Skeptomancy

[Gregory Paul Stolze]

At 10:54 AM 2/19/99 -0800, Ian Young wrote:
>Paul Duggan presents us with a new school of magick...
>
>
>Well, here's where I have a little problem.  The Skeptomancer is walking
>both sides of the fence -- he can either fake an event, or expose a fake
>event for a charge.  I'm inclined to suggest that, if someone is able to
>generate a magickal effect due to his personal obsessions, then he needs to
>decide what he's really obsessed with -- pranking or fraud-busting.

No no, both are two sides of the same thing - transforming belief into
doubt or vice versa.  It's not a fascination with either belief or doubt,
but with the transforming process and the liquidity of human faith.  "I'm
not obsessed with flour or with bread: I'm obsessed with baking."

>Hmm...you're missing a fraud here.  How about my personal favorite, the
>Piltdown Man?  A skull and jawbone found in a quarry in Piltdow, England
>was long hailed among the scientific community around the globe as "the
>missing link" of human evolution -- a human-like cranium with an ape-like
>jaw!  Well, as it turns out, it really was just that -- a human skull that
>someone had buried along with an ape's jawbone (an orangutan, if I recall
>correctly).  Major embarrassment to paleo-anthropology.

This is actually quite similar to "cryptomancy," an idea I was kicking
around for magick based on lies.  The cryptomancer taboo would be that they
could never tell a lie except to charge up, never for personal gain.  They
charged up with giant hoaxes.  Alternately, they lost their charges if they
got caught in a lie.  But I couldn't quite make it cohere...

>Now, this makes me think of the suggestion of creating a rules set for
>stage magicians and technicians who are skilled enough to use mundane means
>to create effects rivalling and surpassing those of magickal adepts.  Why
>bother building and collecting charges if you don't really need them? 
>After all, reality and simple gullibility are your friends!

It's a teriffic idea, but I think there's plenty of room for both the
skeptomancers and the debunkers.  In fact, maybe the skeptomancers covertly
SUPPORT the debunkers because that provides support for their belief
busting and ALSO provides skepticism for them to overcome.  (There was
something somewhat similar in "City of Lies," where a gang of crooks posed
as "ninja" believing that the ninja were just a peasant superstition.  A
faction who considered themselves the GENUINE ninja supported the criminal
ninja as another layer of confusion...)

-G.
1899 Phrenologist: Your son has the sloping forehead of a sexual deviant:
better put him in an asylum.
1999 Gene Therapist: Your fetus has the "date rape" gene.  Better abort.