THE RITUAL OF PLAY: RPGS, ART, AND RITUAL

Introduction

In a recent interview, Chaosium's Jeff Richard discussed TTRPG criticism and whether these games can be viewed as "art." If you watch it before reading this, you'll have a bit more context where I am coming from in this piece. 

As I read through the comments the interview received, I was struck by--but not particularly surprised--how many people have been trained to belittle the hobby they presumably love and themselves by extension for participating in it. Many seemed ready and eager to make themselves, and their experiences, small. How odd for a hobby which is entirely about Walt Whitman's line, "I am large, I contain multitudes."

I read things like "it is just game." "It is just play." "It's all about luck." I found myself thinking yet again how indicative this all was of the quiet hollowing out of words that has occurred the last two centuries. Words have meaning, and when they don't, when they become meaningless, we end up where we are today where even truth is now a meaningless concept. 

Because I agree. RPGs are "games," and they are "play," and they are about "luck." But these words mean something to me that I don't think they mean to some of the critics, and because they do, I am ready to argue that roleplaying is not just an "art," it is also a "rite."

Rituals of Battle and Play

As a graduate student, my thesis advisor was the late Alf Hiltebeitel, who passed away just this year, on my birthday. Alf had been one of the top specialists in the great Sanskrit epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata. The latter was his primary focus. He wrote a series of brilliant books on the character of Draupadi and her cult, as well as studies of the concept of dharma in the epic. Yet one of his earliest works is the one I want to reference here as our gateway into a discussion of RPGs, art, games, and ritual. Alf's The Ritual of Battle: Krishna in the Mahabharata was a stunning piece of research, full of new insights. It also shaped how I think about rituals and games.

A poem sixteen-times the length of the Bible, the Mahabharata is a descendent of the Indo-European epic, cousin to the Iliad and Odyssey, the Aeneid, the Norse sagas, etc. Scholars suspect these stories all descend from a single ancient source because of similar themes (cataclysmic wars) and the repetition of very specific phrases. For example: Ved. śrávaḥ ákṣitam = Gk. kléos áphthiton “imperishable fame”; Ved. máhi śrávaḥ = Gk. méga kléos “great fame”; Ved. dātā́ vásūnām = Av. dāta vaŋhuuąm = Gk. dôtor heáōn “giver of goods”; Ved. sū́ryasya cakráḥ = Gk. hēlíou kýklos = Old Norse sunnu hvél“wheel of the sun”; Ved. áśvāḥ āśávaḥ = Av. aspåŋhō āsauuō = Gk. ōkées híppoi “swift horses”; Av. pasu vīra “cattle (and) men” (a merism for the totality of a character's possessions). These are just the most common examples. 

Before we go on, for any of this discussion to make sense a very short summary of the Mahabharata is in order.

The story is about the end of the third age and the beginning of the fourth. The Earth (the Earth goddesses specifically), cries out to the gods for aid. Men have grown corrupt. They lie, they cheat, they steal. The despoil the land and do not treat her with respect. The gods must perform a ritual to make this right.

Several of the gods incarnate as mortal men, the Pandava brothers, the heroes and protagonists of the story. Dharma (cosmic order, rightness, truth) incarnates as the eldest brother Yudhishthira. Indra, king of the gods and thunderbolt-wielding warrior, incarnates as Arjuna. Vayu, the tempestuous berserker wind god incarnates as hot-tempered and bull-like Bhima. Finally the twins, Nakula and Sahadeva are the incarnations of the Ashvins, who are dawn and dusk but also psychopomps and healers. 

Yet above all of these is Vishnu...who incarnates as Krishna. See, the Mahabharata exists at a transition point between the old Vedic gods and the emerging Hindu ones we are familiar with today, such as Vishnu and Shiva. Thus Vishnu is portrayed as a god above the gods, and Krishna--while not the main character--is the chief string-puller, trickster, and puppet master of the epic.

Finally, the Earth goddess herself incarnates as Draupadi, who becomes the wife of all five Pandava brothers. There is a special linguistic connection between Draupadi and Krishna, because Draupadi is also called by the feminine form of his name, Krishnaa. The name means "the dark one," but the fact that they share this name is a subtle reminder to the reader. The Earth called out to Heaven to set things right. So Draupadi and Krishna are the two instigators of these events. 

The Pandava brothers are pitted against their cousins, the Kauravas (who naturally are the earthly incarnations of demons). They are fighting for who will rule the kingdom. While the conflict is settled in the cataclysmic Kurukshetra War, it is all actually triggered by a dice match. The dice match sets the story (and the end of the world) in motion. And this brings us back to gaming.

Rolling the Dice

Growing distrust between the two sets of cousins leads to the suggestion of a game to "relieve the tension," a dice match. The Kaurava bring in a ringer however at the last minute, "swift-fingered" professional gambler Shakuni who will be playing on their behalf. Yudhishthira is suspicious, of course, but because he vowed never to refuse a challenge plays anyway. Shakuni wins every round, over and over, as Yudhishthira wagers and loses the Pandava's armies, chariots, riches, possessions, and lands. Desperate, Yudhishthira wagers and loses himself and his own brothers. Then he loses their wife, Draupadi.

