Practice: The Shape of Focus

Practice: The Shape of Focus Jan 30, 2020 18:10:35 GMT -6

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Post by xaria on Jan 30, 2020 18:10:35 GMT -6

Practice: The Shape of Focus

Practice means “to make” or “to do.” And so, a mage – guided by her beliefs – does her magick through a practice. As the name suggests, a practice is also practical, turning abstract ideas into useful activities.

When your character makes things happen, she employs a practice that serves her needs and beliefs. One mage might petition her gods, whereas another dons her business suit, applies subtle cosmetics, and goes off to work her Will at the shareholders’ meeting. In game terms, every mage has a practice; in story terms, that practice comes from that character’s culture,
beliefs, and circumstances.

An appropriate practice can also spell the difference between coincidental magick and vulgar magick. That said, Mage characters don’t choose their practices based on in-game benefits. In Mage, as in real life, people often choose to believe inconvenient things and follow inconvenient practices. Sure, that High Ritual magician knows he’s an anachronism in the postmodern world, channeling his Will through cumbersome rituals and theatrical instruments. It’d be quicker and easier for him to simply use a computer like everybody else. For him, though, his practice is a matter of pride. He’s not like everybody else, so his beliefs, practices, and instruments
set him apart, defining him as extraordinary even when they seem somewhat inconvenient.

Below, we’ve presented a range of common practices within Mage’s world. Each entry is exceedingly generalized, encompassing dozens – sometimes hundreds – of loosely related disciplines, different in many specifics though linked by several common elements and intentions. Each one, though, offers an overview of a practice that you can choose for your character. If you like (and with the Storyteller’s okay), you might create your own practice to suit your character. Just remember: every practice meets a need. People craft new arts, sciences, and religions when the old ones don’t accomplish the things they needed to accomplish. If and when you come up with something new, ask yourself this: how does this practice meet my character’s needs, beyond the ability to cast Effects? How does it turn his beliefs into actions? And what sorts of instruments aim those actions toward a desirable goal?

In the spirit of such activities, each of the following entries features a few Associated Paradigms, Associated Abilities, and Common Instruments. This way, you’ve got some guidelines for the things your mage knows, does, and uses in order to pursue her practice of choice. Those Abilities can be found in Chapter Six, and the instruments are detailed in the section after this one.

Alchemy

From turning base materials into decaying messes and then moving them upward toward eventual perfection, the ancient art of alchemy has provided the basis for modern chemistry. Wrapped in elaborate codes, symbols, and metaphors that still remain open to interpretation, this Art depends upon the idea of transformation from lower to higher states of being. The common perception of the Art rests upon its old claim of turning lead into gold; in reality, though, that claim is both metaphor and a way of scamming money to fund alchemical pursuits. Sure, a skilled alchemist might indeed use Matter magick to change lead into gold; on a deeper level, however, the lead is the alchemist and the gold represents self-perfection.

Although its common name comes from an Arabic practice, alchemy has several different forms: the Taoist Arts of sublime energies, the medieval European “lead into gold” vocation, the Islamic refinement-of-self through the keys left by Allah in the hands of wise men, the roots of those Arts in Classical Greece and Egypt, the early forms of modern chemistry, the complex pharmacopeia of South American mystics, the postmodern psychotropic experiments of transhumanist philosopherchemists, and probably a few more forms as well. A 21st-century alchemist might study several of these disciplines, formulating new variations on ancient principles. Alchemy, after all, focuses on learning-based perfection. The practitioner’s mind and body transform themselves through practicing the Art.

Aside from its chemical applications (poisons, psychoactives, explosives, and so forth), alchemy isn’t really a fighter’s Art. Its techniques demand patience, time, and a dedicated workspace. As a result, Ascension War alchemists tend to craft Wonders and compounds that come in handy when things get tense. And because it’s not really difficult to turn lead into gold if you know what you’re doing, such mages tend to be quite rich… with all the resources that wealth implies.

In all its forms, alchemy demands discipline. An alchemist studies principles, experiments with materials, deciphers codes, puzzles over symbols, works in his lab, creates useful goodies, and constantly challenges and refines himself. For him, the practical applications of alchemy – drugs, acids, and
other chemical compounds; quick wits; foreign languages; and other techniques of transformation – take a back seat to the self-perfection at the core of this venerable Art.

Associated Paradigms: A Mechanistic Cosmos; Bring Back the Golden Age; Creation’s Divine and Alive; Divine Order and Earthly Chaos; Everything is Data; Might is Right; Tech Holds All Answers

Associated Abilities: Art, Crafts, Cryptography, Enigmas, Esoterica, Medicine, Pharmacopeia, Science (chemistry)

Common Instruments: Books, brews and potions, designs, devices, drugs, formulas, laboratories

The Art of Desire/ Hypereconomics

Known in the Renaissance as Ars Cupiditae, the Art of Desire focuses upon achieving your desires through finding out what other people desire and then using that knowledge to enact your Will. Like alchemy (and most other forms of magick, art, and science), this discipline involves plenty of self-perfection: athletic exercise, meditation, mental gymnastics, self-reflection,
etiquette, and other social graces. Fashionable clothes, subtle yet influential cosmetics, poise and grace, martial arts, seduction, intimidation, and the trappings of wealth and refinement provide essential tools for this practice. Although it’s most readily associated with the Syndicate and its original form as the High Guild, the Art of Desire has adherents throughout the mortal and Awakened worlds.

Essentially, Ars Cupiditae converts desire to reality. What you want, you make happen. A devotee nurtures her desires and the desires of other people, then uses them to advance her agenda for Reality as a whole. An Art of value, this practice draws connections between people and places, reads emotions and influences thoughts, manipulates the physical and mental states of both the mage and her subjects, and directs probability and material toward a greater goal. As a result, this Art favors the Spheres of Correspondence, Entropy, Life, Matter, Mind, and Prime, using them as parts of a useful, interlocking whole. An eminently cultured practice, Ars Cupiditae draws upon a mixture of Asian, European, and Middle Eastern social and philosophical technologies. A practitioner of Desire rarely comes
across as a mage at all – she’s more Nikita than Hermione. Although certain Ecstatics and Hermetic wizards favor this approach, and modern Ngoma and Taftani use it to command urban commerce and culture, a devotee of this Art employs social influence, economic wizardry, and sheer personal excellence in order to get what she wants. Such mages rarely use violence themselves, leaving the dirty work to paid enforcers. If and when a practitioner needs to get her hands messy, though, her athletic prowess and
advanced technology prove that she’s no corner-office pushover. A related practice, hyper economics, refines the Art of Desire into social and global control. By exploring and exploiting desires and values within a given group, a hyper economist can sense the Primal Energies of want and need within that group and then turn them to her advantage. An arcane practice understood mostly by Syndicate reps and the occasional Virtual Adept, hyper economics provides an excellent vehicle for Entropy, Mind, and Prime Effects, channeled through social and mathematical activities so subtle that few people even recognize that their lives are being altered. Almost always coincidental (gross violations of Consensus Reality are considered cheap), hyper economics remains a closely guarded secret in the 21st-century reality wars.

Associated Paradigms: A Mechanistic Cosmos; Bring Back the Golden Age; Divine Order and Earthly Chaos; Everything is Chaos; Everything is Data; Everything’s an Illusion, Prison, or Mistake; Might is Right; One-Way Trip to Oblivion; Tech Holds All Answers

Associated Abilities: Academics (culture, philosophy, psychology), Athletics, Awareness, Carousing, Etiquette, Expression, Finance, Intimidation, Leadership, Martial Arts, Media, Politics, Seduction, Subterfuge

Common Instruments: Cards and dice, cosmetics, (very refined) dance and gestures, eye contact, fashion, gadgets, mass media, money and wealth, sex, social domination, vehicles, voice, weapons

Chaos Magick

It’s not what you think it is. Although the term “chaos magic” tends to be associated with demons and evil, occultists understand chaos magick as a postmodern and often improvisational Art. Like other mystic practices, it emphasizes knowledge, reflection, and other forms of self-improvement.
This revolutionary inversion of traditional mystic disciplines, however, depends upon personal intuition and interpretation; individual freedom; a deliberately iconoclastic approach; and an often subversive use of pop-culture symbols, social behaviors, and improvised designs.

