Soothsaying

[lumpley]

So it's a few Julys ago and I'm at an enormous pagan festival on the NY-PA border.  Ellen Kushner is soothsaying.  She's in the center of a circle of us with her assistant.  Her assistant talks her down the World Tree into the Underworld, to the gates of ... whatever the gates are of at the roots of the World Tree, I forget.

Supplicants go into the circle with her and ask her stuff.  This is a big deal.  They ask her important questions about their lives.

Ellen Kushner calls on our dead ancestors.  First all the supplicants who need the wisdom of the dead ask their questions and receive their answers.  When they're done, her assistant talks her (and us) back up the World Tree, past the earth, all the way up to the Bridge of Light.  Now if any of us need to ask questions of the gods, instead of the ancestors, we go into the circle.  Mostly the gods' messengers answer, but if I recall, one actual god came to answer a question personally.  Maybe it was Freya.  Whenever she asks a new god or messenger or ancestor to attend, her assistant pours mead on the ground.

And my gracious.  We dig the answers that Ellen Kushner and/or the gods are giving us.  They're sharp, insightful, challenging, and sometimes breathtakingly right on.  The supplicants are getting wisdom with a capitol Wise.  I cannot fault the answers; I can't say that she was playing to our feel-good and telling us what we wanted to hear.  She didn't do a single parlor trick.

And I'm all like, dude!  Roleplaying!

I've done a couple past life regression thingies and they were exactly like roleplaying too.  Same sense of the character being alive, real, apart from my own mind, same sense of watching the character act rather than having the character act.

The conclusion I drew was that past lives are fiction, same as roleplaying.  I can imagine drawing the other conclusion, that roleplaying is magic.  I know people who do.

I'd love to have somebody with more experience of magic ... um, magick ... talk about the relationships between it and roleplaying, but I'd be surprised if it happens.  That's how it goes.  But anybody?

-Vincent

[ethan_greer]

Well, I'm not real qualified to talk about it, but I do know that Isaac Bonewits wrote a book called Authentic Thaumaturgy that discusses realistic magic in a role-playing context. Might be worth checking out.

[John]

The conclusion I drew was that past lives are fiction, same as roleplaying. I can imagine drawing the other conclusion, that roleplaying is magic. I know people who do.

I'd love to have somebody with more experience of magic ... um, magick ... talk about the relationships between it and roleplaying, but I'd be surprised if it happens.

I can't speak to past-life regressions, but I've been a role-player for 23 years and a Wiccan priest for 10. From my PoV, role-playing, magickal ritual, and theater are all closely related. Sadly, role-players (or at least role-players who are neither magicians nor familiar with theater techniques and training) are typically the least well-informed about how these field of endeavor inter-relate.

A game is a performance, a play is a performance, and on a deeply important level, a magickal ritual like the one you describe is a performance. In all three, people are taken out of their ordinary experience, given roles to portray, and the entire procedure is designed to produce and maintain particular emotional responses.

I think it's no accident that the first forms of drama we know of were all sacred rituals. Nor is this tradition extinct, Balinese ceremonies where Rangda and Barong battle in mock combat are more than simply festival dramas, many of the participants (and the lines between audience and participant blurs greatly in them) go into deep trances and become caught up on the frenzy and magick of the occasion. Similar things happen in Voodoo rituals, where gods frequently ride audience members.

Most actors and the vast majority of gamers completely dismiss any potential supernatural dimensions of their craft and often consider people who discuss such issues to be foolish or unbalanced. However, I see the entire situation differently. For me, it's all a question of will and intent (and by this statement, I reveal that I am thinking as a magician :) A secular play or an RPG is generally performed to entertain. They are used to either produce emotions in those involved, or in more daring cases, to help people to look at some issue or type of experience in a new way. Sacred drama and magickal rituals can also be used to help people deal with some issue or experience (most rites of passage, from marriage to funerals have this intent), they can be used to produce some practical result (such as magick to bring wealth) or to assist some form of spiritual enlightenment.

However, while intent differs, the techniques remain the same. Also, rarely is intent singular. I've seen people learn important lessons about violence in an RPG campaign that was created purely to entertain the GM and players. I've also priested magickal rituals that were both excellent entertainment and powerful magick (these often go hand-in-hand), and on a few occasions, I've learned magickal lessons from my long-term RPG characters and have had a few that would meet most people's definitions of spirit guides.

As far as what is "fiction", that's a matter for individual belief. Depending upon what one chooses to believe, I can see deciding that theater, magick, and RPGs are all fictional activities or deciding that they are all sacred and magickal. I have a more difficult time seeing how one can say that some are one and some the other, but that is likely simply because there are limits to my understanding.