When Draupadi is dragged into the room and told her freedom has been lost, the Kaurava attempt to shame her and disrobe her. But again...remember the two Krishnas are the prime movers of the epic. Miraculously they are unable to remove her sari, which keeps growing and growing yard after yard. As they are all terrified by this miracle, she then challenges what right Yudhishthira had to gamble her if he had already lost himself first. Cowed by Draupadi's rage, they agree to grant her a boon. The Pandava and she get their freedom back, but must go into exile. It is during that exile that they will plan their revenge.

In the 21st century, we tend to think of rolling dice as "just" a game. But I invite you to think about it as the ancients did. Yudhishthira abides by the results of the dice game because that is what destiny ordained. Forget probabilities or randomness. The dice match was a sacred thing because Fate determined its results. Yudhishthira was meant to lose.

There is some suggestion that dice--or similar instruments--might have been used before ancient Vedic sacrifices as a way to read the future, to get a sense of the auspiciousness or inauspiciousness of performing that particular sacrifice. Priests might roll dice or draw lots and from the results determine whether or not to proceed. And this brings us back to Alf and the argument he makes in The Ritual of Battle.

As mentioned above, the Mahabharata as we know it is a conscious pivot away from the old Vedic gods (who were worshipped through sacrifice) towards deities like Vishnu who can be reached through bhakti, "love" or "devotion," instead. This is similar to the same shift between Old Testament worship practices, such as the extensive types of animal offerings listed in Leviticus, and the latter New Testament refocusing on faith and love. But what is really intriguing about the Mahabharata, is the idea that reading, hearing, or otherwise experiencing the story is the equivalent of performing a sacrifice. In fact, the epic seems structured that way.

The traditional Vedic sacrifice is being played with on two levels. First, in terms of the story, the entire Kurukshetra War is a Vedic sacrifice, or as Alf phrased it, The Ritual of Battle. It begins as a divination (the dice match), and ends up a sacrifice of life by a priest (Krishna) upon an altar (Draupadi). Draupadi was, in fact, literally born from an altar in the narrative. Her father is conjuring a son and she appears from the altar as well. Further, as Vedic altars were hourglass shaped, Draupadi is constantly called "altar-waisted" to remind us of her significance. Krishna invokes the gods, the Pandava, delivers the sacrifice, the armies, and in doing so restores the rightness of the world (more on that below).

But on another level, sitting in the audience and simply listening to the Mahabharata was like performing a Vedic sacrifice. Just sharing in the narrative was said to have all the same benefits. Hold this thought in mind as we get back to roleplaying games.    

The Words We Use

Roleplaying game. Let's start right there.

Think about the ritual of this, the magic being invoked. You sit down at the table, and like Yudhishthira surrender your fate to the dice. The dice are divination, revealing the path of your character before you.

Now think about the power of playing a role.

Earliest Greek drama emerged as ritual. The actors, masked, were believed to be invoking and incarnating the gods. The fact that is was oral mattered; the Greeks believed in the living power of the spoken word, and even Socrates wrote that when something was written it lost the power to grow and change. When you play, you sit at a table and you become someone else. You are invoking a presence that is not you and experiencing existence through its eyes. 

What on Earth could be more powerful than that?

This is another call back to the Mahabharata. After losing the dice match, the Pandava go into exile and to disguise themselves they play roles. Yudhishthira, having lost everything gambling, assumes the role of a master gambler. Arjuna, the ultimate warrior, becomes a transgender dancer. Bhima--always eating--becomes a master cook. The twins become farmers. What is crucial here is they are roleplaying...and by roleplaying they grow stronger and are prepared for the war ahead. They pretend to be what they are not and it helps them expand as people.

"It is only a game, Drew, get a grip." Game. Game. Sure. Just a "game." But that word, which for you might mean "meaningless play" (because everything in the 21st century is apparently meaningless) meant nothing of the kind in the initial use of the word. The Old Gothic gaman meant "to commune with, to participate in." It was used for serious business like hunting (we still talk about fish and "game") and martial practice. "Ga" simply means "with" and "man" means, well, people. So a game was initially to participate in an experience with other people.

By the way, as an educator, one of the first things you learn is that through games and roleplay people learn. Yes, it is pretend, but it is how we become bigger than we are right now.

"It's just 'play.'" Yes it is. But what does "play" mean?"

The earliest definition we have is the one that nails it. It meant "cultivate." When you are playing, you are practicing. You are learning. Again. You are growing. Just a game and just playing make absolutely no sense to me given the origins of the words. Unless you subscribe to the Orwellian Newspeak of the 21st century, these words as dismissal should mean nothing to you too.

Now let's get to my favorite. Luck.   

When you sit down to play an RPG like RuneQuest or King Arthur Pendragon, and you fumble a roll, you might blame "bad luck." "Luck" to us is a fluke, a meaningless thing. It is a random outcome. But consider the origins of the word, and consider Yudhishthira's response to the dice match. Luck comes to us from a PIE word that meant "omen, mark, fortune" and was connected to fortune-telling, using dice, runes, stones, or whatever to determine what Fate had in store for you. This is in fact where the "lot" in "drawing lots" comes from as well. Indeed, the names of the god Loki and the goddess Lakshmi both derive from the same root as luck (he was a bad omen, she an auspicious one). So in the original sense of the work there was nothing random about it. Luck was what the universe had in store for you.

So let's sum up before the finale, shall we?

Every time you sit down to the table, create a character, and let the dice guide you...you are performing rituals that people have been doing for thousands of years. You are engaging in the ceremonial experience of becoming someone else, and experiencing situations you might never otherwise encounter. The dice, and their outcomes, reveal the destiny of your creations. You are performing a ritual, and therefore, art.

