Self taught Entropomancers: The Other Side of the Coin Toss

One of the greatest magickal teachers of the twentieth century was Big Betsy Ficarro, Entropomancer. She managed to train four apprentices, two of whom ended up training others, bestowing upon the Occult Underground such colorful characters as Neil Brinker, Harvey Duopulous, and Uriel Sterne, among others. In the circles of people who track this type of stuff, her tutelage is the sole reason that bodybags tend to show up more in the Midwest then elsewhere. This is a half-truth at best.

Any economic sociologist could tell an occultist, if they were asked, that the curve of supply and demand has a marked effect on the population, class, and behavior of the people involved. When applied to magick, it means that adepts go to where the magick is. For example, Plutomancers tend to collect in cities, simply because that’s where most high paying jobs and opportunities for wealth are, the stock market and eBay notwithstanding. The same holds true for Cliomancers: While history can be, and is, made everywhere, the landmarks and statues that people remember in connection to history usually end up in cities. Urbanomancers are city-based by definition, and so on and so forth.

The Midwest, compared to either coast, is sparse in terms of cities (if you ignore Chicago, which is pretty much an area that obeys its own mystic rules), and this leads to a magickal vaccuum of sorts for particular schools. Sandwiched between concentrated points of money, history, anger, and so on, the middle of the continent is short on resources to power such magick, so mages that don’t need such elements accumulate in the middle. Or, to take the converse route, warbucks and cobweb farmers develop in the Midwest but migrate to the cities on both sides, leaving other adepts to fill in the blank spots on the magickal map. Perhaps both are true.

So why would chaos magicians accumulate in the Midwest, when life is full of risks everywhere? Is it simply pressure from other occultists, keeping them out of the coastal areas of high stress and high competition? Or is it something in the water? One theory states that the Midwest as a whole is the most popular spot for chaos because it’s so boring. A far more likely theory is that the Midwest’s overall cultural and social climate is statistically more likely to produce the type of personality disorders commonly associated with Entropomancy. Magick then follows madness.

The Midwest is surrounded on four sides by totally different customs and mindsets, and especially magick centers. The East coast, with its old networks of the Plutomantic robber barons and huge amount of Cliomantic sites, is a snapshot of the aggressive pragmatism of earlier times. The West Coast is also aggressive, especially thanks to the Sternos and the Fellowship of Bad Traffic, if nothing else. The Midwest is then encumbered from the South by the aptly named Bible Belt; given the antagonism between religion and magick, it could easily be reffered to as the Bible Noose. The South is just as aggressive as both coasts, but in an entirely different fashion, usually along religious and xenophobic lines. Lastly, the area is blocked at the north by Canada, which is subject to similar Xenophobic feelings despite the U.S.-Canada border being the longest undefended border on the planet Earth (it is entirely possible to get lost in the general viscinity of the border and cross it ten times in three hours without anybody realizing it).

The result is that there is aggression on three sides and a seemingly alien environment on the remaining side; the Midwestern mind develops a subtle undercurrent of paranoia and persecution, of being surrounded by enemies. In normal people this almost never amounts to anything, but in adepts the consequences are more readily seen. Animal experts often say that any animal that feels it is cornered will attack viciously, even if it is not normally an aggressive creature or species; humans are no different. When cornered, people take chances and perform actions that they otherwise would not attempt, and taking chances is core to the philosophy of Entropomancy.

To put it in different terms, Entropomancy sometimes develops on its own in situations that seem to be lose-lose. This is actually independent of any lack of confidence in the adepts own ability to make decisions. While it has nothing to do with chance, a similar incident is mentioned in the second Star Trek movie, when Kirk reprogrammed a rigged simulation so that it was possible to win. Changing the system so it’s possible to win is one of the most popular uses of Entropomantic power.

One cultural idea that lends itself to chaos magick, in its own way, is not limited to the Midwest. It does, however, show how the persecuted mindset lends itself to Entropomancy. The idea lies in the phrase “You’ll always miss 100% of the shots that you don’t take.” This phrase is often used as a means of convincing people, especially children and teenagers in school, to take chances, to do things they might otherwise not attempt. It is intended to be an indirect boost to self-esteem; the reasons why it fails to serve as such are beyond the scope of this text.

An unofficial add-on to the phrase is a second phrase: “You’ll always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, and statistically speaking, 99% of the shots that you do.” This modified statement is an effective counter arguement to the original idea, pointing out that the odds of failure can only be modified in one direction. Or, that is to say, one can change a million-to-one shot to absolutely impossible by not trying, but one cannot change a million-to-one shot to something better, say for example a thousand-to-one shot, by trying. Not without magick, anyway.

What Entropomancers learn is basically a complete inversion of not just the phrase, but the preconceptions it’s supposed to support or alter. To an Entropomancer, every risk is win-win. This is because a bodybag gets a charge out of a risk whether she gets burned on that risk or not. Chaos becomes a reliable, if temperamental, authority figure, and Lady Luck becomes a maternal symbol of unconditional love in the most extreme cases.

It is not easy to learn this flip-side of chance, without being trained by another Entropomancer, unless one is pushed up against the wall, cornered by people and probability, and decides “What the Hell. Let’s do it anyway.” Even then, only a fraction of those who make the jump end up making the magickal connection between risk and power and also land on their feet. Still, enough of them pull through in the Midwest that the area has gained a reputation for Entropomancy to be statistically more likely, which is the whole point.

A Self-taught Bodybag from the Midwest that shows this principle well is Brian Michaels, farmhand and pool hall menace, who treats the machines and animals he works around with disrespect that would get mundanes killed or maimed sooner or later, but makes him pretty strong. His medical history is filled with psychotic breaks, paranoid episodes, suicide attempts and perscriptions for anti-stress medication. Once he started his magick development, however, most of these problems vanished. Not that he’s out of the woods, of course; he just traded one set of problems for another. It’s nearly impossible for him to decide anything without flipping a coin or rolling a pair of dice. But it’s entirely possible that he came out ahead on this trade.

-End

Well, I hope you found this entertaining and/or informative. Coming Soon from Unknown Variable X (maybe):

Epideromancy and Stigmata: The Church’s Dirty Secret?

How to Bake Friends and Influence People: A Narqui’s Guide to Success

And a Report on Japanese Plutomancers’ secret plot to strengthen the Yen via ritual sacrifice and subliminal messages hidden in all English-dubbed anime!