| From: | Max Rible <slothman@*********.ORG> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: RM Tarot Mage in SR |
| Date: | Wed, 13 May 1998 15:16:52 -0800 |
>In a message dated 5/13/98 4:00:34 PM US Eastern Standard Time, erikj@****.COM
>writes:
>
>> Okay Steve, I don't recall ever asking you this before.
>>
>> How do you know so much about "real" magic? I've always wondered
this,
>> because I doubt FASA pays you enough to simply "become" a magic
scholar.
>> Do you practice Wicca or something? (I doubt seriously I phrased that
>> properly) You seem to have a knowledge about "real" magic traditions
above
>> and beyond that of most mere mortals.
>I am going to answer this for Steve, but not directly. THIS TOPIC got way out
>of hand as I recall a year or so ago. There are many beliefs running around,
>that much is certain.
Playing the game Ars Magica got me heavily into being a magic scholar.
Ars Magica, for those of you who don't know, is an RPG set in Mythic Europe--
Europe as people in the 12th century thought it was at the time. (The PC's
are generally wizards, using one of the best magic systems of any RPG;
though it isn't balanced with non-wizard types.) Because of the nature of
the game, any random book of folklore, history, or legend can be a sourcebook
for the game: who needs a Monster Manual when you can just skim through
Pliny's _Natural History_ for giant octopi, gold-digging ants, and men with
their faces in their chests? You could just as easily get into it from
playing White Wolf's _Mage_ (which can be anywhere from cheesy to fascinating,
depending on your gaming group), or researching magical traditions for
Shadowrun.
There's a lot of fascinating stuff out there in anthropology, if you're
willing to dig into it, and if you're fortunate enough to have a good
occult bookstore in your neighborhood you can learn a fair amount from
just browsing the shelves. I found a good class in "Magic, Religion, and
Witchcraft" when I went to UCSB, with a really nutty professor (Madsen)
who just loved to talk about painful aboriginal initiation rituals to
make people wince.
If you are interested in the modern practice of magic and whether or not
it produces results in the 1990's or has ever done so in the past, there
are plenty of places to discuss it, but that's off-topic for the
SHADOWRN list. Steve's article on the Many Masks of Magic (at
<http://www.arc.unm.edu/~james/skenson/traditions.html>;) covers pretty
much everything I've ever heard of, and will give you good keywords for
hunting things down on the web. I don't know of any particular magical
tradition that will give you Steve's apparent breadth of knowledge--
I suspect you have to be doing upper-division or graduate work in
anthropology or just have a really big curiosity bump to pick that
much up. :-) Me, I just have the big curiosity bump.
If you're looking for some fiction to flavor your view of magic,
pick up John Crowley's _Little, Big_ for hermetica and faeries,
Tim Powers' _On Stranger Tides_ for voodoo pirates, and Neil Gaiman's
work on the _Sandman_ comic for all kinds of fascinating stuff.
If you want to get into the more anthropological end, pick up
Joseph Campbell's _The Hero With a Thousand Faces_ and start digging
from there.
If you're thinking about Tarot-based mages, Tim Powers' _Last Call_ is
an excellent look at the world of the Tarot and the Fisher King.
--
%% Max Rible %% slothman@*****.com %% http://www.amurgsval.org/~slothman/ %%
%% "Ham is good... Glowing *tattooed* ham is *bad*!" - the Tick %%
