Circuit bending is not all that complex...
It's just basically taking some small electronic item like a synthesizer, kid's toy, effects pedal, or whatever, and shorting out the connections inside to find new sounds and oddball glitchiness. Most people do it with alligator clips, I do now as well, though I used to just use pieces of wire and a pair of pliars to short out connections. It's pretty easy actually. One thing I have up against others though is I have a fairly easy time locating where all the power-supply electronics are so I can avoid them.
As for guitar wiring, I kind of think of it in terms of plumbing with two kinds of liquids that must only intersect in certain amounts at certain points, or kind of like pneumatics. You're just basically guiding energy to an output, and manipulating it along the way to change the sound. I know nothing about pedals except the principals upon which they work, and how to occasionally tweak them by changing settings on the internal trim pots. Much of my learning about the guts of an Electric Guitar came from designing my own wiring diagrams in class in high school, and tracing the routes of the current through the wiring, to find faults, and often building the circuits at home on home made guitars.