Let me throw the last few words at you.

Ritual, rite, right, rhythm, and art all come from the same PIE root, the  PIE *ar(ə)-ti-. They are related also to the Sanskrit Ṛta, which was the precursor of dharma and meant the order of the universe.

Understand what is happening here. What is being said.

When you create art you contribute to the order of the universe, to the "rightness" of it. You become part of its cycles and "rhythms." You align yourself with the harmony of the universe and that is also part of a rite.  That is the purpose of why rituals are performed.

Because we are, all of us, so small and so trapped in out own skulls. The experience of being "other," the ritual of play, is art. It allows us to get out of the narcissistic little prisons which are all the rage in the modern era, and to be bigger. To be other. To see the world through different eyes.

So the next time someone asks you why you are into roleplaying games, ask them, "why aren't you?" It is art. It is magic. It is sacred.

Do not feel the need to apologize.

  

 

  

YES VIRGINIA, THERE IS A THIRD SIDE

A CHILD'S QUESTION, A MAN'S ANSWER

IN 1897, Francis Pharcellus Church, an editor for the New York Sun, found himself in a difficult position.  An eight-year-old girl, whose father told her she could rely on anything printed in the Sun, had written in with a burning question.  Church's answer was a classic example of the "Third Side," a crucial element of the thought and life work later promoted by Anton LaVey (1930-1997).

"There are not always 'two sides to every issue,'" LaVey would later write.  "It is invariably a third side that is overlooked in every issue and endeavor, from abortion to gun control.  The third side can be the crackpot stuff of conspiracy theories, or it can be the most logical and simple, yet deliberately neglected conclusion." (1)

The question put to Church was whether or not Santa Claus existed.  Her friends, it seemed, had told her that he did not.  Suffering an existential crisis, she reached out to the newspaper for clarity.  

"Virginia, your little friends are wrong," Church answered.  He continued;  

They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. 

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. 

Not believe In Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

...A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

A WORLD OF GODS AND SANTAS

I think of Francis Church--and Anton LaVey--whenever I am asked if I "believe" in God.  For starters I try not to "believe" anything, especially in the sense of "accepting something is true without proof."  However, if you are asking if I think God exists, of course I do.  I am not an idiot.  Yahweh, Satan, Allah, Krishna, Thor, Osiris, et al are every bit as real as Santa Claus, Hamlet, and Sherlock Holmes.  To deny any of these exist is to fall into a trap laid by "vested interests and...minds of limited scope," (2) people who want to frame the definitions of the conversation into either/or propositions to force you to either side with or against them.  

Yes, gods exist and Santa exists.  They exert measurable and demonstrative influence on the lives and behaviors of billions. You might as well deny the existence of capitalism or liberal democracy.  Thus I am categorically not an atheist; "a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods."  That definition has that ugly "believe" word in it again.  I know the gods exist.  So rather than play the game of getting forced into one side or the other of this tedious debate (and therefore by default ceding the right to define its terms to the person asking me, who all too often has an agenda), I embrace the Third Side alternative that Anton LaVey synthesized.  The question is not whether gods exist or not, the question is who created whom.

"It is a popular misconception that the Satanist does not believe in God," LaVey wrote in his (in)famous Satanic Bible. "...Man has always created his gods, rather than his gods creating him."  It is clear from the way that LaVey wrote of gods and devils that he regarded them in much the same way as Francis Church regarded Santa Claus.  These are real ideas, real things, that motivate human behavior, and they have manifested in every human civilization we know of.  This indicates to my mind that they are somehow necessary--or at least useful--to us.  All too often, the use to which they are put is control; bullying other people into thinking and acting how we might wish them to, but LaVey had answer for this as well.  "If man needs such a god and recognizes that god, then he is worshiping an entity that a human being invented...(is) it not more sensible to worship a god that he, himself, has created, in accordance with his own emotional needs?" (3)  The Theism/Atheism debate tries to force us into either submitting to other people's gods or to throw the baby out with the bathwater and reject gods of our own.    

LaVey put forward the convincing theory that humanity is an amphibious species that needs to swim the waters of dreams and ideals as much as crawl out and walk the hard bedrock of reality.  This explains the dramatic and romantic dimensions of his otherwise brutal, pragmatic philosophy.  Like Church's Santa Claus or fairies, how drab and dreary existence would be without Count Dracula, Superman, Daenerys Targaryen, or Zeus.  How impossible to imagine.  Yes, atheists are right to point out we can find awe and wonder and beauty in looking at the stars and the sunsets, but this doesn't mean I would want to live in a world without myths and fairy tales. I daresay I needn't have to, because there is a need for these things deeply buried in the human psyche.  So long as we remain human, the need for gods and Santas will always be there.    

1. and 2. from "The Third Side: An Uncomfortable Alternative," published in Satan Speaks!

3. The Satanic Bible   

IMAGINATION, POWER, AND THE NECESSITY OF CREATIVE PLAY

Looking down on empty streets, all she can see
Are the dreams all made solid
Are the dreams all made real
All of the buildings, all of those cars
Were once just a dream
In somebody's head

Peter Gabriel, "Mercy Street"

THE ABILITY TO REASON, to draw conclusions from observation and experience, has been crucial to the success of the human species.  Of this there can be little doubt.  But the flip side of reason, the ability to see the world "as it is," is the ability to see the world "as it might be."  This power, imagination, is one of our most extraordinary gifts.  It is not merely the source of our arts and cultures, but our technologies as well.  It lies close to the heart of what makes us--for now, at least--the dominant species on the planet.

