Just a quick update.

[novapsyche]

As I mentioned in my comments of the previous entry, my headache has reduced itself tremendously. I still have the skeleton of a headache, but for the most part it is a phantom.

I finally cracked open Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, originally written in the 1500s. The edition I have is annotated, which makes the reading oh so much more accessible. It's way more interesting than I would have thought. Book II, the section I'm starting with, is all about numbers and their relation to magic; he speaks a lot about the Pythagoreans and of Plato, and also places a lot of emphasis on the kabalah. Of course, I loved the section devoted to the number four.

I admit, I know very little about what "the occult" is supposed to be. When I was a teenager attending a Free Methodist church, I read a book that said that automatic writing, visualization techniques, and other such activities were of the occult. (It was on this definition that I gave a confession to the entire church during a Sunday service, where I described being involved in the occult and making a conscious decision to turn away from it now since I was in the church. Mind you, I was 16.) I know that my aunt Anna was most likely into the occult; I nabbed a couple of magazines that sold "occult" paraphrenalia (oils, incense, candles, athames, books, even robes). But other than that, all I'm running on right now is conjecture--and this book I have beside me. Hopefully, I'll come away with a better understanding.

My friend Dan is encouraging me to run a Mage campaign. I think I have more of a grip of what it may take, being a GM; however, there are some skills I still feel I do not have and that may be essential. I don't think things up on the fly very well. But Dan, himself a GM, managed to explain some things (trade secrets?) to me, and I think I understand the idea of likelihoods a little better now. His advice was helpful.

So... a Mage campaign. I've only been preparing for this for four years. Like I told him, I'm not working right now... what else do I have to do with my time? The thing I'll have to restrain from most is making my primary NPC a Cultist of Ecstasy. I might want to pick something not so rock-the-boatish.

Comments

[vaxjedi]

I admit, I know very little about what "the occult" is supposed to be.

Actually, almost no one knows what the occult is supposed to be. Occult means hidden knowledge- often it is hidden for a reason.

Now, according to what I know, Agrippa is a wonderful source for hermetic esoterica, as much of the Golden Dawn's work is derived from Agrippa's work. He was, in a lot of ways, a zeitgeist for Western esoterica at the time. Also look into John Dee.

For an interesting perspective on it all, check out GURPS Cabal, by Kenneth Hite. Hite knows more than God about the occult and conspiracy topics and wrote the game book based off of Agrippa and other sources in order to give it a feel of hermetic magic.

Another pseudo-gaming book is Authentic Thaumaturgy, by Isaac Bonewits (who got his Doctorate in Magic from a legitimate college). Some very straight forward talk on what magic means. His book Real Magick is a good overall book on magic, though it shows many of his early bias.

Another good book on magic for the mathematically inclined is The New Magus. I think you'd mesh very well with that one. The one major difference I have with it is the implication it has that evil will always lose to good because good is 'good'. Not a very good perspective, especially in the magickal world where will is the driving force, despite intention.

What I found interesting is something that Hite refers to in the above GURPS book: the fact that most occultists are syncretists. That occult investiagtion and education isn't so much learning a hidden set of rules or arcane formulae, rather that it is a discovery of disparate energies, manifestations and concepts that the magician weaves into a larger tapestry. That's why a lot of magick uses symbols from many cultures - not only did the occultists find common archetypes, they created them by establishing corresponsencies. Thus is another way the Magus exerts his/her Will through the Law of Sympathy - not only that like effects like, but defining what 'like' is.

As for a Mage game, here's my strongest piece of advice: how a Mage does their magic is more important than what the effects are. The Spheres detail effects in a common frame of reference. But what separates a Dreamspeaker from a Son of Ether, or a Technocrat from a Tradition Mage is how they accomplish their magic. A Virtual Adept recoding a bullet into a fireball is a VERY different thing than an Order of Hermes evoking the Essential Fire in the gunpowder, or a Celestial Choruster singing the One's fury into the gun, or a Son of Ether using unstable Nirtonium in the rounds, or a Dreamspeaker calling on the Phoenix to accompany the bullet.

And remember that the Traditions are only on the same side because they have to be, because they are all losing. Each Tradition feels they have found the Truth - a mage can alter reality not because they understand that reality is untilmately flexible and without definite form, but because they believe their new paradigm so completely that their Avatar can uphold the rules of THAT paradigm in the face of the collective will of the Sleepers. None of them, except for the truly enlightened, believe in the others' paradigms, nor in the metaparadigm of the Spheres - they simply tolerate each other because someone bigger has a gun to their collective head. The only thing they'd reall,y admit is that reality seems to be flexible enough that even people who don't really understand how realty works can make magick happen using weird little crutches they call their Truthes.