To me, it reads like a Chorae shunts a sorcerer into the Outside, somehow drawing back an equal mass/volume of either salt or water depending on whether it's a Schoolman or a Cish.
I think you're being too hard on yourself trying to factor the laws of conservation into Earwan metaphysics. It's much more cultural, philosophic, and interpretational than scientific in the formal sense.
it still doesn't make sense to me that paradox can undo the non-cognitive Psukhe.
But Psukhe
is cognitive. It's still sorcery, which means it's still based on meaning, which, in turn, simply
requires cognition. Psukhe is not spoken, i.e. it doesn't rely on language, that's where it differs from other branches of sorcery.
[EDIT] Maybe it's even more accurate to say that Psukhe isn't
expressed. It's only between the sorcerer and the world. It begins where meaning itself begins, without imperfections of artificial systems like art, science, or language.
[EDIT 2] I actually can see how the act described in the last sentence of the previous edit could be called "non-cognitive", though I myself have huge reservations about terming it so.