Despite its power (or perhaps because of it), imagination tends to make people a bit nervous.  Like magic, a word to which it is related, imagination is at turns dismissed, trivialized, and condemned.  There is a sense that it must be restrained, sanctioned, quarantined.  We chuckle at it in children, but expect them to bridle it in adolescence and enter the "real world" (something I have written about here). We could argue this is due to its mercurial nature; imagination is often erratic and unpredictable, acting as an external muse rather than something we switch on and off like a coffee maker.  Imaginative work is a sort of dance, where the imagination acts as an equal partner rather than a subordinate.  As any artist will tell you, imagination needs to be wined and dined.  It can be controlled, but doing so cripples and eventually withers it.  To really let imagination do its thing, you have to be willing to let go. But most people only feel comfortable engaging with imagination in a limited, controlled way--such as by reading a novel, playing a video game, or watching a television program.  Actually unleashing it and allowing oneself to be carried away is usually left to artists...widely considered an odd bunch to begin with.

It's unfortunate that such attitudes exist, that people are afraid of letting their imaginations "run away with them."  It is also completely understandable.  At issue here is the nature of "power," and of society's attitudes towards it.

The beginning of despair lies in being unable to imagine anything better.  That leads to surrender.

There is a deep misunderstanding of what "power" is.  The word comes to us via French from the Latin potis, "to be able, capable," and is cousin to the English words potential and possibile.  There is a hint to its identity in this.  While we are generally taught that power is synonymous with "control," as in power "over" something, true power is the capacity to do and more importantly to create.  On some level we all understand this; Abrahamic faiths often refer to God, the Supreme Power, as the "Creator," and few aspects of human existence are treated with as much awe and sanctity as the power to create new human life.  Paradoxically we look askew at imaginative power, the power to create new ideas.  Indeed, it has often been said that the tragedies of history all stem from a lack of imagination.  It goes back to the obsession with control, and the desire by societies to control, regulate, and dictate the ideas that make up that particular culture.  When we talk about dictators wanting to control what people think, what we are really saying is that authoritarians want to control what people can imagine.  The beginning of despair lies in being unable to imagine anything better.  That leads to surrender.  In the interest of keeping control, those at the top of a society must limit the populace's ability to dream.

So very few of us then allow ourselves the experience of imagination as creative play.  This is tragic, because the imagination--like a muscle--only grows stronger with use.  Many of the same activities that lead to weakness of the body simultaneously lead to weakness of the imagination.  Sitting passively watching the latest big budget superhero film, the new season of Game of Thrones, or playing the most recent release of a favorite video game all seem to be exercises in imagination, but in reality these are mediums where all the imagining has already been done for you.  This benefits both authority and the entertainment industry--which like a drug dealer makes the public dependent on its product for "escape"--but does little to benefit the individual.  This is especially pernicious for children.  Where once they went outside to run and play, making up their own adventures and stories, today they remain indoors spoon-fed someone else's.

We end up in a situation, then, where people require re-education to do what should be completely natural for them.  No, not everyone should have equal imaginative capabilities, any more than we should all be able to lift the same amount or run just as fast, but we should all know at least how to sit down and make up stories, close our eyes and visualize, or engage in creative play without feeling self conscious about it.  Even reading--which like sex or dance is a creative pairing between two individuals, one providing the words and the other painting the images in his or her head--is becoming less common these days.  I have no doubt that this deterioration of imagination lies at the heart of many of the political movements we see these days, and I feel strongly enough about this to write an entire blog about it. 

...the key to a better life, for oneself, one's family, one's society, lies first in the ability to imagine one.

The connective tissue in all that I discuss here is imagination as creative play, a guilty pleasure that so many people have been taught to keep away from.  But the key to a better life, for oneself, one's family, one's society, lies first in the ability to imagine one.  This is the Promethean theft of fire from the gods.  It is the mercurial and awe inspiring heart of true magic. The first step in attaining this power is to allow oneself to go against oppressive norms and prohibitions intended to stifle it.  The road to freedom begins with allowing oneself to engage in the simple magic of childhood, to give oneself time to play.        

    

ENOCHIAN MAGIC: THE CRY OF RII, THE 29TH AETHYR

FIRST THERE WAS a yawning void, and I was falling upwards into it.  I seemed to fall forever.  Then there was light in the darkness, a growing brightness.  Stars, planets, galaxies rushed past me.  Was I falling, or were they?  Upwards, faster and faster, I sped.  Then, above me, I beheld an immense black orb, burning in an aura of orange light not unlike the corona of the sun.  I was racing towards this, passing unburnt through the orange flames and swallowed whole in the darkness of the sphere.

My feet touched ground.  Slowly, as if lights were being raised in a darkened theater, a world around me emerged.  The brightness grew intense, like noonday.  Before me towered a giant Caduceus, forged of brass.  It seemed to me more Egyptian than Greek.  It was embedded like a flagpole in the ground, in the very center of a circular plaza orf brilliant white stone.  From the base of this Caduceus, that same orange light, like fire, rose and swirled upwards around the shaft.  It did not burn the metal, but caused the pole to hum and vibrate, wobbling rhythmically. 