Chaos magick spits in the face of established dogma. Often regarded by outsiders as a Left-Hand Path, it’s a sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll sort of practice, raising and directing personal energy (that is, Quintessence) through extreme experiences. Obviously, this sort of thing appeals to Cultists of Ecstasy, whose more formal practices – Tantra, vision questing, ordeals, and crazy wisdom (see below) – have been integrated into the chaos magick potpourri. Even that diverse culture, however, is too confining for many chaos practitioners, whose embrace of the Chaosphere – the whirling fractal of absolute existence – resists confinement in any form.

Playful yet serious, each chaos-magick practice draws from the individual practitioner’s experiences and desires. Depending upon the individual practitioner, it can integrate formalized ritual or involve spontaneous improvisation… or both, or neither. Flexibility and personal investment are innate elements of the practice as a whole, often connected to psychic thought forms called egregores: concepts given reality through extensive investment of psychic energy. (See the Instruments entry for Thought Forms, pp. 598-599.) Some folks use toys and Tarot cards, whereas others draw sigils, craft graphic novels, run raves, stage flash mobs, and concoct elaborate pranks on society at large. Eris, Bob, the Flying Spaghetti Monster… these deities supplant the classic divinities in a chaotic pantheon
whose figureheads are less concerned with worship than with inversion. Each mage, then, is a vortex of potential whose Will spins energy into being. And if this sounds too abstract to be useful, then you’re thinking about it too hard.

Associated Paradigms: A Mechanistic Cosmos; A World of Gods and Monsters; Creation’s Divine and Alive; Divine Order and Earthly Chaos; Everything is Chaos; Everything’s an Illusion, Prison, or Mistake; Might is Right; One-Way Trip to Oblivion

Associated Abilities: Art, Awareness, Carousing, Computer, Esoterica, Expression, Lucid Dreaming, Meditation, Pharmacopeia, Streetwise, Technology

Common Instruments: Whatever works, so long as none of it becomes too stable or confining.

Craftwork

There are reasons that Hephaestus is a metalsmith, Jesus is a carpenter, and Ogun is said to be the iron “who always eats first.” It’s no accident that Freemasons remain one of the most respected yet feared societies around – a society responsible, in ways, for the foundation of the United States. Many myths peg humanity’s origins to deities who fashioned us out of clay and
then breathed life into their creations. That’s because craftwork – the Art of making miracles out of raw materials – is among the first metaphysical practices.

Craftwork’s mystique has been largely diminished in the industrial world… so much so that it’s often farmed out to sweatshop labor or performed by machines (which hold their own ominous metaphysical connotations – witness the Terminator and Matrix sagas). Even so, there’s something magical about that Geek Squad specialist who can fix your errant computer, the tattooed malcontent repairing your car, or that friend who forges swords or crafts costumes for the SCA. The heart of craftwork comes from an apparently supernatural expertise with materials and tools – the ability to take bits of rock or skin or tree and then make lovely, useful objects from them.

Many mystics bridle at the thought of crediting craftsmanship as a magical practice. After all, the Technocracy began as a bunch of disgruntled Craftmasons who shaped the machines that ended the High Mythic Age, so why should such people be considered mages? And yet, that prejudice ignores the legendary ties between craftwork and the mystic Arts: the legacies of Solomon’s temple and the masons who built it, of the temples whose sacred geometries invited gods to dwell within them, the shapers of iron, gold, and stone who brought humanity out of caves and into cities of their own design. Even the Industrial Era has a sense of magick – the sleek glare of glass towers, the hellish factory glamour, the enchanting pixel dance that comes from computers, TVs, and the Internet… all of which demand craftwork in their creation, maintenance, and eventual dismantling into recycled components. That Art might be taken for granted these days, but it’s still magickal to those who understand it.

As a practice, craftsmanship combines the physical and mental skills involved in various crafts (carpentry, metalsmithing, glasswork, plastics, leatherworking, and so forth), then combines them with Pattern Arts in order to make those materials better than they’d been before. Matter presents the obvious Sphere for such disciplines, but Forces (to command fire, air, electricity, gravity, and the like), Prime (to energize and strengthen those creations), and often Life (to work living or organic tissue) and Entropy (to spot, add, or banish flaws) are more-or-less essential too. Old-school crafters employ Spirit to Awaken or placate the spirits within the materials – an important process in ancient craftwork, which depended upon the goodwill of gods and spirits in order to succeed. And although the rituals of creation demand time, materials, and expertise, the results – from glass vessels to armored tanks – can last for centuries… or even, as with the pyramids, millennia.

A typical crafter-mage seems rough around the edges compared to her more academic peers. Often physically strong and personally abrupt, she can be perceived as boorish and dull. That’s a common but mistaken view. In her chosen craft, this mage is every bit as sharp and knowledgeable as her book-bound contemporaries… most of whom would be lost without her expertise. And although common prejudices view such mages as members of the Technocracy (not without some truth), a crafter is just as likely to be a stonesmith Verbena, an ironworker Ngoma, an artisan Hermetic, or a VA computer tech. The Taftâni weavers earned that name from their physical skills as well as their mystical ones, and the Ngoma preserve the practical skills as well as the magical rites from their Egyptian/ Nubian origins. Even Akashayana employ craft Arts in their martial practices – see the film The Man With the Iron Fists for several examples. Though often forgotten in the catalogs of magic, craftwork is as old as humanity yet as fresh
as the laptop at your fingertips.

Associated Paradigms: A Mechanistic Cosmos; A World of Gods and Monsters; Bring Back the Golden Age; Creation’s Divine and Alive; Divine Order and Earthly Chaos; Everything’s an Illusion, Prison, or Mistake; It’s All Good – Have Faith; Might is Right; Tech Holds All Answers

Associated Abilities: Academics, Arts, Computers, Crafts, Energy Weapons, Esoterica (sacred geometry, quantum mathematics, elemental pacts, stone and metal lore), Hypertech, Research, Science, Technology

Common Instruments: Artwork, blood, books, computers and IT gear, devices and machines, elements, gadgets, household and crafting tools, laboratories and workshops, symbols, weapons (hammers, blades, sickles, guns, etc.)

Crazy Wisdom

A mage who gets a little bit out of her head when performing magick might use what’s often called the crazy wisdom practice: deliberately irrational activities that supposedly grant wisdom by shattering established concepts of what is and is not possible and real.

Another sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll approach to magick, crazy wisdom often involves psychoactive entheogens, trance inducing music, vision quests, risky ordeals, sexual excess,
gender inversions, social misrule, mass ecstatic rituals, and solitary isolation in which the practitioner turns her own personal reality inside out and then ponders what that means.

Although it’s technically undisciplined by the standards of more rigid forms of magick, such behavior provides a potent tool for enlightenment… assuming it doesn’t kill you first! Although it's obvious adherents come from the Cult of Ecstasy, crazy wisdom has a long and respected history as part of shamanism, voodoo, witchcraft, and even certain High Ritual practices. The Order of Hermes has its own variation – the Antinomian Praxis – in which a mage smashes taboos, violates her own standards, and breaks through constraints to find what lies beyond them. Drawing strength from its obvious contradictions, crazy wisdom is dangerous, disruptive, often scary, and potentially lethal. That’s kind of the point, though danger isn’t always involved. Mystic contraries and genderqueers, who deliberately invert social expectations about identity and gender, practice a form of crazy wisdom on a social scale, fucking with people’s preconceptions in order to show greater possibilities. This is the Trickster’s Path, breaking on through like Jim Morrison in a mosh pit with Patti Smith, Br’er Rabbit, the Cat in the Hat, and several buckets of paint.

