Magic Theory

I’ve found the concept of the laws of obedience and paradox to have a fair amount of parallels. Make of them what you will.

Object worship in lieu of a large-scale ideal or ideology — one look at the cargo cults of the Pacific islands, and you should have an idea of the interruption of the planned worship of a given ideology/iconography with the addition of random ‘alien’ artifacts and concepts; sudden appearances of shipments of photographs and canned food can tip the power base and groundwork of countless generations of shamanistic rulers in mere seconds, just by uttering the three most fatal words to those who lead the blind: I Don’t Know.

The Judeo-Christian God is a good, benevolent Creator; ask Sodom and Gomorrah.

Quoth the Bible, Thou Shalt Not Kill; except when Crusading.

“Read my lips… No new taxes.”

Need further examples?

Take a look around; irony, oversight, bullshit, sarcasm, paradox, call it what you will, but its out there, in vast abundance. Life’s got lies, truths, ugliness, and beauty all wrapped up in one convenient, easy-to-misunderstand package.

Your mileage may vary.

So, that about covers ‘Paradox’.

Obedience; essentially, it is handing over the keys of one’s life to a higher state of being, science, consciousness, or status, and giving control to another force, rather than taking control of one’s own destiny.

People do it daily, for a thousand reasons, in a million ways; you ride a bus to save the expense of driving. You rely on a thousand workers to produce a vehicle safe enough to convey you from point A to point B, and hope that the safety inspectors to whom you’ve elected to dictate your personal safety to find nothing unsuitable or dangerous about this bus. You’re reliance on a hospital to get well, on a teacher to explain things, on a policeman to save you from the crimes commited around you. All of this, so you don’t have to walk, don’t have a persisent hacking cough, and so you don’t find a knife in your belly, so you don’t have to get tired, sick, or injured.

So, many are content be quiet, get on the bus, obey the doctor’s instructions, and listen to Mr. Policeman, until they’re utterly self-reliant. It ain’t easy, it ain’t a good plan, and it sure as Hell ain’t a catchy ideology, as it’s a lot of work.

Nature seems to follow Occam’s Razor with ease, so I’ll venture further, and imply that human nature, generally, follows suit closely.

Then again, I’m using someone else’s theory, not mine. But, I’m lazy, and not self-reliant.

I agree with you that Paradox is simply a way of accessing Magick. Specifically, it is a PostModern way of accessing it. Traditional thaumaturgy does not use seeming contradictions at all.

But then again, traditional thaumaturgy is extremely limiting. It relies completely on the Law of Transaction. While postmodern adepts also use this law, I see them a getting playing the “high-yield, high-risk” strategy on the Law of Transaction field.

Paradoxs are a contradiction (or seeming contradiction) of meaning; the human mind twists and becomes enticed when encountering them. I think a paradox would be an excellent way of turning up the symbolic volume. I see ritual as the traditional way in which magickal tension was build and made usable by magick-users.

Paradox is only a short cut. a seeming contradiction creates immediate symbolic power when the mind sorts and defines the conflicting concepts. Ritual builds symbolic power though just giving the concept sooooo much attention. If I stare long enough at one grain of salt, will it become special to me? What if I chant at the same time? How about if I stare, chant and paint perfect circles on a teddy bear’s forehead with my firstborn’s tears?

PoMo adepts keep that symbolic tension with them at all times (obsession) and so can call on that power whenever they are willing to pay the price. Traditional users have to wait for the right day to start staring at salt and collecting tears, but they don’t have to carry that tension within themselves.

Of course, PoMos can turn back to the old ways (rituals), but there is no dabbling in PoMo. You are all the way or not at all.

Anyway, a “mere horror game depicting a dead-end struggles over powers that drive you mad in the end”? I’ve run two long-term campaigns. Never had someone go socio yet, but that’s the kind of game I run. I don’t know what you are looking for or why UA is inferior because it isn’t just that. Is it the stress checks? Go play Mage or throw the stress checks out. I think the sanity system is one of the primary reasons I run UA.