I looked around me.  Around the edge of the plaza were greco-roman columns, of the same white stone.  Above was a clear blue sky, dazzling.  A few puffy white clouds hung in the air.  The entire plaza was open and airy, a soft breezing blowing through.

I strolled towards the edge of the plaza.  From there, I saw I was atop a high, grassy hill, green lawn stretching down a great distance around me.  All around were green, rolling hills, treeless, but each carved with chalk figures dug into the turf, reminding me of figures like the Uffington White Horse in England.  But these were not animals, or giants.  Each hill bore a variety of symbols, sometimes geometric figures, sometimes the runes or letters of dozens of different alphabets.  I marveled at this, walking around the circumference of the plaza looking out at the endless sea of strange, carven hills. 

Then I sensed movement behind me.

I turned to behold a Sphinx.  It was strolling away from me, towards the opposite side of the plaza.  It had the immense, tawny body of a lion, and great wings feathered white and brown like a hawk.  Its tail, however, a living Caduceus…a lion’s tail ending in a smaller pair of wings and around which two serpents, red and green, coiled.  Cautiously, I approached it.

Excuse me, I am SOMUE.  Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

It turned slowly to face me.  It had a man’s face, with kohl around the eyes, and a pharaonic beard and head dress.  Under this, however, hung the pale, naked breasts of a woman from its chest.  It stared impassively at me.

Is this RII, the 29th Aethyr?

The creature face a nod.  That it is, Thelemite.  The sphinx spoke with the high, sweet voice of a little girl.

May I ask your name?

I am XILOPE, it answered.  I simultaneously heard and saw it.  You have questions, Thelemite.

I hesitated a moment, considering where to start.  What is the nature of this place?

It is the beginning of Bindings, of Yogas, of Religions.  The Sphinx replied.  This is where the Higher Planes are linked to your world.

It’s nature is communicative?  I saw the symbols in the hills.

The creature licked its front paw and nodded.  All words and symbols have their origins here.  This is where the Logos is made Flesh.  From these raw materials are hammered the realms of TEX and the Watchtowers.  But symbols are not the same as truths.  They suggest the truth, but cannot claim it.  To know the Real you must transcend the symbols, and cross the lightless dark of the Abyss.

I shuddered at this, and nodded, looking out at the horizon.  Somewhere out there lay the Abyss.  Is RII Mercurial then?

The creature flicked its tail.  In the sense that it connects the worlds of Gods to Men, yes.

RII is the foundation of thought?  Is that correct?

The Sphinx yawned and nodded again.  Obviously.  But not the foundation of experience.

How can I better understand this?  I asked.

The Sphinx indicated that I should follow, and so I did.  We left the plaza together and strolled down the grassy hillside.  At the bottom of the hill flowed a crystal clear stream.  As I looked more closely I saw it was not exactly water, but a sort of silvery, flowing light.  Around the stream grew tiny flowers of scarlet and yellow. 

There, Thelemite.  The cup.  The Sphinx pointed with its nose.

Beside the stream, on a small rocky ledge, was a silver chalice.  It was engraved with alchemical symbols, and had two handles, like wings, in the shape of laurel leaves.  You must drink, the Sphinx informed me.

Strangely, this made me nervous.  For a moment, I looked at the stream and it now seemed mercury, which I knew was highly toxic.  So I asked the Sphinx to give me a sign that it was a friend and not a foe.  

Clearly bored, it reared up on its hind legs to give the LVX signs.  When it fell back to all fours it watched me through lidded eyes.  Satisfied?

I nodded, and lifting the heavy cup dipped it into the stream.  Raising it to my lips, I drank.

As soon as I drank, a thousand million characters exploded in my mind.  Every letter of every alphabet, every glyph, every number, every possible symbol lost or yet to be discovered flashed through my brain.  It was overwhelming.  Endless streams of silvery data poured through my consciousness, and I understood wholly and completely that all manifest things are formed from pure information.  Anything that existed was a string of code.

Then, I blacked out.

I cannot say how long I was unconscious, but I opened my eyes in a bed of red velvet, the cushions trimmed with gold tassels.  There was a low table beside me, bearing a bowl of fruit.  An ornate Persian carpet, also crimson and gold, covered the floor.  Incense was burning.  All around the bed were scattered books and scrolls.  I looked around and realized I was in a great orange tent, like that of some bedouin king.

The Sphinx lay at the foot of the bed.  It raised its head when it saw me awake.  When you feel strong enough, you should perhaps return to your realm.

I sat up in bed.  That drink?  Was that the nature of Mercury I took into me?

You must gather what you will need for your journey.  What is now in you was in you before, but a seed has begun to grow.  You will now develop your mercurial powers.

I placed my feet on the floor as the Sphinx sauntered over and opened the tent flaps.  Sunlight streamed in.

I stood, and followed the creature out.  We were encamped by the side of the stream, at the base of the hill where the plaza stood.  

You may return any time that you wish, the Sphinx told me, but I can instruct you further only as your initiation deepens.

Thank you, I replied, and started back up the hill.  Now I walked a white stone path, and each stone bore a distinct character.  Then I realized that each of the red and yellow flowers growing on the hillside also bore a character, as did each and every blade of green grass.  Even the motes of pollen drifting through the air had their own unique markings.  Everything around me bore information for those who could read it.  The world was a book, waiting to be interpreted.

I re-entered the plaza, and immediately began falling upwards, back to the Earth.

Here ends the Vision of RII.