Associated Paradigms: A World of Gods and Monsters; Creation’s Divine and Alive; Divine Order and Earthly Chaos; Everything is Chaos; Everything’s an Illusion, Prison, or Mistake; It’s All Good – Have Faith; One-Way Trip to Oblivion

Associated Abilities: Art, Athletics, Carousing, Esoterica, Lucid Dreaming, Meditation, Pharmacopeia, Survival

Common Instruments: Blood and body fluids, bones and remains, brain/ computer interface, dance, drugs, music, ordeals, sex and sensuality, social domination, thought forms, toys, tricks and illusions, voice

Cybernetics

When organic machines get wedded to mechanical machines, the synergy called cybernetics raises the human animal to a whole new level. On a broader plane, cybernetics reaches beyond mere flesh and machine to embrace the technologies of communication, language, electrical impulses, complex systems, and thought itself. Drawn from a Greek phrase meaning “to steer or govern,” cybernetic practices employ complex interactive systems – computers, electronics, prosthetics, mathematical formulae, linguistics, philosophy, even social dynamics – to extend the practitioner’s control… first over his own reality, and then over the reality of other systems and entities.

Essentially, the cybernetic practice views Creation as a vast machine whose systems can be understood and manipulated with sufficient dedication. For many adherents – like the members of Iteration X – that dedication includes merging their bodies with mechanical components. Other practitioners, though, use cybernetics as a theoretical construct – a model through which calculations, psychology, symbols, and external devices and machines (as opposed to implanted ones) can bend probability (through Entropy), change minds (the Mind Sphere), transform materials (Life and Matter), channel energies (Forces and Prime), and redefine temporal physics… or, in plain English, reroute Time.

Despite the dated overuse of “cyber” as an adjective, cybernetics remains a bleeding-edge discipline. Rooted in Chinese, Greek, and Arab technologies, this discipline blossomed during the Industrial Revolution and hasn’t stopped blooming yet. In the 21st century, whole nations are composed of cyborgs – smart-phone-using, video-watching, TV-nurtured, socially networked machine-people whose relationships and realities are defined by the 24/7 interface of our Information Era. And although the science-fiction landscape of depersonalized drones looks nothing like the world as we know it now, every element of life in our new millennium depends upon a complex interplay of cybernetic forces that very few people truly understand… and that even fewer – aside from certain technomancers – can control.

Associated Paradigms: A Mechanistic Cosmos; Everything is Data; Everything’s an Illusion, Prison, or Mistake; Might is Right; One-Way Trip to Oblivion; Tech Holds All Answers

Associated Abilities: Academics, Biotech, Computer, Crafts, Energy Weapons, Hypertech, Media, Politics, Science, Technology

Common Instruments: Books, brain/ computer interface, computers and IT gear, devices and machines, gadgets, inventions, laboratories, languages, mass media, nanotech, numbers and numerology, weapons, writing and inscriptions

Dominion

Social domination might just be the oldest form of magick. At its most basic levels, this practice directs animal instincts and human interactions toward the will (and Will) of the dominant party. Although other practices – notably Ars Cupiditae, shamanism, and High Ritual Magick – draw upon these techniques of domination, a raw assertion of command is the foundation of capital-A Authority… most notably among the New World Order.

Rarely considered “magick” in the usual sense, the dominion practice employs inner discipline, social control, a cultivated understanding of behavior and governance, significant words and symbols, the trappings of power and authority, and a host of verbal and physical tricks that keep the practitioner on top of a given situation. At its lowest form, it’s the art of the abuser, con-man, and pick-up artist. Its techniques come into play through office and sexual politics and often form part of any strong parent’s arsenal. On a metaphysical level, dominion taps into the primal need for leadership and parenting, then directs that need with a conscious eye toward overwhelming control. Through that control, in turn, you command Reality because you believe you do, and you make other folks believe you do as well.

A serious practitioner of dominion (that is, a mage) goes beyond crude intimidation, studying the deeper applications of social domination and self-perfection. Like a devotee of desire, he learns how to maximize his personal strengths and minimize his social flaws while taking full advantage of another party’s weaknesses and appealing to their need to be protected and led. Like Ars Cupiditae concentrates upon desire, the discipline of dominion concentrates upon command. The techniques can seem rather arcane, especially when they’re combined with religious and/ or philosophical beliefs; it’s through technology, however, that dominion finds its greatest influence. Queen Victoria was a master of this Art… and though she used technological instruments to get her point across, she exerted such a charismatic mystique that we still use her name to define the age she ruled.

Skilled dominion practitioners employ eye contact, body language, vocal tactics, peer pressure, social appeal, and resonant symbols (uniforms, weapons, parental behavior, religious iconography) in order to cow their herd. From there, these alphas enact their Will in both a mundane and Awakened sense. Lots of mages use social techniques, but a dominion master takes them to a metaphysical extent, wresting control of Reality itself through mass domination – an Art of Kings that has shaped history and continues to do so today.

Associated Paradigms: A Mechanistic Cosmos; A World of Gods and Monsters; Bring Back the Golden Age; Divine Order and Earthly Chaos; Everything is Chaos; Might is Right; One-Way Trip to Oblivion; Tech Holds All Answers

Associated Abilities: Academics (history, psychology), Art, Belief Systems, Empathy, Expression, Intimidation, Leadership, Media, Politics, Seduction, Technology

Common Instruments: Art, brain/ computer interface, eye contact, fashion, group rites, languages, mass media, music, social domination, symbols, thought forms, tricks and illusions, voice

Faith

Through faith, all things are possible. This saying underscores the essence of what might be the most common mystic practice in the world: devotion to a higher source. Drawn from the Latin word fides – “loyalty, trust, belief” – faith provides the foundation for many other practices, yet it stands as a practice in its own right. For although witches, shamans, Voudoun practitioners, and even scientists might be faithful to their higher power, faith itself provides comfort and power for those who believe.

Often regarded as the core of overtly religious sects like the Celestial Chorus and Ahl-i-Batin, faith can inspire and energize any mage. Even the demonic Nephandi maintain faith in their horrific Absolute or the Infernal entities they adore. Faith, you see, provides the believer with stability and purpose. And although magick is often seen as an egotistical practice, faith ideally removes the ego in favor of that greater Source. The faithful mage says “THY Will be done,” then acts as an instrument for that Divine Will.

For a mage of faith, the actions she takes and the Arts she pursues all represent the ideals of her higher power. In most cases, those ideals come through a religion – a binding that unites Divinity with the people of the faith. Not all faithful people, though, are religious; strictly speaking, religion is a social institution, whereas faith is a personal connection. Even science – often seen these days as an enemy of faith – can be a devotional practice. The foundations of modern science, historically, were laid by men and women of faith who used their discoveries to delve into, and then to reveal, the glories of their God.

A faithful magus follows the tenets of her creed, maintains contact with her source through prayer, and acts – as often as possible – as an emissary of her creed’s ideals. “Keeping the faith” means pursuing virtues that supposedly please the higher power, and although the particulars depend upon the specific creed (a Franciscan Catholic, a Shi’a devotee, and an
Odinist spá-kona all have very different ideas about virtue!), the mage’s adherence to that creed is essential. “Faith” does, after all, mean loyalty.

Associated Paradigms: A World of Gods and Monsters; Bring Back the Golden Age; Creation’s Divine and Alive; Divine Order and Earthly Chaos; Everything’s an Illusion, Prison, or Mistake; It’s All Good – Have Faith!

Associated Abilities: Academics (tenets of faith), Awareness, Belief Systems, Cosmology, Empathy, Enigmas, Esoterica, Expression, Medicine

Common Instruments: Blessings and curses, books (scriptures), cups and vessels, energy, food and drink, group rites, music, offerings and sacrifice, ordeals and exertions, prayers and invocations, sacred iconography, symbols, thought forms, voice, writings and inscriptions

Gutter Magick

The most practical magick practice is the one that uses whatever you’ve got to work with. Sure, wizards and cyborgs and Enlightened tycoons can afford all the best ritual gear around. What happens, though, when you’re more or less broke? Homeless, maybe? Living in a squat or stuck on the street or getting by as part of the working poor? Well then, you use gutter magick, the craft of making do.