First, I think that the New Inquisition and the Sleepers are not really cast as the “good guys”. From thier own perspective, they are doing good. From an outside perspective, they may be doing more good than harm, but it’s hard to tell. Certainly, both of them have high goals, but they are using dark means to get there.

That is a constant theme in Unknown Armies – the question of “what are you willing to do to get what you want?” Are you willing to cut yourself to get the power to kill the child rapist? Are you willing to risk your life to save your friend? Are you willing to live a life conforming to mystical forms in order to make the world a better place when/if you ascend?

True, UA casts magic in a somewhat negative light. Most people could not be adepts and live normal lives. This is because UA focuses upon the fact that in order to gain something, you must sacrifice something. It is assumed that adepts are sacrificing thier normal lives.

When you say “puritanic horror morality”, I’m assuming that you’re referring to the fact that there are magic schools fueled by sex, drugs, gambling and alcohol, and it’s assumed that these are self-distructive actions. The answer is that these aren’t depicted as self-distructive, any more than an interest in history or an interest in mechanics. It’s obsessing about these things which is self-destructive.

Which ties into the idea that magic is self-distructive. Yes, that’s an element of UA. Without it, UA becomes a game of powerful mages who hide from society, similar to the World of Darkness games. Basically it removes the “transcendental horror” from the game. If you’re problem is that magic is depicted as evil, then I would ask what you define as evil. If evil is self-destructive, then that means that people must choose if the ends – magical power – are worth the means – slow self-destruction.

Perspective, in my humble opinion.

To hear about a rickety old roller coaster, well.. that’s one thing.

To feel the safety bar get jammed securely into your abdomen by some barely-paid, hardly-trained carnie with dubious chemical enhancements..
then the swelling throb in your gut as you ascend the first angled upwards climb…

then the slow clacking of each of the notches on the ascent ticking down to what you know will be when the bottom drops out, and the true excitement is going to start…

then, the arrival at the apex of the first ascent, and the massive vista in front of you, stretching your field of vision outwards to infinity, all things under your feet, eyes, and growing tension…

the first look down the ramp, behind you, to the teeming masses all secured in their seats, locked in like cruise missiles, safe in their vapid little mental prisons, unfeeling of the swell of power in you…

and then your seatlcok gives way, letting you know on the first turn or steady descent, you are going to fly into the parking lot at mach one, colliding with pavement like a meat-filled bag of crushed bones and pain.

Gosh.

Horror’s where you are vulnerable to a situation that didn’t just *suddenly* happen. It’s where, if you exercised some common sense, could have avoided. It’s the inevitable punishment for a lack of foresight and wisdom.

That, and waking up with a naked man dressed as a clown standing over your bed, speaking to someone not in your range of sight, saying, “.. is the other leg off yet?”

Take your pick.

Makeup.

Two cents

Matter within UA is in a state of paradox. The desire for order, the tendency towards entropy. This paradox creates the turbulence in the fictive material world of UA.

In addition the cosmos reincarnates at (ir)regular intervals as the tendency or desire wins or loses.
These ideas are all well established by ancient thinkers in our own world.

So instead of getting postmodern hiccups about a magic system look to the real basis of the game.

Now to the question of morality in UA. Most of the ancient world, with the exeption of Socrates and Plato (possibly also Aristole), saw morality eg. good and evil, as relative.

Protagoras said: man is the measure of all things, of those that are that they are, of those that are not that they are not.
(See the paradox??)

As i see it post-modernist morality is also a relative concept. IMO this means that morality in UA should be relative eg. there is no other good and evil than what the characters decide on for themselves.

Since relative morals are ipso facto impossible to debate any notion of a morality debate (e.g. any debate over who is good and who is evil) whitin UA is immposible.

My two cents are free
Thanks for listening