Authentic Thaumaturgy

[Durgil]

I went out a few days ago and bought Authentic Thaumaturgy by Isaac Bonewits after it was briefly brought up on a different Forum, and was wondering if anyone else has read this book and what they thought of it.

I'm only up to Chapter 7: "The Magician as Juggler," but am starting to see how it could be quite useful in conjunction with TRoS as an alternative system of magic.  It definitely has as many or more options for players of magicians as TRoS has for players of combatants.

[Stephen]

Bonewits knows his material, but it's more useful as a reference source for ideas than any kind of independent ready-to-go system.  I dislike any game product that requires me to do more math than single-digit arithmetic (and no division).  Granted, it's mostly prep rather than play, but still.

Also, of course, Bonewits is so blazingly anti-Christian and anti-establishment that it's very difficult for ye olde religious traditionalists like myself to actually get through his rhetoric to the useful bits.  (I've even heard people who were neither religious nor traditionalist complain that they found Bonewits' prejudices fairly hard wading -- those who aren't offended are bored out of their mind.)

Basically, if you have a lot of patience and are not easily offended, AT can be useful, but there are other things more useful.

[tauman]

Hmmm...haven't heard of it, but I'm always interested in the mechanics of magic in FRPGs.  When creating a magic system you don't have to worry about modelling "reality," just creating something good enough to allow a reasonable suspension of disbelief with some sort of internal logic (although that's a little harder than it sounds).

Steve

[svenlein]

Stephen - what would you suggest is more useful source for the subject AT trys to cover.  ("real" (note quotes) magic)

[Stephen]

Stephen - what would you suggest is more useful source for the subject AT trys to cover.  ("real" (note quotes) magic)

Hmm.  Well, this may be heresy on this board, but GURPS Cabal has one of the most useful game-friendly treatments of Renaissance European magical theory you can find; much less math than AT and far more effort made to make it gamer-friendly.  (Which is the trick: there are good sources for the study of real-world occult and magical beliefs all over the place, but finding one that's systemic enough to be useful for a game without being so detailed as to be deathly boring is harder.)

If you do feel like doing the reading, The Black Arts by Richard Cavendish is a godsend, though it's hard to find; anything by Colin Wilson would be useful as well.

It's worth noting that the idea of magic as a technical procedure for controlling impersonal, nonsentient energies is a purely 20th-century concept; almost all "real" magic is a process of attempting to contact, compel and control forces that were historically thought of as thinking entities, and so magic is a process and art of communication and persuasion rather than a secret science of energy application.

[contracycle]

It's worth noting that the idea of magic as a technical procedure for controlling impersonal, nonsentient energies is a purely 20th-century concept; almost all "real" magic is a process of attempting to contact, compel and control forces that were historically thought of as thinking entities, and so magic is a process and art of communication and persuasion rather than a secret science of energy application.

I strongly disagree; I think there is some serious indication that for many early peoples, "worship" is coinceived as an essentially mechanical process executed by technical specialists.

[svenlein]

One might say some believed it takes specialised technical knowledge to comunicate and persuade supernatural entities.  Although I think you both would agree most believed these supernatural energies had personality, when today many believe "magic" does not have personality and is just another energy like electricity.

Scott

[contracycle]

I'm inclined to think that the personality is often used in much the way we might attribute a "personality" to a car.  I am... unconvinced that they necessarily actually thought it had a real, independant personality with a mind of its own.

[Stephen]

I'm inclined to think that the personality is often used in much the way we might attribute a "personality" to a car.  I am... unconvinced that they necessarily actually thought it had a real, independant personality with a mind of its own.

Well, I grant that I am not an anthropologist, so I certainly may be in error about what earlier cultures actually believed, but as far as I can tell almost all pre-Roman magical systems were either shamanistic or clerical, involving the invocation of spirits or gods to do their work.  They may not have believed these spirits had the same kind of personality or awareness as a human being, but that assumption of personality and independence was one of the key explicators as to why the results were not predictable.

There were certainly attempts to systematize and codify them -- astrology as the foundation of astronomy, for example -- but even those systems had to account for demonstrated inconsistency of practical results; astrology assumed that the planets represented gods, and thus their influence waxed and waned in a pseudo-predictable manner, but the fact that they were gods and capable of varying decisions rendered that influence suitably unpredictable that any prognosticative failure could be blamed on that rather than on the astrologers' incompetence or (horrors) basic impotence.

[Irmo]

I'll throw in Richard Kiekhefer as an author of more academic (as opposed to gaming-related) orientation, specifically

"Magic in the Middle Ages"

and

"Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century" (part of the Magic in History series)

[svenlein]

Thanks for the book suggestions.
Other books I've heard are good are:
The Magician's Companion: A Practical and Encyclopedic Guide to Magical and Religious Symbolism by Bill Whitcomb
The Magician's Reflection: A Complete Guide to Creating Magical Symbols & Systems by Bill Whitcomb

Has anyone read these and can give a review?

Scott