Composed of odds and ends with symbolic connotations, gutter magick features coins, cards, toys, scraps, bottles, cans, nails, junk, graffiti, and things crafted out of the cast-offs of consumer society. Dead TVs, old magazines, cardboard boxes, gnawed chicken bones, sacrificed rats and alley cats, old clothes repurposed and restyled with feral urban flair… such instruments direct the Will of the truly destitute. On the next rung up the socioeconomic ladder, lower-class mages use cheap tricks, cheesy clothes, New Age books, action figures, and other tokens of postmodern mall-magic. When invested with Awakened intentions, these otherwise useless trinkets provide focus for orphans, Hollowers, and other mystics with more ambition than resources.

As with many other mystic practices, art forms a potent force in gutter magick. Hip-hop culture, Gothic rock, the various flavors of heavy metal, the blues, neotribal, technoindustrial, and even country/ western music styles provide soundtracks for the mystic side of the urban scene. Inside the clubs, dancing and drugs create hypnotic atmospheres in which it often seems like anything could happen. A paranormal survival tactic, gutter magick skulks in the shadows of the alley between respectability and forbidden Arts. Gutter magick proves that you don’t need high wizardry and ancient tomes in order to get attention (if not necessarily respect) from the spirit world. In its darker elements, such magick employs guns, blades, cheap sex and cheaper booze, crimes and punishments, madness and desperation. Though not exactly new in form, it’s a common practice in the new millennium.

Associated Paradigms: A World of Gods and Monsters; Creation’s Divine and Alive; Divine Order and Earthly Chaos; Everything is Chaos; Everything’s an Illusion, Prison, or Mistake; It’s All Good – Have Faith; Might is Right; One-Way Trip to Oblivion

Associated Abilities: Animal Kinship (rats, cats, crows, etc.), Area Knowledge, Art, Crafts, Expression, Firearms, Intimidation, Pharmacopeia, Streetwise, Survival (urban), Technology

Common Instruments: Artwork, blood and fluids, bones and remains, cards and dice, dance, drugs and poisons, eye contact, fashion, herbs and plants, household tools, music, offerings and sacrifice, sex, social domination, symbols, thought forms, toys, tricks and illusions, weapons, vehicles

High Ritual Magick

To achieve excellence, one must have perfection. To work one’s Will, one must have the discipline to master that Will and then direct it with utmost confidence. In an outsider’s perspective, the rigorous devotees of High Ritual Magick (all capitalized) are a pretentious pack of OCD pricks. For those devotees, however, the truth is plain: you must be strong, courageous, disciplined, and wise to unlock Creation’s power. High Ritual Magick demands those qualities.

In High Ritual Magick, everything has significance: the alignment of planets, the tone of words, the calculations necessary to discover the correct number of times to repeat certain phrases, the formalities of address, and the measure or angle of materials aligned just so for maximum effect. That precision has a dual purpose: in one regard, the relationship of those many elements is crucial for success. In another regard, the precision tests and challenges the magician, forcing him to overcome his flaws and become the superior person whom such intricacies demand. This practice is both an Art and a Science whose expertise has withstood the tests of time. You cannot be weak or sloppy or stupid, goes the reasoning, if you wish to work your Will upon Creation. Only the smartest, the bravest, the most refined people are capable of True High Magick, and so the rituals and their elaborate preparations discourage everyone who lacks the excellence to succeed.

(This mindset also explains the condescending attitude for which High Ritual Magicians are so infamous. Although they don’t all feel this way, many such wizards believe that other practitioners have not earned the right to work True Magick. Lesser mages, to them, are like drunk kids speeding down dark mountain roads with Daddy’s car, an expired learner’s permit, and the wizard strapped in the back seat, unable to avoid the coming crash.)

Though often associated with medieval Europe, High Ritual Magick has many forms, all of them refined by civilized urban cultures. China’s ritual magick boasts Confucian complexity, and rites from Egypt and Mesopotamia provide the centerpiece for the Western occult traditions of Greece, Rome, Persia, Israel, and Arabia. Nubia’s ritual Arts remain a closely guarded secret, held by the Ngoma as a timeless inheritance. Tibet, India, and Japan all have sublime ritual practices, whereas North American occultism blends Old World sophistication with New World eclecticism. The rites of South and Central America have largely been lost, thanks to Spanish conquerors… and yet, in secret corners of Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, and Peru, sects
preserve those Aztec, Maya, and Incan practices.

In all forms, High Ritual Magick demands preparation, discipline, and the finest materials a magician can acquire. Such practices connect the mage with greater powers – gods, angels, demons, elementals, and the faceless forces of the universe – and those powers demand respect. The wizard, too, must earn respect; such powers do not answer to fools. In practical terms, High Ritual Magick is slow and precise. The wizard might call upon the results of his prior work in the heat of the moment, but those results – enchanted wands, crafted staves, precious amulets, mystic scrolls, imprisoned demons, angelic favors, priceless statues, carved jade pendants, Otherworldly gates, fine robes, imposing tomes – must be prepared well in advance.

Despite all those trappings, an accomplished Ritual Magus understands that it is his Will that commands those elements. He does not hope or beg – he commands. Spirits can be bargained with, dragons might be conjured, God Himself might slip the mage a favor, but in the end all of those parties respect the High Magus because, ultimately, he has shaped himself into the true instrument of Will.

Associated Paradigms: A Mechanistic Cosmos; A World of Gods and Monsters; Bring Back the Golden Age; Divine Order and Earthly Chaos; Everything is Data; Everything’s an Illusion, Prison, or Mistake; Might is Right; Tech Holds All Answers

Associated Abilities: Academics, Belief Systems, Cosmology, Crafts, Expression, Esoterica, Investigation, Leadership, Meditation, Occult, Research

Common Instruments: Books, celestial alignments, circles and designs, computers (for modern wizards), cups and vessels, elements, eye contact, fashion, gems, gestures, languages (Latin, Sanskrit, Mandarin, Greek, etc.), meditation, numbers and numerology, offerings and sacrifices, prayer and invocations, social domination, symbols, thought forms, True Names, wands and staves, weapons (swords and knives), writing and inscriptions

Hypertech

A catch-all term for the hundreds of methods used to unite advanced technology with visionary ideas, hypertech represents a dynamic approach to science. Despite the rumblings of disgruntled old-school mystics, this approach has transformed the world we live in. Computers, obviously, reflect the most obvious aspects of this Art and Science, but the brute force of metallurgy, the explosive powers of internal combustion, the harnessed lightning of electronic technologies, and the heady physics behind it all drive hypertech and humanity to new and exciting frontiers. “Oh, THAT’S not magick,” sniff the critics… but actually, it is. It’s not Hermetic wizardry, after all, that gave us cars, phones, computers, and electronic power… all those things, and more, began as hypertech.

The hypertech practice reflects the genius of the human condition – that restless striving to perfect and understand. In earlier forms (like those employed by the Order of Reason), such “godless” Arts were reflections of deep reverence. Men and women of God sought the keys to His Creations, seeing divine glory in every twig or flower. The technologies of China, Greece, and Persia reflected mystic aspirations too. It’s no accident that so many scientific names come from old gods and Classical mythologies, and although modern science emphasizes proof over faith, there’s still plenty of room for wonder in this world.

At the core of this practice – in its many applications, from cloning and biotech to astrophysics, mechanical engineering, chemistry, theoretical physics, and far more – hypertech is about potential… finding it, recognizing it, expanding upon it to create something even better than what we had before. A scientist understands that she doesn’t have all the answers and so constantly seeks them out. She’ll spend endless hours in the lab or reading journals – not so that she can turn humanity into drones, but so that she can bring something better into being. Despite its apparent sterility, hypertech retains a visionary optimism.

Although the scientist might believe in some Creator, she’s not shackled to blind faith. Instead, she employs rigorous tests, complicated data, consistent verification, and an Art founded not on chance or outside whims but upon tested principles and concrete achievements. She’s the Progenitor, the Adept, the technomancer whose tools reflect the precision of her Arts. Unlike her deluded counterparts who practice their weird science, this visionary employs solid protocols for dependable results. In a way, she’s the High Ritual Magus of our age, making wonders with vigorous Science.

(For more about the range of hypertech potential, see the Science Trait and the SCIENCE!!! sidebar in Chapter Six.)