I have a highly operational definition of reality. If the spells I cast work, then magick works, if a spirit or god talks to me then it is an individual as real and as deserving of respect as any of my physically-bodied friends and acquaintances. It is also perhaps worth knowing that while I acknowledge that something deserving of the name "objective reality" may exist, none of us come close to perceiving or understanding it.

[lumpley]

Oops!  Meg says it was Diana Paxson, not Ellen Kushner.

-Vincent

[Perrina]

Oops!  Meg says it was Diana Paxson, not Ellen Kushner.

-Vincent

I was going to say, I have never heard of Ellen soothsaying!

Though truth does ring through her stories and radio show.  ;)

Kerrie

[Cemendur]

As far as what is "fiction", that's a matter for individual belief. Depending upon what one chooses to believe, I can see deciding that theater, magick, and RPGs are all fictional activities or deciding that they are all sacred and magickal. I have a more difficult time seeing how one can say that some are one and some the other, but that is likely simply because there are limits to my understanding.

I agree with most of your post. However, I believe theater, magick, and RPG can each be different activities. It's a matter of set, setting, and intention.

Magick can in some sets and settings merely be magic, a form of story-telling or psycho-analysis.

Theater can be ritualized in magick, it can be a psychological examination, it can be a neo-realist projection of reality. Their are many different theatre art movements and ritualistic theatre, each with their own unique experiences. Theatre can be role-playing. I can imagine that in some cases theatre can even be role-taking.

Likewise, role-playing is an important point in child development. Role-playing can be explicitly psychological (psychodrama, sociodrama, etc.). It could be a more covert psycho-analysis. Role-playing can be interactive theatre. In can be a game or interactive story-telling. Role-playing can be many, many things. Role-playing can lead to role-taking. Role-playing can also be an instrumental tool of ritual. . .

A game is a performance, a play is a performance, and on a deeply important level, a magickal ritual like the one you describe is a performance. In all three, people are taken out of their ordinary experience, given roles to portray, and the entire procedure is designed to produce and maintain particular emotional responses.

Yup. Role-playing, other games, ritual, and theatre share the element of "time apart".

[ejh]

I remember the first time I realized the important connections between gaming and magick.  It's when my GM's eyes flashed fire and she said, http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp">Don't be stupid, Debbie!  I think you'd better let Elfstar take care of things. You're getting out of control..

I never did end up journeying http://www.deadalewives.com/sound/%5BThe_Dead_Alewives%5D-%5BDungeons_and_Dragons%5D.mp3">deeper into the bowels of El Diablo though, mainly because she wouldn't stop calling me "Debbie."

(Is there a point behind this jokey post?  OK, Ok, here it comes...)

It seems weird to me that while for years RPG players have defended themselves against accusations of Evil Occultism by saying it's all a pretend game and has nothing to do with any actual occult anything, and now we've got a thread exploring, essentially, the idea that Jack Chick was exactly right! -- minus of course that whole "witchcraft = Satanism" thing.

I don't mean to particularly condemn this development, I'm just a bit amazed by it.  But I guess this is nothing new -- this echoes my surprise back in the early 90s when I saw on a text-based Internet BBS of some sort [back before I had ever heard of this crazy WWW thing] someone claiming with a straight face that RIFTS was a useful source of information about actual, real-world ley lines....

(BTW, I've seen Authentic Thaumaturgy -- I think I own a copy of the SJG version -- and it doesn't seem to me at all to be about ways in which (as Lumpley said) the process of *playing roleplaying games* is like unto actual magicking; rather, it seems to me to be about ways of doing a very "realistic" "sim" magic system, based on an attempt to model the "real world magick" that Bonewits apparently seriously believes in, a sort of anthropologically-conditioned-parapsychological/scientific-magic system.)

[MachMoth]

*sigh* It's that kind of article that makes one ashamed to be called Christian.  Uh wait, I didn't say that...  STOP LOOKING AT ME!!!

Seriously, I just lost one of my pbem players the other day because of stuff like that influencing his parents.  And, while Spirit Chronicles may sound a little ifey in the religeon department, it has no religious context what so ever.  One could possible probe deeper into the world of Midori than even I have at this point and claim it the work of heretics, due to its complete lack of religion.  I don't care, I don't touch on religion in roleplaying games for a reason (and am in no great mood to debate its place here either).  If you want to split this into a new thread, by all means do.  I will not take part.  I have no stance on the issue other than this:  It's hard enough to keep players in general in a pbem, and it just pisses me off to no end to lose one that is still interested.

[John]

I agree with most of your post. However, I believe theater, magick, and RPG can each be different activities. It's a matter of set, setting, and intention.