PSYCHONAUT: THE ART OF BLUEFLUKE

"...it is my position that art, language, consciousness and magic are all aspects of the same phenomenon. With art and magic seen as almost wholly interchangeable, the realm of the imagination becomes crucial to both practices."

- Alan Moore

Magic seems to go hand in hand with artistic impulses.  It only makes sense; Magicians and Artists work at manipulating symbols, and the act of "creation" is integral to both.  Rattle off a list of modern Magicians and you find a pack of artists as well.  Crowley was a poet and prolific writer.  Spare was a renowned visual artist.  Anton LaVey was a gifted musician keenly interested in the idea of the image as essential to magic.  Andrew Chumbley's works combine striking visual imagery with magic and poetry.  Grant Morrison and Alan Moore are both comic book high priests and public Magicians.  Indeed. if you dig deeply enough for the Indo-European roots of the words we use, it is even likely that magic and imagine derive from the same source (possibly PIE magh- "to be able, to have power").  It goes back to the shamans who painted on cave walls to ensure a good hunt, to the idea of seizing an idea from the hidden realms and shaping it into something tangible.

  

What we now call "chaos magic" originally was just referred to as "magical art" in seminal works like Liber Null and Psychonaut.  Generally viewed as the offspring of Peter J. Carroll and Ray Sherwin (the latter of whom liked to use the term "the theatre of magic"), chaos magic was born in the 1970s as an attempt to look across the broad field of magical traditions in an attempt to distill the techniques and practices common to all.  It was meant to be magic ripped free of tradition, a highly individualistic path that encouraged the development of one's own symbol sets.  If Carroll and Sherwin were the parents, Austin Spare was clearly the grandfather (though to my mind, LaVey does not get the credit he should for being a sort of uncle).  At the core of sorcery, chaos magic wanted to tell us, was the exploration and manipulation of consciousness. "Belief," in this quest, was "a tool."  I would liken this to LaVey's "suspension of disbelief."  The idea was that magic invested symbols--any symbols--with power, irregardless of where these symbols were drawn from.  The Magician could invoke Isis or Gabriel or Alice in Wonderland so long as in the course of the ritual these beings were animated by belief.

Obviously this flies in the faces of hardcore Traditionalists like Julius Evola, who tended to see their symbols as a sort of Truth handed down from time immemorial.  This iconoclasm gave chaos magic its sort of "punk" glamor.  Chaos magic was a post modern field where magic was liberated from dusty grimoires and kabbalistic laundry lists.  Now magic could turn up anywhere.  Even, as Morrison and Moore have demonstrated time and time again, in comic books.

This brings us to Arch-Traitor Bluefluke.

Since I first tripped across Bluefluke's work, it has become a destination I recommend to anyone trying to get a sense of what chaos magic is  ("Curious about chaos magic?  Go check out http://bluefluke.deviantart.com").  All the hallmarks are there.  The Magician comes at you with a striking visual style simultaneously mystical, anime, and punk and a "magical name" that sounds like a rave DJ.  Bluefluke writes and illustrates with the same cocktail of respect/disdain for tradition that fuels zen, a yin-yang fusion of opposites essential for reaching "qabbalstic zero" (or again, Crowley's n + -n = 0).  In a way, this Magician is performing the same trick that LaVey used in slapping Satan across his magic...many will look at Bluefluke's art and think "this can't be taken seriously" and wander off (LaVey was going for the more "frightened off").  The intellectually curious, however, will stick around and suddenly discover how deep the well goes.  This is an ancient trick, my friends, separating the initiates from the voyeurs.

And Bluefluke is worth sticking around.  The Psychonaut Field Manual, at this writing in it's 3.5 incarnation with four of five chapters finished, is a free grimoire containing a completely workable system.  The title is obviously a wink and a nod to Peter J. Carroll, and this combined with the focus on gnosis (qabbalistic zero again), the Discordian touches and the frequent appearance of Michael Moorcock's star of chaos all plant Bluefluke firmly in the chaos magic stream, but the tech in its digital pages is universal.  This isn't to say that Bluefluke's work isn't highly idiosyncratic and recognizably unique, nor that the particular synthesis of ideas here isn't new (it is), but rather that this very uniqueness is showing by example what chaos magicians should be striving for.  "Take these tools and explore thyself."

I'm still fond of Grant Morrison's "Pop! Magic" essay as an entry point for chaos magic, but The Psychonaut Field Manual is meatier on a thousand different levels.  Browse the illustrations alone and the Magician communicates this approach to magic; they seem at once hieroglyphic and Pokemon, stained glass and Cartoon Network.  This gives the images a punch that even, say, Chumbley's illustrations did not have.  They seem to say "magic is not all spooky and scary...it is spooky and scary and cotton candy Wizard of Oz.  That alone is heady stuff.

So what is actually in this system?  It starts with the familiar chaos magic idea of gnosis, a transcendent state wherein opposites are reconciled and thus nullified, including the subject/object dichotomy.  This mental "void" state is akin to the yogic samadhi and Buddhist nirvana, a deep meditative state in which the mind is silenced.  It is in this state that commands are implanted, causing subsequent change in the Magician and his Microcosm.  Part of this process involves overcoming the Ego, which Bluefluke terms the "Selfconscious."  This is the "I" that most people identify themselves with, the "I" that speaks, goes to work, and pays the bills.  The Selfconscious is really just a construct, however, a complex operating system running on our brains that is built by our experiences. Bluefluke tells us the Selfconscious is just one of a Trinity of "selves", and these three must be brought into alignment to enter gnosis.  Its partners are the "Subconscious," which is the body and its animal drives, and the "Superconscious" which is the artist, the visionary, and idealist.  Exercises are offered to bring these into "Soul Resonance," alongside visualization and meditative techniques.  This is the core of the system, which always runs along the lines of "Invoke Soul Resonance, enter gnosis," and then perform whatever specific act of magic follows.