Associated Paradigms: A Mechanistic Cosmos; A World of Gods and Monsters; Divine Order and Earthly Chaos; Everything is Chaos; Everything is Data; Might is Right; Tech Holds All Answers

Associated Abilities: Academics, Computer, Crafts, Hypertech, Investigation, Medicine, Research, Science, Technology

Common Instruments: Books, brain/ computer interface, computers, devices and machines, household tools, inventions, laboratories, nanotech, writing, and the many tools of technological achievement

Maleficia

Certain magicks are deliberately cruel. Cast with malicious intentions, they’re intended to cause harm and distress. Medieval law called such Arts maleficia – “evil-doing” – and that’s appropriate. For though most conceptions of witchcraft are mistaken, there are people who use bad magick for bad ends.

When folks think of black magic, they’re referring to this deliberately obscene practice… although any form of magick can be hurtful, maleficia is intentionally crafted toward malignant aims. Curses; possessions; damnations; invocations to malevolent powers; infernal pacts, inhuman abilities; violations of body, mind, and spirit… such is the realm of maleficia. Other forms of corruption, too, can be invoked through this form of magick: wealth spells, sexual enchantments, techniques of social dominance, and all manner of metaphysical abuses can be conjured with help from sinister powers. These practices have no set form but range from the petty desecrations of teenage devilheads to the arcane ceremonies of ancient Infernal cults.

Although the Nephandi seem to be the obvious offenders in this regard, anyone with a sufficiently bent motivation can employ a form of maleficia. The evangelist who calls upon his congregation to pray for the death of some hated figure is invoking maleficia; the forbidden Hermetic rites for summoning demons employ it too. The Black Masses present pretty obvious examples; what’s less obvious, though, is that the Catholic Church itself has a history of Requiem Masses, performed to kill living people, and Amatory Masses, intended to compel affections upon unwilling people. The Grimoire of Honorius – attributed to a Pope – features Masses to be performed for evil purposes. Just as any mystic practice can inflict harm, so too can any mystic practice become twisted into maleficia. 580 Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition

As a practice, maleficia features deliberate cruelty and perversion. Sex, for example, is a sacrament in certain traditions, but malefic practices use sex in its most tortured and nonconsensual forms. Sacrifices become as brutal and horrific as possible; prayers are spoken backwards; sacred symbols and objects are deliberately defiled through acts of defiant malevolence. Technology might play a part as well, as an instrument of torture, a method of access, or a channel for disruptive acts and energies. Music concerts, computer hacking, media broadcasts, machines… all could be employed as instruments of black magic.

For obvious reasons, maleficia tends to leave nasty Resonance behind. That combination of sick deeds and ugly intentions poisons everything it touches. Rooms, tools, and people feel tainted after a malefic rite; even Sleepers can sense that something’s not right about such things. The mage can clean up every physical trace of the crime, but a metaphysical essence lingers… often attracting corrupt entities that pick up where the malefactor left off…

Associated Paradigms: A World of Gods and Monsters; Bring Back the Golden Age; Divine Order and Earthly Chaos; Everything is Chaos; Everything’s an Illusion, Prison, or Mistake; Might is Right; One-Way Trip to Oblivion

Associated Abilities: Cosmology, Enigmas, Esoterica, Expression, Intimidation, Melee, Occult, Pharmacopeia, Seduction, Torture

Common Instruments: Artwork, blood and fluids, bodywork, bones and remains (often fresh), circles and designs, cups and vessels, curses, elements, eye contact, drugs and poisons, gems and valuables, group rites, music, offerings and sacrifice, prayers and invocations, sex (typically nonconsensual), voice, weapons

Martial Arts

The human machine is a miracle whose vast potential is hampered by undisciplined habits and acquired behaviors. Martial arts expand upon that potential, unlocking the deeper physical and metaphysical abilities of body, mind, and spirit. Although such arts, at the basic levels, simply help a person strike or move more effectively in a fight, the higher reaches of martial-arts discipline go far beyond physical combat, into the realm of mental focus and spiritual refinement.

Although the obvious example of self-perfection through martial arts is kung fu (roughly translated as “hard work” or “auspicious effort art”), most martial arts have esoteric elements. Renaissance fencing features philosophy, psychology, and mathematics as well as physical skill; Greek pankration emphasizes being “all powerful” in all respects; capoeira relies upon the essence of freedom as well as on the acrobatic maneuvers for which it’s famous. Advanced martial arts, therefore, nurture the spirit, hone the mind, and turn the body into a focus for the powers of each.

At their most metaphysical levels, advanced martial arts attune a practitioner into the Quintessential life force, channel it through refined motions, and grant incredible – some would say inhuman – powers through the focus of an art. The Akashic practice Do is probably the most obvious example of this practice on a metaphysical level, but any martial art – even dirty fighting – can become a magickal practice with the proper mindset and devotion. (See Chapter Nine’s sections dealing with Martial Arts and Do.) Essentially, the artist manifests her will through clarity, energy, and activity. In game terms, she uses that art as a mystic focus.

Beyond their mystic elements, martial arts are also technologies: refinements of knowledge that can be studied, repeated, and employed with practical effect. Thus, Technocrats and other technomancers can employ martial arts as a focus too. Regarding all that mystic nonsense as metaphors and mental techniques, a technomancer can divorce her martial arts training from mysticism and still retain its metaphysical potency. With such powers, she can direct Forces, alter Life, rearrange Matter, perceive Entropy, channel Prime, enhance Time, and – perhaps most of all – refine her Mind to sublime capacity. Although she couldn’t fly through the air or skip along tree branches by manipulating chi (“That’s just mythology!”), she can still rework conventional physics and biology through her understanding of the fighting arts.

Associated Paradigms: A World of Gods and Monsters; Bring Back the Golden Age; Creation’s Divine and Alive; Divine Order and Earthly Chaos; Everything is Chaos; Everything’s an Illusion, Prison, or Mistake; Might is Right; Tech Holds All Answers

Associated Abilities: Acrobatics, Alertness, Athletics, Awareness, Esoterica, Etiquette, Intimidation, Martial Arts, Medicine, Meditation, Melee

Common Instruments: Bodywork, dance and movement, energy, herbs, meditation, ordeals and exertions, symbols, wands and staves, weapons, voice

Medicine Work

Next to parenting, healing might be the highest human vocation. Many mages – mystics and technomancers alike – view their Enlightenment as an obligation to heal. To heal the planet, heal the people, heal the spirits, heal the Earth… perhaps all of them at once, if that’s at all possible. And so one of the oldest and most sacred Paths an Awakened person can pursue involves the practice of medicine work.

Simply put, a medicine-person directs his skills and energies toward a healing practice. He might be the Progenitor physician, the Verbena root-witch, the Bata’a houngan, the Templar medic… it’s not the group that matters, or even the medical practice, when it comes to the abilities of a skillful mage. A shaman with Life 3 can fix a broken leg as well as a Progenitor with the same level of Spheres. For the purposes of magickal practice, the term medicine work refers to the intent to heal and the choice of techniques that enhance healing, not to the specific method a mage uses when healing injuries or disease.

Human medicine is an ever-evolving technology. Things we take for granted as medical facts were unknown half a century ago, whereas certain proven truths of conventional Western medicine ignore equally proven truths of alternative, nonindustrialized medicines. A well-rounded healer in today’s world would probably understand Western technological medicine; Tibetan So Rig techniques; faith-based spiritual methods; Indian Ayurveda (“the science of life”); Japanese reiki and Swedish massage; the vast synergy of modern Chinese medicine; the Persian, Greek, and Arab roots of conventional medicine; current holistic theories; experimental machine technology, and other techniques besides. Few healers, of course, have the time or access to study such a broad range of disciplines – many of which clash with one another on a philosophical level. Instead, the healer picks a specific approach and then directs his attention… and intentions… toward the path that works best for him.

Thanks to magick (especially the Life, Entropy, Mind, and Prime Spheres), any form of medicine can work for an Awakened healer who employs that medicine as a focus, so long as that mage BELIEVES in that form of medicine. An Iroquois member of the Society of Faces would feel as lost in a Progenitor biotech facility as a Progenitor would feel when hefting a medicine mask. Both techniques work in the hands of a mage who understands and trusts those techniques, but few healers trust both of those techniques with equal faith. And so, when choosing medicine work as a magickal practice, the player needs to define what sort of medicine his character employs. (We encourage players to research actual medical practices from different cultures. The facts are as fascinating as any constructed fantasy!)