Magick can in some sets and settings merely be magic, a form of story-telling or psycho-analysis.

I completely agree. They are all discrete activities, but a play or a ritual is not (in my PoV) much more different from an RPG campaign than one RPG campaign is from another or than one play is from another - as you point out, the range of each of these three activities is quite broad and also overlaps.  I would say that what we have is a continuum that magick, theater, and role-playing all lie upon.  I am not certain what broader term should be used to encompass all three activities, but there should most definitely be one.

[John]

It seems weird to me that while for years RPG players have defended themselves against accusations of Evil Occultism by saying it's all a pretend game and has nothing to do with any actual occult anything, and now we've got a thread exploring, essentially, the idea that Jack Chick was exactly right! -- minus of course that whole "witchcraft = Satanism" thing.

I'm reminded of when I was writing Liber Ka (the sorcery supplement for the defunct Chaosium game Nephilim) back before Ken Hite took over the line, the editor specifically wanted a real magician to write the rules.  I wrote up detailed rules that if done in a LARP would not greatly differ from performing actual ritual magick. I mentioned this to the then editor and his response (which greatly pleased me) was that if anyone found a path to spiritual progress through reading this books he'd be happy.  On a similar note, I don't LARP, but I have know people who do who have LARP'd ritual magick, including one fascinating sounding initiation ritual for a PC that sounded very much like it raised at least some power.  Definitely a fascinating side of play that few people discuss.

(BTW, I've seen Authentic Thaumaturgy -- I think I own a copy of the SJG version -- and it doesn't seem to me at all to be about ways in which (as Lumpley said) the process of *playing roleplaying games* is like unto actual magicking; rather, it seems to me to be about ways of doing a very "realistic" "sim" magic system, based on an attempt to model the "real world magick" that Bonewits apparently seriously believes in, a sort of anthropologically-conditioned-parapsychological/scientific-magic system.)

I find Bonewits to be tiresome and not terribly worth reading.  I wish there was more useful reading on this topic.  The oddest thing I've ever seen relating anything of this sort was in a truly terrible modern-supernatural game with a name like Everlast (does anyone have any idea what game I'm referring to, it's been years since I flipped through it in a store, the book came out in the late 90s).  The game was quite bad, but the appendix was fascinating.  The author actually had instructions on performing a simple ritual to help get everyone in the mood for gaming and in character.  This included each person doing a very short and minor summoning of their character.  I'd love to have a copy of this appendix, it was wacky but also rather interesting, if not necessarily something I'd actually use.

[John]

Ignore this, the above message posted twice and I have no idea how to delete a post, so I'm shortening it.

[ejh]

John, is this the game you were talking about?

http://www.visionaryentertainment.com/index2.html

[John]

John, is this the game you were talking about?

http://www.visionaryentertainment.com/index2.html

That's it, thanks muchly.

[lumpley]

Awesome post, John.  Thank you!

...on a few occasions, I've learned magickal lessons from my long-term RPG characters and have had a few that would meet most people's definitions of spirit guides.

Can I ask about this last?  Particularly, when you created the character, did you intend for him or her to act as a spirit guide, or did that role emerge over the course of play?

It seems pretty clear to me that that's what was going on with Ms. Paxson's soothsaying - character as spirit guide, I mean.

-Vincent

[John]

Awesome post, John.  Thank you!

...on a few occasions, I've learned magickal lessons from my long-term RPG characters and have had a few that would meet most people's definitions of spirit guides.

Can I ask about this last?  Particularly, when you created the character, did you intend for him or her to act as a spirit guide, or did that role emerge over the course of play?

Specifically, I was playing a character in a game who was a powerful empath, who later learned to do psychic healing.  I started playing this character back in the mid 80s, before I had started serious magickal study.  In the late 80s, when I actually began to get some magickal training, it turned out that the first sort of energy-work (immediate, non-ritual magick) that I discovered that I was good at was healing.  To aid my healing, on a number of occasions, I let myself slip in character.  The result worked quite well and I learned more about the "feel" of healing.

The above is merely a somewhat more unusual example of a fairly standard magickal practice. Many experienced magicians deliberately create sub-personas (ie characters) for various pruposes.  I used this character for the same purpose, the only difference was that he was a lot more "real" than any of the magickal persona's most people create.  On a related note, around 5 years ago, I did a ritual that Sarah K. of the Ennead was present at - afterwords, she commented that I had an interesting "priest-character".  I was aware that I shifted my personality and perceptions when I put on my robes and acted as a priest, but I had never considered this shift to be an actual character, but it's a somewhat accurate term - although it is a fairly rudimentary character.