The rest of Psychonaut deals with techniques like sigilization, invoking and evoking, god forms, and astral projection...among a great deal else.  There is a lot crammed into this deceptively simple little work.  Along the way Bluefluke offers a new way of looking at traditional consciousness mapping like chakras or the Qabbalistic sephiroth, looking at these as evolutionary stages of brain development in a new eightfold system partially inspired by Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson.  

This is a beginner friendly system, but also a refresher course for those who are old hands at all of this.  Like most chaos magic is it stripped entirely of "religious" elements, pared down to simple techniques and workable exercises.  It's a manual you are going to want to actually use to understand.

As with Bluefluke's artwork, the writing style is refreshing.  It is playful while taking itself serious, irreverent while speaking reverently, and relentlessly modern while teaching tricks used since before the mammoths went extinct.    The Psychonaut Field Manual will entertain you, challenge you, and delight you.  What more could one want in a grimoire.

And while you are there, do check out Bluefluke's Tarot Trumps.  I might prefer the Thelemic re-alignment of the Thoth deck better, but there are some fresh, powerful images there.





  

       

SWORD & SWORCERY: A GAME REVIEW

A lone figure makes her way through the Caucus Mountains.  It is somewhere around 1000 B.C.  In the shadow of Mingi Taw ("the Eternal Mountain," what today we call Mt. Elbrus, the highest peak in all Europe), she comes across a lone shepherdess that the locals just call "Girl."  Further along she meets a woodcutter named "Logfella," and his canine companion "Dogfella."  Hidden in the dreams of these mountain people are the forces she needs to complete her woeful quest.  But first, she needs the woodcutter to lead her up the lost roads to the Kingdom of the Clouds.  He agrees but isn't "super jazzed" about it.

So begins Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, an indie game phenomenon that combines Jung, Robert E. Howard, and Joseph Campbell in a world that looks and feels like a living Georges Seurat painting.  Just to prove how timeless and eternal myth is, the game is set in prehistory, the characters speak like modern twenty-somethings, and the entire project is drenched and dripping with the "feel" of fantasy from the 70s, when D&D was a secret you had to be initiated into, you had Heavy Metal magazines under your bed, and Tolkien was woven like secret threads in Led Zeppelin lyrics.  For something intentionally designed to look like you might have played it on your Atari or Commodore 64, Sword & Sworcery isn't a game but rather an experience.  It's what Greg Stafford would call a "HeroQuest," a journey outside profane reality into what Mircea Eliade's "sacred time."  It's not about treasure, levels, or stats; it's about truth, dreams, and above all else "death."

Don't get me wrong, there are puzzles to solve, monsters to fight, quests to be won.  But spend ten minutes within this game and you will immediately recognize this thing is an entirely different species from Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls, or World of Warcraft.  The inclusion of "EP" in the title is there for a reason; it's not so much a traditional RPG as a concept album you can hang out in.  Designed in collaboration with Canadian progressive rock artist Jim Guthrie, whose stunning soundtrack is a vital part of the experience, the "record album" association is part of the architecture, often literally.  On the menu screen, a spinning record album charts your progression through the game, the needle gliding towards the center the closer to the end you get.  Every time the protagonist travels back and forth between the waking and dream worlds--the two interconnected settings of the game--the record album is seen "flipping over" (the Dream World is "Side B").  The "sworcery" of the title is not tossing fireballs or shooting lightning from your fingers, but rather a song the protagonist learns to sing which expands her consciousness so that she can perceive the unseen.  And in the Dream World you have the chance to meet album composer Guthrie himself and have a jam session with him. The soul of this game is the music.

As for gameplay, Swords & Sworcery has little interest in established conventions.  There are no rules to learn before play...you just jump right in.  You are prodded at times with enigmatic phrases; Trespass, Look, Listen, Touch, Believe, and part of the challenge is to figure out what they mean.  At crucial stages the game's narrator--a Rod Serlingesque dude in a suit with a cigar and a really big chair--will appear to address you, the player, directly, with cryptic instructions and explanations.  Because in Sword & Sworcery there is no "fourth wall."  From the very start the game makes it clear that you, the player, are going through the journey as surely as the protagonist is.  In fact she--the Scythian warrior monk you play throughout the game--never once says "I."  Her pronoun of choice is "we," speaking for you and her.  Combat is handled by blocking with a shield and parrying with a sword, and you start the game with five "health levels" (the only stat you have).  In a brilliant and complete inversion of other RPGs, after each of the game's four episodes one of those health levels actually disappears.  This is a game about mortality, after all, and she is growing old, making it harder to reach the end.  For the rest, this is your Hero's Journey as much as hers.  You begin a novice and learn as you go.

On a random note, the game was released in the US on the vernal equinox and in Japan on the summer solstice.  The phase of the moon--our moon, the real moon up the in the sky--is essential to unlocking some of the game's episodes.  That means you need to play it over a lunar month at least, waiting for the moon to be in phase.  If you can think of anything cooler, drop me a line.