It’s worth mentioning that traditional Native American and African mages often abhor the idea of using magic. In many cultures, “magick” is either trickery or the influence of malignant spirits. Medicine is a more accurate and respectful term for what such people do than magick is… hence, the phrase medicine man. Many “shamans” actually consider themselves to be medicine people, using their Arts to nurture and restore the world, not to make it dance to their whims.

For the practical effects of Sphere-based healing, see Health and Injury in Chapter Nine, (pp. 406-409).

Associated Paradigms: A Mechanistic Cosmos; A World of Gods and Monsters; Bring Back the Golden Age; Creation’s Divine and Alive; Divine Order and Earthly Chaos; Everything is Chaos; Everything’s an Illusion, Prison, or Mistake; It’s All Good – Have Faith; Tech Holds All Answers

Associated Abilities: Academics (healing practices), Art (masks, dance, music, etc.), Awareness, Empathy, Esoterica (herbalism, energy work, bodywork, healing and meditative practices), Medicine, Meditation, Pharmacopeia, Science, Technology

Common Instruments: Artwork, blessings and curses, blood and fluids, bodywork, bones and remains, books, brews and concoctions, computers, cups and vessels, dance and movement, devices and machines, drugs and poisons, group rites (operations), herbs, laboratories, languages (Latin, jargon, and that weird script doctors use when writing prescriptions), meditation, music, offerings and sacrifices, prayers and invocations, social domination, voice, weapons (surgical instruments)

Reality Hacking

Imaginative people can do imaginative things with supposedly static structures. Hacking them apart to reconfigure those structures, these people use various tools – technology, philosophy, art, politics, and, occasionally, magick – to remake what was into what can be. With the correct gear and the right ideas, you don’t even need to be a mage in order to hack the dominant paradigm… just ask Osama bin Laden’s ghost. When you are a mage, however, you can employ those tools to remake Reality on a grand scale.

Typically associated with the Virtual Adepts (and, to a lesser extent, the Cult of Ecstasy), the reality-hacking practice can be used by any mage with the proper mindset and expertise. The core idea – reality is flexible – seems familiar enough these days. As a practice, reality hacking uses an array of technologies to rework the systems that govern our world: its commerce, politics, media, memes, connections, faiths, physics, and so forth. By concentrating on specific systems and ideas, the mage can start remixing expectations into some new and interesting shape.

Sound like anarchy? Sometimes it is. Many of this practice’s oldest adherents and principles, however, come from the Order of Reason and Technocratic Order. After all, it was early Technocrats who hacked the human concepts of the universe, God, governments, and other technologies. Technocrats shaped fencing (a sword-fighting hack), the physical sciences (an elemental hack), exploration (a geographic hack), mass media (a consciousness hack), and the space program (a planetary hack). It’s no accident that the Virtual Adepts and Society of Ether began as Technocratic Conventions. And despite their unruly applications of technology, they’re just keeping that old hacker ethic alive.

(Ironically, one could argue that the Order of Reason hacked the Traditions by replacing the High Mythic Ages with our industrial era. That idea would make a Black Suit chuckle, but he wouldn’t disagree.)

The postmodern reality hacker tends to employ information technologies – not simply computers, but also memes, media, and other forms of mass intellectual access. As demonstrated by 9/11, she doesn’t have to be a computer nerd – simply a visionary who notes the weakness of a structure and the method that exploits it. The transhumanist idea of reality as
information – epitomized by the Data and Primal Utility Spheres (see pp. 524-527) – provides leverage for a reality hacker mage. Channeling her ideas and energies through computer code, social media, videos, slogans, pranks, guerilla theatre, movies and videos, graphic novels, music, fashions, Internet memes, and the clever manipulation of vibrant symbols (masks,
puppets, iconography, remixed media, and so forth), that mage can re-contextualize reality as the Masses understand it, then take advantage of those new perceptions. It’s not as quick or gratifying as a thunderbolt, but it tends to be a hell of a lot more powerful… and more coincidental, too.

Like cybernetics, dominion, and the Art of Desire (all related practices), reality hacking aims more toward influence than raw force. The reality hacker strives to modify the system to her advantage, rather than blast it apart. Even so, certain tools – like terrorism and atrocity – can be incredibly violent in both implementation and results. Even then, however, that violence serves as an extension and instrument of the hack; the power of terrorism, for example, comes more from the atmosphere of dread and fury than from the casualties themselves. Spherewise, reality hacking favors Correspondence (for drawing and exploiting connections), Entropy (for spotting flaws and arranging probabilities), Forces (directing or destroying electrical systems), Mind (influencing ideas and the folks who have them), Life (rewiring the human animal), Prime (drawing, raising, and directing energy), and Time (re-contextualizing the perceptions of time), and uses instruments that express and subvert those principles in the modern world.

Associated Paradigms: A Mechanistic Cosmos; A World of Gods and Monsters; Bring Back the Golden Age; Creation’s Divine and Alive; Divine Order and Earthly Chaos; Everything is Chaos; Everything is Data; Everything’s an Illusion, Prison, or Mistake; Might is Right; One-Way Trip to Oblivion; Tech Holds All Answers

Associated Abilities: Academics (history, philosophy, social sciences), Art, Belief Systems, Computer, Expression, Government, Media, Politics, Science (psychology as well as physical sciences), Subterfuge, Technology

Common Instruments: Artwork, books, brain/ computer interface, computers and IT gear, devices and machines, drugs, eye contact, group rites, language, mass media, money and wealth, music, nanotech, sex, social domination, symbols, thought forms, tricks and illusions, voice, weapons

Shamanism

We occupy a living world whose essence is greater and more intelligent than we recognize. Whereas common people stumble through material illusions, a shaman transcends both humanity and illusion. Moving through a world of layers and traps, he exists outside the everyday realm. And yet, through his guidance, the Sleeping People slumber more comfortably and the Awakened Ones remain more aware.

Perhaps the most abused word in magic, shamanism technically refers to a specific type of Siberian spirit-worker. Over time, however, it’s come to define anyone who employs old-culture traditions to walk between the sublime world and it's often ridiculous material counterpart. Dying – sometimes literally – to the life he led before he felt Called by the spirits, the shaman is reborn in a half-outcast state… mad by the standards of his previous society, yet aware of (if not always clear about) the true nature of Reality.

Because the shaman traditionally lives between the worlds of flesh and spirit, human and animal, matter and essence, sanity and dementia, conventionality and chaos, he embodies a living crossroads in which those qualities intersect. In many cases, he suffers from physical and/ or psychological ailments, a wounded healer whose infirmities render him more sympathetic to other wounded souls. A shaman often depends upon other people and spiritual allies whose aid and guidance help him survive his strange existence. In return, he grants his allies healing, insight, action in realms they might not be able to reach unaided, and a powerful intercessor with parties they may not address alone. A soul guide, a prophet, a medicine bringer and spirit warrior, our shaman walks a sacred… if often unpleasant… Path.

Thanks to noble-savage nonsense, shamanism has a trippy popular image that’s deeply at odds with the earthy and often bizarre nature of the shaman himself. In reality, shamanism is a gritty, anti-orthodox vocation, filled with deliberate contradictions and slippery concepts of sanity. A shaman often inverts ideas of propriety; cross-dressing, speaking in riddles, or acting in deliberately crude or obnoxious ways in order to shake up or demolish preconceptions. These tools – as well as the usual masks, dances, and trappings one expects from a shaman – form the instruments of shamanic Arts. Folks who expect the dewy-eyed dreamer of New Age romanticism are in for a shock when they meet true shamans… and that shock, too, is part of the shaman’s toolkit.

Although shamanism favors a naturalistic viewpoint, technoshamanic practices exist in the current era. Connecting with urbanized spirits (city-souls, electronic entities, machinespirits, and so on) – frequently through computers, fast-food offerings, consumerism cast-offs, and other postmodernist talismans – the technoshaman blends ancient awareness with current technology, acting as a vessel to distill the essence of eternity into the power of today.

