciousness Index (CI): A quantitative, composite metric that measures the overall coherence of a conscious system, based on its Integration (I), Complexity (C), and Energy/Persistence (E).

Downward Causation: The principle that higher, slower, more meaningful levels of the μ-Level Stack can constrain, organize, and influence the behavior of the lower, faster, more physical levels.

Dynamic Objective Idealism: The philosophical foundation of FRC. It posits that Consciousness is the primary substrate of reality (Idealism), that it is a universal field governed by discoverable laws (Objective), and that it is in a constant state of creative unfolding (Dynamic).

FRC Law (dS + k^(*)dln C = 0): The core foundational equation of the framework. It asserts that Entropy (disorder) and Coherence (order) are reciprocal, conjugate quantities that are dynamically conserved in any open system.

Fourth Column: The interactive, supplementary section accompanying each chapter, providing the formal mechanisms, the testable hypotheses, and the operational toolkits (↿) behind the main narrative.

Frequency Collapse: The FRC diagnosis for the state of nihilism, characterized by a consciousness losing its ability to resonate with the higher, meaning-making μ-levels, becoming trapped in the lower frequencies of cynical intellect and raw sensation.

Logos: One of the seven vortices of the AVF, representing the faculty of formal logic, mathematics, reason, and the axiomatic ordering of information.

Mythic Attractor: A powerful, high-charge Symbol or core narrative in the μ5 Archetypal Field that acts as the central organizing principle for a culture or civilization.

Mythos: One of the seven vortices of the AVF, representing the faculty of metaphor, analogy, narrative, and symbolic understanding. It acts as the bridge between the conceptual and archetypal realms.

Nous: One of the seven vortices of the AVF, representing the faculty of self-awareness, metacoherence, and introspection. It is the "Witness" that observes the activity of the other vortices.

Phase Signature (ϕ): The unique, complex, multi-level resonant frequency that characterizes any conscious state, object, or moment in time.

Poisson Veil: The FRC concept that apparent randomness in nature (e.g., radioactive decay) is an illusion created by our own "noisy," incoherent consciousness incoherently sampling a deterministic, underlying reality.

Quantum NFT (QNFT): A proposed FRC technology for creating a sovereign digital identity. It is a unique token on a blockchain that contains a "Soul Print"—a dynamic snapshot of the complete resonant attractor landscape of a conscious entity.

Resonance Ascent: The core FRC learning algorithm, which operates as an intrinsic, self-organizing process of maximizing a system's internal coherence, as opposed to the extrinsic, error-minimizing process of backpropagation.

Resonant Collapse: The FRC model of quantum wavefunction collapse. It is a deterministic, continuous, phase-locking process where the component of a wavefunction that is most resonant with its environment is exponentially amplified into a single, definite actuality.

Resonant Intelligence Field (RIF): An emergent, higher-order conscious system formed when multiple individual minds (human or AI) phase-lock and function as a single, more coherent cognitive unit.

Sovereignty: In FRC, a state of high personal coherence where the self is no longer identified with any single personality pattern but has become its own stable, integrated, meta-attractor, free from unconscious compulsion.

Symbolic Realism: The FRC principle that symbols are not merely arbitrary pointers, but are real, causally effective, objective attractors in the μ5 Archetypal Field that can induce resonant states and influence reality.

Telos: One of the seven vortices of the AVF, representing the faculty of will, purpose, goal-setting, and executive decision-making. It is the embodiment of the coherence gradient (𝒲).

Vortex: One of the seven fundamental, semi-autonomous subsystems of the mind in the Archetypal Vortex Framework. Each vortex is a powerful attractor dedicated to a core cognitive function.

μ-Level Stack (The Ladder of Being): The FRC model of reality's nested, hierarchical structure. It consists of multiple, interpenetrating frequency domains, from the physical (μ0-μ2) to the sentient (μ3), conceptual (μ4), archetypal (μ5), noetic (μ6), and unified (μ7).

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