In conclusion, there is a line in the Indian epic, the Mahabharata (composed around the same period as the setting of this game) that kept coming back to me as I played.  Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the author of that epic would stop every now and again to address the reader directly too.  Anyway, it was there in the back of my head as I encountered each Jungian archetype--the Sheperdess, the Woodcutter, the Wolf, the Deathless Spectre.  "This is a story about you...and if you listen, at the end you will be a different person than when we began."

That's Sword & Sworcery in a nutshell.

THE LOOKING GLASS

Let's get our definitions out-of-the-way first;

Objective universe: the part of existence which can be sensed and quantified. It is the mechanical/organic cosmic order characterized by its regularity and predictability, by the presence of laws.

Subjective universe: the "world" of any sentient entity within the universe. There are as many subjective universes as there are sentient beings, each is the particularized manifestation of consciousness within the universe.

THE FIRST THING you learn as a magician is that there are two worlds, the one of the senses, and the one inside our heads. The second thing you learn, is that a great deal of mischief arises from confusing the two planes. Uber magician Aleister Crowley, once warned his students before beginning on any magical curriculum;

1. This book is very easy to misunderstand; readers are asked to use the most minute critical care in the study of it, even as we have done in its preparation.

2. In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them.

I have often thought a similar warning should preface the Bible.

Because "objective reality" and "philosophic validity" is exactly what too many religious people ascribe to the gods and spirits in their respective religions. Over the years, I have met people ready to attest to the palpable presence of Allah in their lives, or the Buddha, or Krishna, or Jesus Christ. And I believe them; I have no doubt that these entities are absolutely real for them. But this is where I always remember Crowley's warning. Just because they are real for them in their subjective universe does not mean they exist as objective realities, and more harm than good arises from believing that they do.

But this is also the mistake that atheists and positivists make. Simply because your microscope tells you differently, doesn't mean that Communion doesn't really become flesh and blood. It does; but inside the confines of the subjective universe. All the gods that ever were are totally real, even if they did not leave a shred of DNA evidence behind. And yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. They exist on a separate frequency from the material, the same frequency that the imagination vibrates upon.

Which does not in any way make them less real than a virus, or gravity. Make no mistake; ideas too can kill. This is the third thing that every magician must learn to understand; that the boundaries between the objective and subjective universes can be crossed. Alice can pass through the Looking Glass, but so too can the Red Queen.

We all know this but we forget. Objective experiences become memories, thoughts, and impressions all the time everyday of our lives. The subjective universe is a mirror that reflects images of the objective world. But it is also so much more than that, and that is the gift of being human. The reason that magic is classified as an "art" is because it takes something born in the subjective world and moves it into the objective. Like all arts, both fine and industrial, it is all about taking an idea and using it to reshape the objective world. It is about turning the mirror around so that the objective world reflects the subjective. This is why, of course, it is ridiculous to dismiss subjective realities as simply delusions or dreams. Too often they escape the confines of their cages and rampage around the "real" world.

As a magician my purpose is to go deep into the subjective world and summon things out of it. This dovetails nicely with my work as a writer. But that's nothing new; the connection between the Word and magic is deep and ancient. We speak of spells and spellings, grammar and grimoire. And all the old gods of magic--Hermes, Mecury, Odin, Thoth--were patrons of communication too. The spirits conjured by great writers have touched millions; who doesn't know Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, or Ebeneezer Scrooge? They move invisibly around us, occasionally seizing possession of actors, not unlike the loa of voudon. All writers--and artists--are magicians, and vice versa.

And here is where we come to the point.

The secret that magicians possess, the one that positivists and theologians lack, is that the objective reality of the spirits we conjure is wholly irrelevant; what matters is their ability to effect the world. Just as the identity of light as photons or waves changes with perspective, so too does the reality of gods and spirits depending on whether your vantage point is in the objective or subjective world. Theists and atheists will squabble endlessly over the existence of God, but the magician knows they are both correct. Further, he is more interested in how "God" effects things than proving or disproving him, just as with any other subjective being. And in the end this might be the greatest point of contention between magic and religion; the magician is concerned with what the gods can do for us, not what we can do for them. This is why it is impossible for me to bow down and worship a god; I am by extension bowing down to the magician who conjured it, and whether his "spell" is meant to control who I sleep with or to persuade me to fly an airplane into a skyscraper, I would be a poor magician indeed to fall under it. I am, however, entitled to listen to the gods conjured by other people. Jesus of Nazareth does not need to be the Lord and Savior of my own subjective universe for me to give him an ear. As a magician, I am free to listen to and to learn from any god, spirit, or devil and weigh what they have to say equally.

Which brings me to the fourth and final secret that being a magician has taught me; the definition of what a "spirit" is. It is more than just the personification of a phenomenon, it is the imposition of meaning on phenomena. We know this when we talk about the "spirit" as opposed to the "letter" of something, or the "spirit" of how it was intended. The objective universe is completely devoid of meaning; it just "is." But our inner subjective worlds are fraught with meaning, bursting with it. Magic, and art, are struggles to bridge the two worlds and infuse our lives with meaning, with spirit, but to be fully aware that we are the ones doing the defining. We must avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of accepting that life is meaningless or that it comes already defined. It is our job to do magic, to transmute lead into gold, and to give meaning to our own existences. That is the greatest magic there is.

Since I began with Aleister, I would like to finish with him as well.  

"...WHY should you study and practice Magick (sic)?  Because you can't help doing it, and you had better do it well than badly."