Associated Paradigms: A World of Gods and Monsters; Bring Back the Golden Age; Creation’s Divine and Alive; Divine Order and Earthly Chaos; Everything’s an Illusion, Prison, or Mistake; It’s All Good – Have Faith!

Associated Abilities: Alertness, Art, Cosmology, Enigmas, Esoterica, Expression, Lucid Dreaming, Medicine, Pharmacopeia, Streetwise, Survival

Common Instruments: Blood and fluids, bones and remains, computers, dance, drugs and concoctions, elements, herbs, household tools, offerings and sacrifice, ordeals, sex and sensuality, thought forms, toys, True Names, voice, weapons

Voudoun

If “shamanism” is the most abused word in magick, then Voudoun might be the most abused practice. Drawn from a fusion of Central African faiths, Native American practices, European iconography, and the humid atrocity of American slave culture, the collection of “voodoo” creeds – Macumba, Obeah, Candomblé, Voudoun, Santería, Delta and Lower Appalachian Hoodoo, the various flavors of Urban-American Voodoo, and their many offshoots – continues to command uncanny fascination in the modern world. Distorted by a combination of secrecy, poverty, racism, psychological warfare, cultural marginalization, and certain unnerving elements that actually do exist within those practices, the popular image of Voudoun magick reflects its distinctly American character.

Essentially, a Voudoun mage’s practice revolves around finding and revering allies in a treacherous world. Arriving in chains for lives of forced labor after a hellish passage in seaborne underworlds, the Africans who were transported to the Americas had little to draw upon except faith, courage, and rage. Ripped away from their families, many of them lacked even a common language. From the bits and pieces of their new lives, these people crafted creeds that reflected the hopes and horrors of that world, peopled with new families to replace the ones they had lost. In that world, the worst thing that could happen was slavery beyond death… so the curses and creatures of Voudoun lore focused on imprisonment, servitude, crossings, hunger, defiance, and escape. Old gods, new spirits, and tales of elevated mortals attained the identities of Loa: the god-spirit kin of Voudoun practitioners. And so, even though slavery has been “officially” banished from the Americas (many folks, of course, know better…), that synergistic survivor creed remains a vital methodology throughout these lands.

Characterized by prayers, offerings, shrines, designs, blessings and maledictions, physical prowess, psychic awareness, bright colors, and sudden violence, Voudoun practices reflect their eclectic origins. Whereas elaborate Arts like High Ritual Magick favor wealth and perfection, Voudoun remains eminently practical. Sure, certain devotees are rich, especially these days; the practice itself, however, employs whatever resources a person has to work with. Faith and trust outweigh arcane rituals and ostentatious displays. Loyalty means more than titles or gold. Rewards and punishments come swiftly… often with quirks of sardonic humor attached… and newcomers get tested with fierce irony and ominous threats. In many regards, the intentionally eerie nature of Voudoun presents a giant KEEP OUT sign to outsiders… most especially white ones. For obvious reasons, a practitioner wears many masks and keeps many secrets.

Beyond those masks and secrets, our Voudoun practitioner nurtures passionate connection. Priestesses become “Mama,” and priests become “Papa.” Far from being distant, sublime godheads, his Loa patrons are powerful yet accessible cousins whose touch is a prayer or offering away. Anyone who needs a favor can come asking for it… and although the price of that favor might not be as pleasant or easy as he might have wished, it does tend to be granted in one form or another…

Despite its shared roots with faith, shamanism and witchcraft, Voudoun has a distinct culture whose methods and doctrines don’t always play well with others. The Loa and related spirits certainly manifest through their human devotees, but those relationships are more familial than the ones often shared (and endured) between shamans and their spirit allies. That element of family is an essential, and typically neglected, element of the Voudoun mage’s Arts. Given that the practice originated with family-oriented people who were severed from everything and everyone they’d known before, it’s not surprising that blood – figurative and otherwise – holds such a vital place in Voudoun lore and practice.

Associated Paradigms: A World of Gods and Monsters; Bring Back the Golden Age; Creation’s Divine and Alive; Divine Order and Earthly Chaos; Everything’s an Illusion, Prison, or Mistake; Might is Right; One-Way Trip to Oblivion

Associated Abilities: Art, Athletics, Awareness, Belief Systems, Carousing, Crafts, Empathy, Intimidation, Lucid Dreaming, Medicine, Meditation, Streetwise

Common Instruments: Artwork (vévés), blessings and curses, blood, bones and remains, cards and dice, cups and vessels, crossroads, dance and movement, drugs and poisons, elements, eye contact, fashion, group rites, herbs, household tools, knots and rope, languages, meditation, music, offerings and sacrifices, prayers and invocations, sex and sensuality, symbols, True Names, voice, wands and staves, weapons, writing

Weird Science

Folks who think that “science is boring” know nothing about science. Underneath the lab coats and brain-cracking equations run currents of curious wonder. And though cold-eyed Technocrats favor a controlled approach to the Scientific Arts, certain visionaries refuse to be so confined. Would you call them mad? Perhaps… but their dedication keeps the hope of Science alive!

Unlike most other technomagickal Arts, weird science isn’t based upon repeatable results. Oh, sure, the mad scientist wants to be able to craft armies of robotic servitors or fleets of dirigible warships… and he may well be able to create them too, once a favorable prototype has emerged from his laboratory. However, that Inspired Scientist (don’t call him a “mage” – that’s ridiculous!) is more engaged by the spirit of inquiry and potential than by the devotion to repeatable craftsmanship. As a consequence, his creations often feature glaring flaws and Paradoxes that will be smoothed out, of course, in later iterations… if he ever gets around to making them, that is.

Weird science, by definition, defies the bounds of possibility. Its crazy ideas fuel crazy creativity. Theories that no rational scientist would entertain guide the creation of devices and creatures whose very existence violates the Consensus: jetpacks, death rays, quirky robots, outlandish vehicles, Atlantean sonic technologies, spacecraft, mechanical appendages, psychic enhancement gear, lab-grown allies, devastating war machines, and whatever other strange gadgetry a mad scientist can imagine. And yet, this isn’t some sort of “magic” – heavens, no! Every piece of odd technology depends upon theories so unconventional yet sublime that they MUST be true, if only for the sake of an imaginative universe.

As with other tech-based practices, weird science requires serious work in the lab before working results appear. An Enlightened Scientist might spend months or years honing his creation before revealing it to the world. Yet once that innovation has been achieved, he can often replicate it quickly, often with the help of skilled (if dispirited) minions. Weird science also allows the Scientist to alter tech with sudden bursts of inspiration, MacGyvering rickety inventions that last just long enough to accomplish a single task. And so – because he’s no sort of wizard, you imbecile! – the mad scientist needs tools and materials close at hand in order to work his wonders. True Science is indeed miraculous, but it’s not some kind of magic. No, not at all…

Associated Paradigms: A Mechanistic Cosmos; Bring Back the Golden Age; Divine Order and Earthly Chaos; Everything is Data; It’s All Good – Have Faith; Might is Right; Tech Holds All Answers

Associated Abilities: Academics, Crafts, Esoterica (various so-called disproven scientific theories), Energy Weapons, Hypertech, Research, Science, Technology

Common Instruments: Armor, books, bones and remains, brain/ computer interface, celestial alignments, computers and IT gear, devices and machines, elements, gadgets, inventions, laboratories, languages, numbers and numerology, toys, vehicles, weapons, writing and inscriptions

Witchcraft

Witch. One of the more venomous words in the English language, the label “witch” can send a person to a hideous death. Even now, when the Burning Times seem more like myth than history, the popular imagination equates witches with warty evil hags cackling over poisonous, foul-smelling brews. Why would anyone, then, want to use something as quaintly horrific as “witchcraft”? Because those who understand it know that it works… not only as a magickal practice but also as a form of reverence for the natural world.

The equally loaded term “witchcraft” covers a lot of ground, from the diabolical maledictions of medieval legend to the reclamationist neopaganism of the modern era. As a Mage practice, however, the term refers to a nature-oriented, practical craft, as opposed to the scholastic abstractions of High Ritual Magick, alchemy, and so on. Traditional witchcraft is a folk-oriented low magick practiced by common people who need discernible results: healing, fertility, divination, luck or misfortune, prosperity, clarity, physical prowess, and intercessions between the people and their gods that are far more intimate than what can be found at the local temple. The disputed origin of the term witch is “wisdom,” although other possibilities include words meaning “twist,” “knot,” or “knowledge.” And so, witches throughout time have been said to know things… often things that proper people could not or should not know.

Today’s witchcraft features a postmodernist brew of traditional European wise-craft; 19th-century literary occultism and 20-century mystic fusions; pre-Christian elements from Greek, Norse, Celtic, Hindu, Slavic, Roman, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian cultures (with prodigious cultural appropriations from Native American, African, Romani, and occasionally Asian cultures); repurposed Christian and Jewish practices (especially Catholicism and the Kabbalah); postmodernist philosophy, and New Age takes on quantum physics; mass-media iconography; and tons of pure invention wrapped up in a bright bow of fantasy media, political activism, and technological polyculture. This high-eclectic synergy often incorporates computers, the Internet, pop psychology, chaos theory, and other elements that would be entirely unrecognizable to old-school wise-crafters. Nevertheless, it speaks to people on an elemental level… and yes, as a mystic practice, it’s as effective as any other tool on a mage’s workbench.

In all its forms, witchcraft has an outlaw mystique – due both to constant persecution and a definitely sinister stance. Today’s witch might practice holistic medicine and nonviolent politics, but she still exists outside of mainstream respectability… often with a Fuck You attitude. Whatever style of witchcraft she prefers, that Art/ Craft incorporates potent symbols – Old Gods, nature spirits, blades, circles, wands, robes, very dark or bright colors, occult iconography, seasons, shadows, chalices, ashes, the four Classical elements, and so on – that reach into the subconscious territory beyond a mainstream comfort zone.

Our 21st-century witch might favor dark clothes, body art, and a swaggering subculture image, or cloak her Arts in a middle-class façade that conceals her elemental devotions. She could follow a strict Witch’s Rule or proclaim herself a mystic anarchist. In more or less all cases, she reveres Nature Chapter Ten: The Book of Magic 585 and diversity, channeling her Will through harmony with light and shadow, death and life. Though epitomized by the Verbena Tradition, she isn’t necessarily Pagan and doesn’t always wear her Art on her sleeve, so to speak. Regardless of her tools or devotions, though, her witchcraft remains eminently practical, focused on everyday miracles and visionary craft.

Associated Paradigms: A World of Gods and Monsters; Bring Back the Golden Age; Creation’s Divine and Alive; Divine Order and Earthly Chaos; Everything is Chaos; Everything’s an Illusion, Prison, or Mistake; It’s All Good – Have Faith; Might is Right; One-Way Trip to Oblivion

Associated Abilities: Academics, Animal Kinship, Art, Awareness, Crafts, Medicine, Meditation, Occult, Pharmacopeia

Common Instruments: Artwork, blessings and curses, blood and fluids, bodywork, bones and remains, books, brews, cards, celestial alignments, circles, crossroads, cups and vessels, dance, drugs and poisons, elements, eye contact, group rites, household tools, knots and ropes, music, offerings, sex and sensuality, social domination, symbols, True Names, wands and staves, weapons, writing and inscriptions

Yoga

Beneath the popular exercise trend rests a potent metaphysical practice. Named from a Sanskrit word that means union, balance, joining, and (by extension) yoke, yoga employs mental, physical, and spiritual disciplines to refine a higher state of being. Through advanced levels of yoga, a practitioner unlocks the greatest human abilities, eventually transcending his human limits and achieving enlightenment… first temporary, and then perpetual. Dedication to yoga strips away the illusions of physical existence. In communion with Absolute Reality, the True Self – the center of consciousness (Atman or Purusha) – comes to comprehend the Unity of All.

Although its historical origins may be disputed, yoga derives from a collection of practices rooted in the Indus-Sarasvati cultures of ancient India. Collected into the Vedas – books of knowledge – these practices and observations refined several forms of ritual, meditation, vocalization, and physical exercise, all dedicated to mending the fractured state of human existence. In the Classical Yoga period, those practices mingled with the Upanishads: scriptures of dynamic unity. By 1900, Western occult traditions had begun to incorporate yogic disciplines into their own practices. (The Council of Nine, of course, understood such practices long ago.) Through mastery of those disciplines, an experienced yogi or yogini (male or female practitioner) can see the essential state of Reality… and can work with it as well. Yoga, therefore, isn’t simply a state of meditation but also a practice of conscious activity. The practitioner doesn’t just contemplate her navel; with deep awareness and conscious devotion, she commits herself to action.

Details about yoga could fill their own book. In a practical sense, though, a yoga practitioner pursues intense physical, mental, and spiritual study; combines learned wisdom with personal epiphanies; supersedes old limitations; and transforms herself into an instrument of transcendence. Through such refinement, she can attain superhuman abilities, project her consciousness outside of her body, and reveal the illusions of material reality as tricks of the mind… and, by extension, master earthly forces like gravity, time, matter, and the elements – in game terms, all of the Nine Spheres.

(A related tradition of practices that often incorporate yogic disciplines is known collectively as Tantra: “weaving,” “loom,” “activity,” or “essence.” Although many devotees of one still practice the other, however, yoga and Tantra are not the same things. Both share a heritage, a dedication to transcendence of physical and mental limitations, and a view of the Whole beyond the illusions of separation. Generally, though, yoga unifies apparently separate elements into a conscious, transcendent whole, whereas Tantra accesses transcendent energies through sublimating physical reality. For obvious reasons, various mages incorporate elements of both traditions into their practices. For an example, see Lee Ann’s activities in the Prelude.)

Often described as “the science of body, breath, mind, soul, and the universe,” yoga can be considered a metaphysical technology. If nothing else, the physical and mental disciplines involved in yoga have proven benefits to the human organism. Thus, technomancers and even Technocrats can pursue a yoga practice, although its more esoteric levels defy pure materialism. By the early 21st century, the Technocracy has accepted the useful elements of yoga and incorporated certain aspects of yoga into its training programs. (Again, see John Courage’s remarks in the Prelude.) And so, although you won’t see Black Suits defying gravity and throwing bolts of pure Kundalini energy because of their mastery of yoga, the techniques of breathing, strength, and flexibility influence the new-millennium Technocrat’s pursuit of Life, Mind, and Prime Procedures. For traditional mystics (like Chakravanti and Sahajiya), such use of yogic discipline is anathema; for the devotees of Westernized yoga, however, that acceptance provides the punch line for a wondrous joke at the Technocracy’s expense.

Despite the utility of books, scriptures, designs, and various medical and sometimes psychoactive concoctions, yoga is a largely self-contained practice. The physical body becomes a vessel for the transcendent Self. A devotee tends toward extraordinary good health and vitality, incisive perceptions, and a big-picture perspective on things. She might be capable of apparently impossible physical feats of endurance and flexibility, and she can – at advanced levels – sidestep little things like physics. The foundation of her practice, however, involves correct breathing, centered consciousness, and reaching past apparent limitations. As the guru Bikram advised his students: This is going to hurt. Don’t be afraid.

Associated Paradigms: A Mechanistic Cosmos; A World of Gods and Monsters; Bring Back the Golden Age; Creation’s Divine and Alive; Divine Order and Earthly Chaos; Everything’s an Illusion, Prison, or Mistake; It’s All Good – Have Faith; Might is Right; Tech Holds All Answers

Associated Abilities: Athletics, Awareness, Enigmas, Esoterica, Expression, Medicine, Meditation, Survival

Common Instruments: Bodywork, circles and designs, dances and movement, energy, languages (Sanskrit), meditation, music, ordeals, prayers, sex and sensuality, symbols, thought forms, voice (mantras, the Om), writings and inscriptions

Post by xaria on Jan 30, 2020 18:10:35 GMT -6

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